After such a summer and such a fall, winter is just as unique here at Earthsprings. Who can tell if it’s really winter or spring? I still haven’t gotten my winter chores begun properly–cleaning up the garden area, adding hearty mulch and compost everywhere, tidying up the barn, checking out my seed catalogues, sharpening tools (after finding them wherever I left them when the weather last sent me scurrying inside) and already the meadow is full of paperwhites, the scent so intoxicating one is drunk on Spring just walking between the house and the medicine lodge! How bravely the plants are struggling back again after such hardship of last summer’s drought and unrelenting heat and all the rest, how brave they are. The first daffodil opened its bright yellow flag of hope only a few days behind the first violets and the first bloom on the tulip tree, all ahead of their usual schedule…and, well, really, I don’t have time to go on about all this, as I’m off to plant sweet peas and pea pods and lettuce and onions and…