SPRING!!!

According to the weather station near our house, today is the fourth day this year that it's been above 70. We have been yearning for some warm weather (after snow and high temperatures in the 30's last week), so this feels amazing! We've done a little bit of work in the yard - mostly Chris has been expanding his garden. Today we moved a truckload of dirt into a new section of garden in the back yard. I have to admit, I was not psyched about shoveling dirt on such a gorgeous day (my bike was calling to me). But after we were done I felt very satisfied (and tired).

He's been talking expanding the garden for a couple of years, and this year our friend Rachel said she'd like to grow some vegetables in our garden, so that was the impetus he needed. A few weekends ago, they both worked for a few hours moving rock and breaking up the ground. It should be ready to go soon!

So far, Chris has planted leeks, spinach, swiss chard, peas (ick), radishes, beets, carrots, onions, potatoes, cabbage, kale, and a variety of lettuces. Rachel planted arugula, peas, carrots, and beets. And, we have some nice looking pepper plants. Soon Chris will plant even more veggies, AND, we signed up for a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) share with Grant Family Farms - so we are going to have vegetables coming out the ying-yang this summer!!


Chris also planted 2 raspberry bushes, and we have 2 blueberry bushes, so we'll see how that works. They need a lot of water, so we have to keep on top of that (the raspberries are in the picture to the right, along with 2 rows of irises Chris' friend planted for us last fall).

In the front yard, we have some irises that are about to come up (I love irises!) and some nice tulips in bloom, and the landscaping we put in a couple of years ago is doing pretty well, too.






And the last project has been our compost pile. After a few years of just accumulated waste, Chris made an "official" bins in the back so that we can rotate them and finally start using the amazing looking dirt on the bottom. You can tell it's cooking, too, Chris said it was steaming when he turned it the other day. Yeah, microbes!









Above: the new bins, "dirt" after and before composting. (It's amazing how little we throw away when most of our kitchen scraps go into the compost pile.)