Falling Behind Schedule

The very cold temperatures we’ve had lately (not to mention late-season snows!) have set us back by at least two weeks in our planting schedule. Because nighttime temperatures have been in the 20s, we’re not able to keep seedlings outside to harden off, which means they aren’t ready to plant. 

You can also see that the weather has frozen our daffodils and tulips in their tracks, and nothing is blooming:

But if you look closely in the photo, you’ll also be able to tell how we’ve been spending our time instead. Did you notice that the house is yellow?

We finally got started on this enormous project this weekend, even though we’ve known for years that A) the house needs paint, and B) that it’s destined to be yellow.

So before the perennial border plants get too big to work around — and while we don’t have anything to plant — we got out there and started scraping off the old paint:

If you look closely. you can tell that we have crushed some of our young plants — it couldn’t be helped. Hopefully it’s early enough that they can bounce back when it warms up and they can still fill in nicely for the season.

This is a horribly dirty job, and it’s also a high physical one. We scraped on Saturday and painted primer and one full coat (field and trim) today: 

We felt pressured to work fast because it’s going to rain in a couple days, and we wanted to get the raw wood sealed back up. We’ll finish the second coat if this section next weekend, and then we’ll keep working our way around the house for the rest of the summer. 

There is one daffodil that wasn’t totally crushed by the snow (or underfoot while we were painting):

I’m pretty pleased with the way the spring color scheme of works with the new house color, though it looks like we’ll have to wait until next spring to really enjoy it.