A year ago today the folks drove up from Red Deer to help with the frantic fencing bee. We spent a chilly morning and afternoon slathering green paint across a few hundred fence boards promptly followed by a lot of pounding nails that eventually led to the the bulk of the back and side fence being built.

Yesterday, upon returning from a quick trip to Red Deer, we enjoyed a little more casual spring preparation. Nearly all of the snow melted, I spent some time pulling furniture and garden-bits from their winter storage in the shed. I hauled out the mower and got it running, mowing up the clumps of shredded grass left behind from the winter mice. I raked a good chunk of the lawn. I cleaned Sparkle’s run from the compound interest of six months of sporadic snowfalls. And I mulched up some of the compost pile, a rich fibrous soil that will feed the raspberry patch all summer long.

The tulips are poking from the ground. There is good hope that the trees all survived their first winter in our yard, the first signs of fresh buds appearing along the lengths of their branches. And after a good raking, the grass even seems to have a generous hint of green emerging from the dried browns.

In the coming couple of weeks, we’re hoping to catch the pre-weed purity of the yard and finish spreading gravel in the appropriate spots along the edges of the house, the fence, in the window wells and a top-up for the run. My fall composting efforts were numerous and seven bags of organics await a good tilling into the rest of the garden. That process, along with a few extra bags of peat and garden-manure should raise the dirt another centimeter and make for another splendid season of fresh produce. And sooner-than-later I’ll drive over the hardware store and get some eaves for my shed and complete the rain-barrel collection system that should keep my tomatoes and flowers strong for the whole summer.

Before the weather gets too hot I’d like to plant a few more small shrubs, some in the front, some in the back. I was thinking I’d also add a saskatoon berry bush in the back corner of the garden, setting up the back wall of the yard to be a stretch of strong vegetation and generous fruit production. With naught but a month until the May long weekend (and that happy three-day stretch when much of the planting is due to occur) there is definitely plenty of work to be finished.