Is it spring yet?

So....its been nearly a month since I journaled anything remotely farm related.  Have I been busy with mounds of farmishness you ask?  I have not.  I have been wallowing in my own depression over the sky swallowing up the sun. I am trying not to be dramatic over the loss of the sun but its not working.  It has been months...well only one day but who's counting, since we had sunshine.   I have been trying, oh how I try, to keep my sad spindly tomato sprouts alive...without sun.

 I have been crying over the loss of 3 of my beloved chickens.  Each bird lost to a different cause. One lost to old age. One lost to either the dogs rough housing or a predator.  One pullet lost to unknown causes.  All of these bring with them a set of worries for me. How does a farm girl keep her chickens safe? How does one keep them healthy in this incessant wet weather? Argumentum ad nauseam.

I have supplied my neighbor, my neighbors-neighbor and their neighbors with eggs.  I have also started selling a few dozen here and there, with the hopes of offsetting the cost of feeding 40+ stinking birds.  And trust me they do stink. Six straight months of rain really do a number on the chicken yard and with the feed store being out of straw till July....things are a bit muddy.

Since the last big wind storm scared the wits out of the Mr. things about the property are going to change.  We will be cutting out some of the big trees closest to the house. This in turn will change the garden area a bit.  This is good and bad. Good, because it will let more light reach the garden and free up more space for garden beds. Bad news is that I have to plan for new beds.  I stink at planning and my planning stinks.

Last fall I bought and actually planted some spring bulbs.  This has never happened before.  Normally, I buy bulbs and forget to plant them till its too late. I either end up with rotten or dehydrated bulbs that must be thrown out OR I stuff them into the nearest empty pot and hope for the best.  I really wanted to round out the daffodils so I purchased tulips; one a solid purple and the other a purple and white variegated. I happily planted them in-between Hyacinth and Freesia and dreamt of the riot of color that would conspire come spring.  The Hyacinths popped up as they should, followed by the solid purple tulips, followed by yellow tulips.

Humpf.

Now I am not a terribly picky person but I have been trying to establish the garden beds to appear as waves of color.  The yellow threw me off.  I didn't plant yellow tulips. I planted purple variegated tulips. I planned  for purple. The yellow tulips look nice with the purple but this is not the Yellow and Purple flower bed, this is the Purple and White flower bed.  See what I mean by stinky planning? I can't win for loosing.
I am hoping that Spring will do its Springing and the the rest of the plant life will burst forth with a color show so brilliant that it will drown out the yellow tulips.

If Spring ever springs....