We expected a mostly-rain storm but ended up with a mostly-snow storm. Now everything is coated in a layer of wet white cement. It will melt today, but for the moment the garden looks grim. Not that the snow will hurt the peas and greens I planted on Saturday: they love this kind of weather . . . cool, dank, mucky.  But this isn't the most charming moment to get a truckload of new soil dumped onto my driveway, and that's what's on the schedule.

Spring in Maine, even here in the temperate south, is jam-packed with teenage highs and lows. Ice! Hyacinths! Frostbite! Daffodils! Still, in Harmony, school was canceled yesterday; they got a real snowstorm, not our gloppy sleety skimcoat. I am aware of the luxury of my complaints.

So today: a morning of editing neatly at my desk; an afternoon of wheelbarrowing loads of soil through mud and slush.