Springtime in Alaska is a bit different than other places. It’s called breakup, and then there’s a brief moment (don’t blink!), and then it’s summer.

This year has been a little longer of a break-up than normal, or it felt like it. When I left for Utah it hadn’t quite started yet, but was in full swing when I got home. Break-up is when the snow starts to melt pretty noticeably, like the driveways that’ve been covered in snow all winter suddenly have dirt, well mud, and there’s water flowing everywhere.

We had a colder than normal winter, so the frost went way deeper than normal as well. That means it takes a lot longer for break-up to finish up because the water can’t go down below the frost, it just sits there making everything muddy until the ground thaws, then the water can soak down into the ground.

One gauge that I’ve found interesting is my rhubarb. Most years it’s coming up through the snow, but the frost is not very deep and is often gone in my garden before the snow is completely gone. This year, the snow has been gone in my garden for at least 3 weeks and my rhubarb has just started peaking through the ground.

The birch trees, mostly the branches, but the trunks a little bit too, get really red when the sap starts to run. Usually it’s about 2 weeks from then when we get leaves on the trees. The trees didn’t get really red until just about a week ago, and the buds are just now starting to get big enough to see. The trees about 15 miles south of us look fluffy, but no green yet.

The birds are a fantastic sign of spring. When we start hearing a lot more birds in the trees, we know it’s coming sooner than later. The big birds start to come back as well. Last week we had some sandhill cranes finally come in to visit, and just a couple of days ago the swans finally showed up in our swamp. They just stop on their way north, but in the spring the swamp has lots of water. I don’t know what they’re eating, but we see them every year.

The night time temperatures are still quite cool, we haven’t had a frost for a week or so, but it’s in the mid 30’s every morning. My greenhouse still needs a fire every night. We’ve had so much cloud cover that the plants aren’t dying, but they aren’t really growing much either. Hopefully this next week we’ll have periods of sunshine now and then at least.

I love when we can start seeing dirt on the driveway, it gives me hope that winter will not actually last forever. I am looking forward to summer, warmth, my garden, hiking, family coming to visit and so much more!

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