Spring Fever has me in it's clutches. Three trips to shop already this month and everyone of the trips ended with me bringing in something to pot up or stick in to the ground.

The Reger begonias have to stay indoors for another month, but then they can go out to the patio in the shade with the rest of the house plants I drag in and out according to the season. It's a full day job in both directions, but I truly am a green freak.

I have pansies blooming along with the daffodils, jonquils, and grape hyacinths. (I planted hyacinths last fall in pots lined with chicken wire to keep the squirrels from digging them up and eating them, but they still didn't survive.)

The peas I planted and mulched in January are peeking out. The strawberry plants are greening up (I lost about half of them and all my azaleas to the repeated freeze-thaw cycles we had this winter--pretty common in Nebraska).

The forsythia I planted last fall are about 18 inches tall and rather funny looking with six or seven tiny blossoms on each. In a couple of years they should be pretty. . .at least they survived being poisoned with weed killer by the crazed neighbor next door.

I planted another row of peas, a row of broccoli (not Rabe) and two of onion sets. It got dark before I got the potatos, spinach, lettuce, cabbage and collards in the ground. Just as well. . .turning up the ground with a turning fork is murder on my back so four rows is really pushing it.

We may have severe weather tonight and tomorrow, but the plants had to go in the ground because we are going out to an Emergency Management conference this weekend and I wasn't about to get a house sitter for a dozen pansies and three dozen broccoli plants.

Of course if the 'large hail' in the forecast happens, it will shred them and I will be out the $$ I spent on them and will be doing the work all over, too, when the ground has dried out. I mulched them with straw in hopes that it might protect them from the weather. I suspect Mother Nature can find them no matter how well I try to camouflage them.

If Mother Nature doesn't get them. . .the rabbits might. I have a cat and a dog and the rabbits are not afraid of them at all and enjoy feasting on the garden. (We also have to contend with ground hogs and deer.) It was too dark to put the netting down over the rows that I finished. I stumbled back to the house in the dark as it was.

Now that you are home owners, you can look forward to to spring fever and yard work, too!