Apparently Mother Nature didn’t think yesterday’s global warming joke was funny, because it got down to a record-breaking 26 degrees last night – some serious frost. Thank goodness Gene checks the weather religiously!

We were outside at 10:30, hunting down tarps, covering plants, and moving as many flower pots as we could onto the porch where the space heater was running. Sigh. On the plus side, we only lost a single hot pepper plant. And it wasn’t due to the cold snap – it got demolished by 3 fat geese who managed to sneak up onto the back deck this morning. One of them stuck its head under the tarp and started snacking.

And I know it was them, because shortly after they did it, they started banging on the sliding door to the bedroom. Higgins still had clumps of potting soil stuck to his beak, and left a trail of pepper leaves in his wake. I fixed the baby gate, and now they’re back to pounding on the front door and leaving lots of evidence of their presence behind.

The hummingbirds weren’t too happy to find all their flowers covered either, and were only slightly consoled by the fact that I lined all their feeders up on the deck railing so they’d still get their 5 am sugar high. I figured it wouldn’t be back to the 40s until mid-morning, so I settled in at my desk to get some work done. I was shocked when I looked at the temperature gauge around 8 and saw it was already back to 70 degrees! So I had to rush around to get everything uncovered before they baked to death heating up under the tarp. Apparently Mother Nature careth not about calendars or my deadlines.

This afternoon, when I decided I needed an outside break (there’s only so long I can stare at a computer screen without getting twitchy), I figured I’d get a start on mucking out the barn. Not going to lie, that’s my least favorite of the spring chores. But I did come to the realization I’ve pretty much shed the last of my city girl vestiges. As I was hauling pitchforks loads of straw that were getting progressively heavier the deeper I dug, I was actually excited when one forkful weighed about 30 pounds and started to angrily buzz at me. Instead of being skeezed out, I told Gene we’d just struck compost gold!