How did you mark the end of winter?

I took down our Christmas cards.

To celebrate the arrival of spring, I caught you a few pictures of flowering spring trees and bushes in the nation’s capital:

And then I spent the afternoon in the garden, which I neglected to put to bed last fall. When I arrived, it looked like this, which is pretty much how I left it, but covered with leaves:

(Incidentally, if you click on that last shot and go to my Flickr page, I’ve put in notes on the picture showing what plants came back/survived the winter. We were pleasantly surprised.)

A few hours later, Rudi and I had much tidier beds and had planted shelling peas, lettuce, spinach, chard, broccoli, broccoli rabe, and onions, but I forgot to take a picture to show you the difference. Next week…