The Winter Doldrums

Oh you know … just your typical April morning in Minnesota.

April 23, 2013

Honestly. Haven’t we been punished enough? I've already resigned myself to the fact the Vikings will never win a Super Bowl, we’ll always be required to sing all twelve verses to every church song ever and will unfortunately always share a state border with that embarrassing cousin you pray never shows up to family events … you know … Wisconsin. But now this? Snow through the end of April? Really?

This extended wintry tomfoolery has been especially annoying for Ashley and I, because we have a bounty of outdoor projects to complete this “Spring.” First and foremost, we haven’t even been able to officially close our loan until our contractor paints the exterior of our house and attaches new gutters. How silly of us to expect consistent 35+ degree temps in April so paint can properly dry! Thankfully, we received an extension from the bank for “unforeseen weather circumstances.”

But painting and gutters aren't the only tasks we have planned these next few months. Ashley, myself and the friends and family we'll con with beer and baked goods also have outdoor projects of our own:

First, we’re itching to channel our inner gardeners (Ashley’s inner gardener may be in permanent hibernation as she hasn’t met a plant she couldn’t kill). If you remember last fall, we transformed the house formerly known as Jumanji, into a clean slate for planting. As of today’s writing, nothing has changed from last fall, although we did order a pretty tree to plant.

We're planting a Redbud tree like this one in our front flower bed. 

We also desperately need to fix our cobblestone driveway (didn’t we tell you we purchased an English cottage?). Years ago, a long vertical section of stones slipped out/were removed and now when the snow melts, we get our very own mud pit. With the menagerie of animals trudging about our property, I’m actually surprised a parcel of piglets hasn’t staked claim to this swath of muddy goodness.

If you look close enough, you might see pig prints.

But thankfully, it's finally spring and we have great weather coming up so our house painting will commence this week and we’ll start repairing our driveway this weekend. April showers bring May flowers, right, weather.com?

OH COME ON!!!