Four more day's until spring!!! The first daffodil is nearly open, even though it was snowing off and on again these last few days. The day lilies and columbines are also starting to make a serious effort to show themselves. I planted oodles of tulips and daffodils in late fall and early winter, and those are all starting to come up now too! I have a list as long as my arm of things I want done in the garden over the next few weeks, especially transplanting. Since many of the gardens are now 4-5 years old, many of the shrubs and perennials are getting to be quite big, and now I have to move some of the filler plants around. Should be interesting to see what it will look like when it is all done. I'm still debating on putting bark mulch in this year, although by the time the plants fill out in late spring it hardly seems worth it.

Also, the slough was frozen over again this week due to the frigid arctic winds and we were able to get a good look at the river otters again. Kind of neat to see so much wildlife in the slough right now. I'll post some pictures of that next time if I can get close enough without scaring them all away!