My yard is obviously working by the ancient Celtic calendar, not by the one on the wall that says spring is still a month away. On Feb. 1st I had camillas blooming on one bush (loads of buds on the other three), all my bulbs were thrusting up their leaves, the roses and hydrangeas were leafing out, all the other trees and bushes in my yard were budding, and today the first crocus opened up. They obviously think it's spring and the next five days of sunny and mid to high 50s weather will be reinforcing that. I'm afraid we're getting set up for an early bloom/killing frost that destroyed our fruit harvest last year.
It's spurred me into action in my yard. I thought I had another few weeks before I started to worry about that (AKA procrastination/avoidance) but two days in a row of glorious sunshine have brought us outdoors.
Yesterday I went out into the backyard to be with DD as she played...I'd ordered her outside to soak up sunshine, and sitting there fiddling with my knifty knitter loom I kept smelling doggie poo.
Sure enough, there was a pile nearby. Started picking up poo, ended up doing the whole yard that's been neglected for a loooong time. I refuse to scoop doggie poo in the cold rain, which it's been doing for weeks. It was just as nasty as you're imagining. Ugh.
After this, for no reason I can give you, I decide to put a path through the quarter circle-ish bed, something I've been wanting to do since we moved in. I used the large cobbles we dug up putting in the willow hut to outline the path and used the small pebbles from another rock pile (long, weird DH story) for the path bed. It's really cute. DD loved helping me do this and prancing up and down the tiny little path afterwards.
Then DH planted garlic for me inbetween the rose bushes in the same bed. Yes, I know, I was supposed to do that last fall, but I didn't, and we got a head of garlic from the store last week that was exuberantly sprouting, so we planted it and another one. If it isn't ready this fall, I'll just leave it for a year and pick it next year.
So, of course, we had to put up some of the wire garden fencing I'd gotten to keep the dog out of that flower bed. He peed my rosemary and chamomile plants to death last summer and keeps pooping in it. Argh. So after starting to put up the wire stuff, DH got a bee in his bonnet, so to speak, and is making a wee little gate for the path through the bed. This is getting too complicated. It'll look strange having a picket-fence style wooden gate with a dinky wire fence, but I couldn't seem to convince him of this. I HAVE been trying to get him to make (or buy) a gate for another section of the yard that needs it, but, no, of course not.
Today I fiddled around with the compost heap, sort of turning it, and pulled up the dried things that used to be the tomato plants from last summer and put them on top of the compost pile. Then DD wanted to plant seeds, so even though it's too early, we planted some storebought "Evening Sun" sunflower seeds and butterfly bush seeds in the flower bed alongside the atrium.
And DD pranced up and down the pebble path.
I'm going to have to take a break from gardening, my tendonitis is threatening to pull rank. But I've got a whole lotta sunshine before it starts raining again on Sunday. I'll have to think hard about what I can do this week for spring prep that doesn't involve shoveling anything. Hmmm.
I'd link photos, but the attachment doohikey won't let me even though I made the file size and image size small enough. Why does it hate me?
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The heathers and pyracantha have kept me going through the dull winter though, and I shall be loath to remove them, unless they are really too leggy or woody once I've hacked out their neighbours. I have quite a few good shrubs in there that I want, like a large hebe and a gold spotted laurel, but there's quite a bit of rubbish that needs clearing before I can see if those shrubs will be worth keeping. 
