It's beautiful here in the north.
It's like Narnia when Lucy first enters through the wardrobe.
Still, I'm annoyed that the White Witch stills holds my gardens in her icy grip. She's had her seasonal reign. Enough already.

Sunrise over the back gardens.

Today it was blustery and 30 degrees, so no melting yet. My smallest dog, Henry, a doxie/chihuahua mix, got stuck in a drift this morning and I had to pull him out. 

I have a little pond in my yard. It's frozen right now, but in the summer it has a waterfall and it used to have koi in it. Unfortunately, the UV filter we had running in the pond broke last winter, unbeknowst to us, and subsequently green algae took over the pond in early spring and killed off the koi. It was sad and also made me feel extremely guilty. For a long time we did not fix the UV filter. Why bother? We had no fish to keep alive anymore. Weep.

And then the frogs moved in. Oh man did we have frogs! They loved that algae. We mostly had American Bullfrogs, Green Frogs, and Leopard Frogs. My husband and children seemed relatively nonplussed about these wonderful amphibians (my kids are teenagers...), but I became smitten! At one point my husband (Andy) cleaned the pond and replaced the UV filter. The pond returned to its pristine loveliness, but I did not spy quite so many frogs after that point, which worried me. Where had they gone? Were they suffering since we had disrupted their home? Gradually, the frogs returned. I think they might have just been horrified that Andy had emptied and refilled the pond, and they took off for several weeks before daring to return.

Green Frog

Northern Leopard Frog. These little dudes are super cool looking. They are iridescent in the sun.

American Bull Frog

Andy turned the UV filter off for the winter, and before the last snow storm I noted the green algae had begun to grow. It got me thinking about my frogs. I so want them to return this summer. So, this morning I researched how to best create an attractive environment for frogs so that they will come.

It turns out the reason my pond became a frog mecca last summer was because we had inadvertently already created the perfect frog environs. They love algae (no surprise there), they like small ponds in areas that have plenty of bugs to eat (check), and they like ponds that have gradual, shallow entries into them. The one area in which I had been remiss is that I didn't have any little frog getaways--pots turned sideways and half buried and other little crevices that serve as cool, damp hiding places. I'm on it. I'm going to make some fab frog hide-a-ways and place them around the pond--just as soon as the foot of snow surrounding it melts....

Onto daylilies.

Yesterday I moved a hundred or so daylilies from the basement to the first floor of the house and placed them on a card table close to a sunny window. The goal was to free up some downstairs space to place a few heated mats and get some annuals and vegetables going before it's too late. I'm worried these daylilies will not do well by the window, but I also can't figure out another solution.

In just a few weeks, even if there is snow still on the ground, I plan to start hardening  my infant daylilies off.
Our last freeze is usually in late April. When do those of you hybridizing in the north start to harden off your babies?