One for my own silver linings playbook

Looking at the sunny side of things.

The five trees that blew down in the storm last fall have been a pain of one kind or another ever since. The only upside is the wealth of firewood they will provide, although it is fast-burning spruce instead of the more desirable birch.

Hauling them down out of other trees, cutting them up into sections, digging out stumps, plans to the E level and most of the splitting still too go because they are still too green to cut up easily this firewood warms half a dozen times at least.

But, today, a silver lining from all that travail showed up, at least to my vision, today.  Apparently it has been going on for some time. The answer is in the photo.

For all the time I have had this garden, there has been a sunny end and a shady end. The end closest to the camera in this photo has been the one in shade for most of the day. Shady end indeed. Does it look like it?

Well, it isn't the shady end any more. Three of those huge spruce that fell cleared the sky at that west end of the garden. Sun hits it about an hour after local noon (do I have to explain that again. Because of politics, business and daylight savings time, local noon here, the time of day when the sun is highest in the sky, is 2 p.m. by the clock.)

The sun then stays on that spot almost until sunset, at least five or six hours of daylight. That's actually more than the former sunny side of the garden gets. If you look closely at the picture you can see the garden is all raked out and the wire is in place for the climbing plants. I am going to have to move some of it into this new sunny place.

One sign the sun already is working, in the areas where I threw mixed Alaska wildflower seeds last year the ground is covered with little green plants. Some of that is visible in the lower right hand corner of the picture.

So tempting to go outside with the garden already.  It has been hot here the past few days and supposed to go well into next week.  It only takes a look at the thermometer in the morning to prevent that.  Right now it is 77, but when I woke up this morning it was 33.  We still could have a freeze, so you really have to stick with the Memorial Day rule. Meanwhile there's lots of growth in pots and flats in the house.