What a beautiful winter wonderland on Tuesday morning. With our luck, now that we have had above-average temperatures in both January and February, we will probably get real winter for March and April.

One drawback of evening snowfall even if it’s simple flurries, the snowplow goes by my house hourly all night long. This often produces sparks as the road has no snow build-up. So much for a good night’s sleep.

When I was young, my Dad drove the plow for the township. We’re talking about serious work. Getting two feet of the stuff overnight was not unusual.

I have photos of Dad in the 60s, shoveling the walkway. The sides were well over his head. He was not a small man.

Yikes! I sound like one of those oldsters who claims to have walked five miles to school in a blizzard — uphill both ways.

Don’t forget, this was in the mountains of western Pennsylvania with the lake-effect weather from Lake Erie.

My first winter on the Vineyard in 1970 was quite a surprise. It’s always been milder than my experience in Rew.

I spent the rather gloomy and rainy afternoon on Tuesday lamenting the rapid snow melt. How quickly it changed from beautiful to dreary.

It’s a bit challenging this week to glean anything to report in garden world.

Fortunately I kept myself busy making soup and bread. I’m coming to the end of my harvest of both onions and garlic. They were added to my own chicken stock along with some kale and carrots from Ghost Island Farm.

I feared for the demise of my own kale in the hoop house. The big freeze a few weeks ago turned it all brown. Then, just a week or so later, each pile of death sprouted new growth. I repeat myself endlessly. Nature is grand!

In mid-November I also seeded some carrots in that hoop house. They germinated but, sadly are the size suitable for Barbie’s kitchen garden.

Speaking of seeding, I removed spinach, onions and lettuce from the propagating mats in the unheated greenhouse. I’m not worried as they can take some freezing. If it gets into the single digits again, I can put some bubblewrap on top. A single layer of plastic will give the plant five degrees so the added wrap should do the trick.

I refilled the mats with some trays of Oriental poppies, echinacea and monarda. All three are hardy perennials. The seeds would survive and germinate even outdoors.

FYI: SBS has several baskets of 2022 seeds for one dollar each. The 2023s can be as much as five dollars.

I know it’s a popular opinion that Joe Biden is too old. I wonder how most people would hold up on two 10-hour train rides, go into an active war zone with no American military backup and make an awesome “unite the free world” speech later in Poland.

If we have to play the old card, I think Trump also has to go. Plus, I’m getting bored picking on him. I want to pivot to book-banning, immigrant-trafficking, education-hating, woke-killing “young” Ron DeSantis.

By the way, what does woke even mean? Does anyone you know use it in a sentence?

Give me old, wise, decent Joe Biden any time. He should paraphrase the famous Ronald Reagan line “I will not hold your youth and inexperience against you.”