March winds, April showers brings forth….I am sure many of you are familiar with the lyrics, but Mother Nature sometimes has different ideas. With the dump of snow, we received November 9 which started our winter a bit early, to our fabulous February when we thought spring was surely around the corner. Then the Arctic vortex settled in for a few weeks which brought my fur coat out of hibernation to the blizzard on March 29. We get that false sense that our long winter is finally coming to an end, and oops here we go again.

For the last couple of weeks when the sun was shining bright and winds were relatively calm I was outside doing the spring cleanup. I am fortunate to have neighbors on the west that have a wind break of towering poplars in their backyard and to the east a giant weeping willow. With the early snow fall the trees didn’t have a chance to drop their leaves but chose to do so these past couple of weeks. Now comes the March winds which filled my yard with a bounty of leaves from the west and of course the wind direction changes and I am picking up twigs from the east. Not complaining but I am still looking at my own Linden that hasn’t dropped a leaf to date.

This past Saturday was my last all out effort to remove as much of those leaves that accumulated under the deck, around the back fence and nestled in the hard to reach area around the storage shed. With the sun shining and the chickadees and sparrows cheering me on I bagged five large bags of leaves ready for the compost. The first official day of spring is March 20 but we know herein Saskatoon it is the May long weekend. Now if those April showers, not snow storms, bring forth May flowers we can start enjoying the sunshine and warm weather once again. My little seedlings are getting anxious to be outside.