A visitor from Alaska

When I went downstairs in the middle of the night, I thought it was a full moon, except (even without glasses) something seemed wrong. Sure enough, we woke up to





. . . in the middle of April!

It's not a record, but I can't remember snow after Valentine's Day. Out in the raised beds, the baby spinach, lettuce and chard are snug beneath their row cover and should be fine, but I'm not so sanguine about the pears and cherries; it's supposed to freeze again the next two nights.

The boys were delighted by snow when they were half-grown kittens, but they've decided, after a couple of early forays today, to pile up inside and wait for better weather. They'll be evicted soon, but we're not letting on.

We're keeping extra warm burning the scrap wood left over from the flooring. It's amazing how much heat you can get from kiln-dried oak tidbits - and how little ash it produces! Maybe we should start toasting our firewood in the oven. We'd only have to do a few sticks a day, and we could bake bread or do a roast at the same time . . .