On this very grey, gloomy and rainy day my thoughts turn to cleansing. It always happens in early spring that we get at least two or three days of heavy cold rain. I bet if we checked the weather records my theory would prove true. My theory being that the earth needs this cleansing of winter. Yes, winter and all the salt and leftover debris that winter always leaves behind and covers up with the snows. Just remember how your yard looked when the snow finally melted a couple of weeks ago. Lots of winter gunk all over. Now that we've had some rain, its disappearing. So, these rains give everything a good cleansing. Maybe that's part of the concept of spring cleaning.

Now that the cleansing is happening, we can plan our gardens, yards and flower beds. Bring out those seed catalogs and start dreaming. Soon the Farmers' Market will be open and plants, eggs and the early spring vegetables will be available again. Even now that its still cold outside, I can see the grass greening up, my lilac bush is just beginning to bud out and the tulips and daffodils are well up out of the ground. For most of us homeowners when young mens thoughts turn to love ours turn to getting the yard raked and to cleaning out the flower beds that we somehow never got to last fall.

Since my back yard is mostly "variegated greenery", meaning grass, clover, quack grass, dandelions and assorted other small greenery, I don't worry too much about fertilizing nor weeding. I'd have to bulldoze the whole yard and start over if I wanted to conquer the lawn. I've found out that dandelion leaves are loaded with vitamin C so this year I'm going to collect the young leaves and use them in salads and mix them with some other "greens" and cook up a pot for me. There's some other so-called weeds growing in my yard that I've found out recently are edible so this is the year to make use of them I think. I've got nothing to lose and since I don't use chemicals in my yard they are safe to eat. In that same vein, I plan on growing  calendulas and nastursiums which are both edible.  I was able to harvest my herbs last fall and they've been a wonderful addition to my cooking efforts over the winter. I've even found a way to be able to preserve chives so that they are still flavorful and keep their lovely vibrant green.

Anyway, enough of my garden and yard musings on this grey and rainy April day. They do divert the rainy day blues and they also create a lovely vision of the weeks to come. I hear its going to be near 60 the middle of next week,  The rake will be out without a doubt.