Yesterday was the warmest day of the year to date, reaching 69 degrees at this nearby weather station.

According to UW professor Cliff Mass, the spring has been the coldest on record since 1948 from an off-the-cuff perspective (number of days over 55).

I moved a bunch of the furniture from our main living area out on to the deck and did a thorough de-furring and vacuum run. Wehn that was done I moved outside to weed whack and take on some other chores.

We are expecting a new grill on Tuesday, so Viv cleaned up the deck for me while I turned and repaired our compost bins. I still have a huge pile of scrap from our deck demolition a couple years ago and I used the rest of the afternoon to build a standing potting bench. I may add a shelf or two in service of bracing the structure but not until the weather improves.

Using deck scrap to build furniture produces very heavy furniture.

It went very quickly, though, and makes me think i might build that x-braced picnic table after all this summer.

Viv has dug out nearly all the beds and transferred many of the potted plants to either new pots or the ground. I got my potatoes in a week ago but still haven’t popped any starts into the vegetable bed. Well, one start – Viv found a volunteer lettuce in one of the flowerpots.

Lacking a gas grill at the moment, I cooked a couple steaks over wood, which is always a challenge as charcoal is so hot. They came out nice, though. I used a teriyaki-and-mustard glaze that burned black much faster than the steak did so what appeared to be horribly charred was actually nicely medium rare.

All this yard work meant the dog did not get his walk; we are hoping to get a good one in today despite the return of rain and cold.