Mud

[Gray Wolf]

The snow is finally melting and we're in that wonderfull time of year. MUD. I can take hot or cold, wet or dry, but I hate the couple of weeks of MUD every spring. And it's probably not even really a true spring melt this time.

Is there a chant I can do to make it go away?

Order a bucket of magic dust to sprinkle on the MUD?

Do a "sun dance"?

Go back to bed for 6 more weeks?

I thought about putting up the hammocks to bring back summer but they'd look kind of silly in the snow.

Aside from leaving your boots on the porch and doing laundry all too often, what do you to get through MUD at your place?

[Jim-mi]

I'll trade ya straight up . . Two feet of snow and ice for some mud...............

Oh for some temps to melt all this snow and ice...............

[k9]

I will second that Jim-mi.... -17 the night before and -10 last night,, 12 days in the month of Feb. when it was below 0.

[jwal10]

Move west. I have been gardening, all the beds are weeded and composted, bulbs are blooming. I have potatoes a foot tall. We have had a few showers the last 3 days but the sun is out and dry again today. Grass is GREEN and growing, fruit trees blooming, new kids and calves playing, it is spring here....James

[MichaelZ]

The answer to mud is a pair of mud boots. Standard equipment by us any time it rains once the ice and snow is gone.

[MattG]

jwal10 what part of the west are you in?

[where I want to]

As mud season here usually runs from January through May, mud coping gets same attention that you spend on snow.
1) not just one kind of mud boot but a couple- one oxford type to use when you are going in places not frequented by the animals, one kind that will stick with you through over ankle slop.
2)inside mats everywhere at every entrance, furnished with a boot jack and slippers.
3)outside mats with boot scraper to leave the worst outside before you hit the second inside mat
4) raised paths made of anything to delay the inevitable sinking into slop.

Of course since our mud is the result of unremitting rain punctuated by days of fog, you have to have lots of places inside to dry stuff out. I guess maybe you could leave your boots on the porch but here t by ey woukd have mold growing on them if they never got a chance to dry some.

[BlackFeather]

For us mud won't come till the end of March or beginning of April. Mud means dog prints on the floor, and no use mopping. Last year I was careful to mop all the floors, and then someone let the dogs in, if they didn't leave tracks on every floor, even the places they normally don't go. I think they had a competition, they thought "clean floors lets see who can leave the most tracks." I gave up till it dried up outside.

[jwal10]

Originally Posted by MattG

jwal10 what part of the west are you in?

West of Salem Oregon. Many would say we have mud all year because they think it rains all the time. Not true. But we have had a very mild winter. Maybe 5 days below 32, no snow, a lot of blue sky....James

[blanket]

magic mud dust is sunshine and wind

[Alaska]

50+ years in the far north. 7 years in central Texas. I really miss break-up, NOT! I love it when winter is usually gone by nightfall. Or at least in a day or two.

[MattG]

Jwal sounds like a beautiful place. Hope to go out that way one of these days. Is land living expensive?

[ChristieAcres]

Originally Posted by jwal10

Move west. I have been gardening, all the beds are weeded and composted, bulbs are blooming. I have potatoes a foot tall. We have had a few showers the last 3 days but the sun is out and dry again today. Grass is GREEN and growing, fruit trees blooming, new kids and calves playing, it is spring here....James

Our weather is similar in Sequim, WA. Spring is early here, too!



Since we are up a bit higher (1,100ft), we are a week or so behind. Our fruit trees are about to bloom. While the Daffodils are blooming down in Sequim, ours are just beginning to bloom. We do deal with mud over the Winter, but it isn't too bad (we do get 25" of rain a year and got more this Winter than usual). I just don my boots and take them off outside. We are waiting for our soil to dry up a bit, so we can prep our new garden area.

[Gray Wolf]

We're around 2,700' and are probably less than 50% snow covered. I saw my first bug a couple of days ago and a weed in one of the clear spots. Spring?

[rambler]

Clay soil is bad for that, and here in south central Minnesota we get the mud season is spades when winter eventually breaks up next month.

A sandy soil helps.

Otherwise just have to slog through it.

Paul

[Use Less]

If mud season only lasts a couple weeks, I'd be glad. Sometimes ours seems to last for months. We are getting one day this week when things may start to thaw, and then it's going cold again. Ice. I really hate that.

[ginny63]

Mud oh beautiful Mud. We have been under a drought for the last 4 years. How I would like to have mud again. My neighbor and I promised God we would never complain about mud again.