I am also sooo ready for spring fragaria!The past few days we have had frigid weather,wind chill got down to 20 below yesterday.I took this pic of my pond this morning,all I can see of it now is the water coming out of the fountain.My opening keeps getting smaller and smaller.I take warm water out to it every day to make sure the opening doesn't get closed off completely. Here is a link that might be useful:

Definitely, if the leaf cover is heavy, you should make a point of getting the leaves off. The trouble with doing it at this late date is the leaves have absorbed a lot of moisture---be it rain, dew or snow. Lawn mowers is the thing to use....raise the height of the wheels so you don't cut turf...the leaves stand a better chance of being lifted up.....bag them, of course. I say, of course, because chances are with the leaves absorbing so much moisture they will be hard to cut up....no matter how sharp the blades...they'll skip out and you'll end up going over and over and over the same leaf pile in order to get any sort of volume. Bag the leaves, throw into your compost....no compost pile...save the leaves in the bag, throw some soil in, throw some kitchen scraps in, poke holes in the bottom to let worms in, and deposit behind a hedge for later use....next summer. Leaf mold makes for great feeding of roses. If you find it hard to lift with the mower, you have the rake to get it done.....but whatever, don't leave them on the lawn...they'll kill the lawn faster than anything.

No snow, but going down to record low territory for this early for lows...around 20 F. Lake effect is minimal here...usually flurries. Big snow events come up from the south and along the coast. Supposed to be back into the 60's by Monday. Ocean temperatures still too warm to support coastal snowstorms. I have personally given up on the concept of 'normal' weather.

The same is happening with the pinyon and beetles. In some places, the kill rate is 50 percent of the forest. The problem is so big that various govm't agencies aren't doing anything. There's just too many dead/dying trees to cut down -- and where can someone burn tens of thousands of trees? They are appealing to landowners to go across their property and cut-down/burn the beetle trees. But nothing is being done (as if anything could be done!) on BLM and USFS lands. I drove southwest of Cortez, Colo., last month. Wow! Stands of brown-needled (dead) pinyon were everywhere. When this all comes to an end, I think people might look back and say the drought/fires were certainly the most visible disaster, but that the beetle infestations and tree kills were the most devastating. Hope I'm wrong about that!