April Showers and Showers and Snow

Wet weather equals mud equals dog
booties. We all hate booties!

To say that April was wet is almost an understatement. Before the month ended, we'd had 175% of our normal rainfall and three times our normal snowfall. Two days saw new record rainfall amounts set for those dates.

Until the very end, the month was grey, grim and cold---much too cold: Two-thirds of the month's days had below normal high temperatures; fifteen of those ranged from 6-21⁰ below normal. Likewise for the nights: Nineteen were below normal; eleven were 5-16⁰ below. Overall, and despite the fact that we had three days with temperatures 11-19⁰ above normal, the month's average was 57⁰ which was 6⁰ below the historic average. The month's night-time average was 36.2⁰, which was 4.8⁰ below the historic average.

I have to admit that I was wishing for some global warming. (I fear I got my wish, given what May has been like, but I'll be covering the so-far freakishly hot weather in May's summary--or summer-y.)

For this gardener, the worst thing about the rain, mud, and bone-chilling cold was that tasks normally begun in mid-March and continued through April couldn't be done. By the time the month ended, I was a good 6-weeks behind schedule. Not being able to get jobs done was bad enough in itself, but not being able to be outside and marvel at the small miracles of Spring left me feeling as grey and grim as the weather.

Crabapple buds and first blossoms

We managed to get onions and peas planted, but we had to bundle up before we could do a thing. I We had lots of wind during the month; not only were they cold, northwesterly winds, many days they were ferocious. The woods behind us suffered a terrible loss of trees over the entire winter, but it was on a warm (actually it was our warmest day in 6 months) but incredibly windy day in April when I heard no fewer than eight trees fall within an hour.

Newly hatched mason bee
and its new home

I took refuge and heart in and from gardening magazines and wildlife websites. I'm embarrassed to admit that it wasn't until April I realized that 2018 is the Year of the Bird. If you want to help build a better world for birds, take the pledge to do one action per month that is bird-beneficial at this  link https://www.nationalgeographic.org/projects/year-of-the-bird/. Click on "Count me in". If you only want the monthly project information, be sure to unclick the four sites listed below the sign-up.

Peony and Siberian iris buds survived the bitter cold nights

If you enjoy birds and gardening, here are tips for how to create a garden that serves as, or at least naturally and beautifully supplements, your birdfeeder https://www.fix.com/blog/grow-your-own-birdseed/

I discovered that Gardeners Supply has a great informational section called "Learn and Share", covering a variety of topics such as how to create a Backyard Habitat https://www.gardeners.com/how-to?folder=backyard-habitat-articles. I also discovered the online version of the Old Farmer's Almanac has great vegetable-growing advice that we hope will help improve our veggie garden yield https://www.almanac.com/gardening.

Despite the weather, all our flowering trees and our heirloom peonies survived a succession of bitterly cold nights at the very end of the month. The mason bees we over-wintered emerged from their cocoons and were joined at our bee "hotel" by an additional 40 mason bees ordered from Crown Bees.The most exciting April happening, however, was when eight wild turkeys wandered through the backyard one afternoon before disappearing into the woods. Sadly, I couldn't grab a decent camera fast enough, and my phone photos are disappointing. Fingers crossed they'll visit the yard again.