Friday Fabulous Flower - winter thaw edition

The high today, Feb. 17th, is nearly 70 F. Night time lows are staying above freezing.  And this is February, a real winter month. A walk around our gardens showed nearly all our early spring shrubs with swollen buds, and if they are pushed just a bit further, a nice wintery blast from the Great White North will bring them and their acting like spring to an abrupt stop. 
Both of our witch hazels are in flower, but they will not get damaged in any way by more cold. Very tough plants.  So this is 'Diane'; she bloomed almost a week ago. She also flowered late in the fall, but then her flowers were yellow.  'Arnold's promise' opened it's bright yellow flowers today.  Snow drops will bloom shortly.  To celebrate our garden's awakening from its brief hibernation, TPP began some garden cleanup and shopped for some upcycled kits for raised garden beds. 

Freeze and thaw

The high today was nearly 50 F and it felt like a heat wave. The snow cover melted from most exposed areas revealing an awful lot of lawn and garden work to do. Just picking up the limbs and twigs will take a couple of hours. With daily highs predicted to be above freezing for a week or more, the shift toward spring will being rather suddenly. Better get the cold frame repaired, but finding the right double-walled polycarbonate was not easy. The original material fell apart rather quickly & one explanation was that the polycarbonate for outside use was put in upside down with the UV filter coated side down (it is one-sided). The material used in the cold frame is thinner than what you can find in the big-box home stores, but our nifty local specialty glass place could get TPP an 4 x 8 foot sheet. 
On the other hand, the chest freezer needed some repacking and so TPP found himself delving deep into the freezer. You find some surprises, good ones and bad ones. Today the finds were good including nearly a kilo of Costa Rican coffee beans. Yea!  Tonight's dinner will be an attempt to finally get rid of the last of a large roast ham that had been lurking in the frozen depths for too long. Someplace there are guidelines for how long things can be kept frozen, but generally, if it can't crawl out of the freezer on its own its probably still safe to eat. Also found some nice Spanish chorizo to use with some of afore mentioned ham to make a paella thereby killing two ancient freezer items in one dish!  At times my efficiency boggles the mind.