Well, I made up for not getting out of the house for the last couple of days. After lunch today, we strapped on our snowshoes and headed into our woods. There were some pine trees we had planted years ago that we'd sort of lost track of and we wanted to see if they had survived. They are down on our lower lot that adjoins the former Encarnacion property. We found three of the perhaps half a dozen we had set out years ago. They are 25-30 feet tall! I had thought they wouldn't survive because it's pretty wet where we planted them, but those seem to have - and we might have found others except the snow was wet and heavy and it was much harder going than we'd expected, so we cut our trek short and came home by way of the road. I'll no doubt pay a price tomorrow - and may be really lame for a couple of days.

We were trying to think how long it had been since we'd been out on showshoes, and we decided it has been at least five years. It was fun, and I'd like to do it again, but when we don't have 8-10 inches of heavy, wet snow to wade through. I had thought there would be a crust under a few inches of snow, but if there was crust at all, it was under a foot of wet snow. The temperature was perfect, though - except I forgot how warm I get on snowshoes and was definitely overdressed. I think it was about 44 degrees when we were out.

Another warm day tomorrow and then some rain to take the snow pack down a bit. It's all a process of approaching spring. I'm pretty sure the sap ran today, and will tomorrow.  Spring was definitely in the air here today!