Evidence of spring is emerging everywhere.

The native Indian plum is blooming, the maple is flowering and the magnolia blossoms have come and gone. Bright green tips mark the end of the spruce trees.

I’ve been itching to get into the garden for some time now. But with the record rainfall this winter in the Pacific Northwest everything is either mud or turning green with moss. Ugh.

This weekend, after a brief break from the rain and a bit of sun, the soil finally drained. I took my opportunity to wake my garden from its winter slumber. Scraping the leaf cover back, I discovered rich, brown soil – one handful contained at least a dozen worms. It appears the composted chicken manure and leaf litter made for some happy wigglers.

I should back up for a moment here, and say I wasn’t the first one to get to work on my garden this year. A mole beat me to the punch. In the last week it literally pushed up 20 mole hills right smack-dab in the middle of my garden – probably tempted by the smorgasbord of wiggling worms taking residence in my garden.

If you’ve read my blog before, you may know this isn’t the first time I’ve battled moles (you can read more here). They’ve been a menace to my garden, demolishing my beds, upturning my onions and up-heaving my drip irrigation.

So along with clearing back the leaf mulch, reforming my rows and resetting my drip irrigation, I replaced our mole stakes, reset the traps and put the Molecat in place. With any luck, the mole will high-tail it out of here. I’m usually a live-and-let-live kind of girl, but this, this is war!

I also managed to plant some peas, kale and broccoli raab starts. And after a full day of garden work, my derrière is SORE! But it sure felt good to get started.

Next week, the forecast is sunshine and high 60’s. It feels good to feel the sun on my face again.