Picture Day!

I was planting all my sprouted climbing peas (Golden Sweet and Mangetout Carouby) when I spied a few surprise volunteers..
Those are 'Sultan's Golden Crescent' climbing beans! I was so surprised to see them coming up already, this makes me want to sprout all my climbing beans and put them in! Of course, I'll need the hubby to install a bit more trellising before that can happen... Hey, tomorrow is Saturday, right? Perfect timing! :-)

The girls puttered around asking for their own garden space while I was laboriously poking holes, dropping sprouts, and watering-in..and I think we'll have to make that happen this year. We've already started some flower seeds (hollyhock and coreopsis) and I've got all kinds of other flower seeds around they'd love. The only thing is to figure out where to put it!

The peach tree is in full bloom now, and I'm not the only one who noticed..

Ugh. Be glad my dinky little old camera doesn't zoom in that close. These little critters are destined to have an exceptionally short lifespan, I hope they're living it up in there..

Now for something more pleasant to look at--Hi, I'm Duke. You may scratch my tummy.

Little show-off..What is he looking at?


Ahhh, his audience. I don't know..
Sallie looks neither impressed, nor amused.

Spring Has Sprung

First of all, I'd like to thank Robin from Southern Cali for leaving such a nice comment on yesterday's tomato post. And second of all, I'd like to apologize because it won't publish! I tried three times and it said it was published, but I don't see it anywhere. Very strange, I can't figure out what's amiss. I kept backing up and trying again, but I'd reached the definition of insanity..doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. Please try again Robin, it must be a fluke!


As for today in the garden, I checked on my babies in the greenhouse and that's probably going to be it for the day. We're having family over for our eldest daughter's 5th birthday party, so at most I'm hoping to get a few trays of seeds planted. It's time to start some herbs like dill and parsley, and I need to resow my cilantro because the first flat got burnt to a crisp when the hubby put it in the greenhouse one bright, sunny morning with the clear plastic lid still on. It was a thoughtful gesture, too bad I didn't see it before the double greenhouse effect fried them like ants on a sidewalk.

Speaking of frying, the roosters are sorely trying my nerves today. There's a red-tailed hawk hanging around, and Ben and Jack seem to feel compelled to stand in the middle of the yard thumping their chests and crowing defiance. I wouldn't care if I didn't have neighbors, but we're friends with all of them and I don't want that to change! I know I wouldn't be too thrilled if one of my neighbors had something making that much noise. I think I'll see if my grandparents would like to take Ben home with them today and I'll bribe the neighbors with some fresh eggs. :-)

Looking around the yard it's really noticeable that we had an abnormally cold winter. Generally, the weeping cherry in the backyard is almost done flowering by now, and it's only just begun.


The peach tree should also be in full flower, but the buds are only now beginning to color up. That may be a good thing, in case we get a late frost!


I had an idea the other day for a new garden bed. (Big surprise, right?) There's a triangular wedge of yard between the path to the kitchen garden, the fence, and the neighbor's property line. It's not very big, but I could fit quite a few herbs in there and save the hubby the trouble of bringing the mower around to that side just to mow that little patch. And I'm ALL about saving the hubby trouble...

You can tell where the neighbor's fence begins because it's stained a slightly different color. The bed would be about 6 feet wide at the fence, and taper up about 10 feet to meet the side of the flagstone path. It gets full sun all summer, and I can see it being a gorgeous herb bed. Mrs. Einck's dill in the back, some purple basil, Citronella lemon balm, German chamomile, and a border of salad burnett. *sigh* It makes me happy already. It looks like I'll have to wait till Tuesday to start, as we're getting some light rain today and tomorrow. In the meantime I'll get busy with the seeds in the greenhouse. Happy gardening!

Call Me Eager Beaver

It looks so much better out there I just had to go ahead and take some pics. This is what the area looked like after a winter of neglect..

The two big pots in the front have mints in them, and the two big ones in the back are my chives pot and my perennial bunching onion pot. I've been dumping the soil from last year's annual pots into the bed on the left, and this is what it looked like after I moved some pots and did some spreading, hoeing, and weeding..

Ahhhhhhhhh...much better. Not quite done yet, I'll be building up the beds a tad more and we may put newspaper and gravel screenings down in the pathways. It would be a lot more convenient than mowing and weed-whacking the paths, and give it a neater appearance. We're definitely taking down that ramp to the chicken coop, too. We put it up originally thinking the dog wasn't going to get along with the chickens and we'd have to put little fences around the beds and keep them in the garden area. Fortunately (for the chickens, not the dog), the dog got ganged up on by the two roosters a couple of times and now leaves them all severely alone. So we were able to put a trapdoor opening in the floor of the coop that opens up into the rest of the yard and they go in and out that way.

The little flap below the open vent window is the egg door, and below that is the stool our eldest uses to stand on and peer into the boxes. We've got three nesting boxes in there for the hens to lay their eggs in. Apparently, that's too prosaic for some of them. A few like to walk on the wild side and lay their eggs in the doghouse. When the rightful owner poked his nose in there this morning he was greeted with screams of outrage. I came running from the garden to see what was going on, and Sally was standing in the doorway scolding Duke like an angry fishwife. I had to pull her out and stroke her to calm her down, and as for the egg she was defending, well, it was delicious.