Squirrel and gardening

I've written about the cute red squirrels here before.  We saw our second squirrel!  Yesterday we went out for a walk in the drippy weather.  Usually I take the children out by myself in the mornings, and that's Will time to get something done at home.  This week he's been going with us more, and it's so much fun!  As we were going through a wooded part of the park, he was telling Jaan and Raia about "the dangerous wild animals that live there."  Then every time they would look away, he'd throw something through the trees to make noises.  Jaan, Raia and I sneaked away to explore a little area very thickly planted with young pine trees.  Right away we saw a squirrel!  And at the same time, Will randomly threw a huge stick and almost hit it.  We were very upset with him!  But the squirrel didn't seem to mind.  We followed it around and watched it for a while.  I went back out onto the path to where Asya was waiting in the stroller, and Will went off to try and get pictures of the squirrel.  He ended up chasing it right out in front of us.  Asya was thrilled.  It wasn't very afraid and hopped around in front of us for a while, before wandering off.  What a wonderful adventure to brighten up a grey day!

And then gardening. . . in Russia, when we got to weather like this, I would be itching to start planting something.  Here, I felt like there was hardly any winter, and even through the weather feels like spring should be coming, I hadn't been feeling like it was time to plant yet.  But now I do!  There's a fun site that gives lists of what should be planted each week.  I don't know what our official frost dates are, but I've heard that the weather here is about like Ohio, so I randomly chose a zip code in Ohio (45211), with frost dates of April 29 and October 13, and I've checked with those a few times.  Today I got my first list of what to start this week: broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, leeks, head lettuce, onion seed, parsley.  Now I'm excited. I definitely want to grow some of those!  According to this nice chart, it's still a little early to plant, but I think we'll try anyway.

About the climate: in Kovrov, our weather was almost exactly the same as what my aunt in Vermont observed.  Who has the same weather as us now?  Has anyone been comparing?  I've been thinking that I could go back through the Wunderground.com temps and figure out my own last frost dates, but I haven't had time yet.  (If I had a child old enough, I'd assign him the job. )