It's Here!

If you have an iPhone, you may have seen the icon for the weather app that says 73 degrees, which may or may not have tricked you into thinking that was the actual weather when it wasn't. Finally, it's no longer a joke with a disappointing punchline ("Surprise! It's actually a high of 36 in mid-April!"). No more jokes; it finally feels like Spring!!

We went to garden center this week, a couple days before the warmth rolled in, and browsed through the trees and perennials that were still just dormant branches and stems. But it still felt so good to be outside, even if there was nothing green.

But today? This is what happened in our front yard: 

 It's the first flower I've seen all year! I'm sure crocuses came up somewhere, but I haven't seen anything yet except these glorious daffodils! We didn't plant anything last year, so it will be a big surprise whatever we see growing.

Mike is starting to harden off his plants:

Although I spent the baby's naptime just finally getting around to planting my second flat of seeds and replanting in the pellets where nothing came up. At least my procrastination goes along with weather-- I doubt it will really be time to plant zinnias or basil for at least 3 weeks anyway. 

Here are the plants in their indoor environment, underneath the grow lights:

And here's something we had a couple weeks ago-- delicious maple syrup made from the tree in our backyard. 

Today I had the joy of being assisted by my little gardener:

Making a pile of rocks

Deciding if she should rip off a piece of the daylily

Watching me weed

Handing me rocks-- much better than when she tries to eat them! 

 It's been a great weekend so far, enjoying the warm weather: grilling burgers, eating breakfast al fresco, bonfire with s'mores and stargazing, family time in the new hammock, weeding and moving landscaping rock, taking down the exterior shutters and getting swooped by a rudely awakened, disoriented bat. And there's still Sunday to enjoy! It was a long time coming, but Spring weather is finally here, and I am in love with every beautiful minute of it! 

April Showers...

It's all I could think driving to work today in the rain. The may flowers are coming! Spring is being extra sluggish this year, as you may have noticed, and although the end of winter has arrived in Wisconsin, it seems to be creeping ever slowly instead of, well, springing. We have a nice thunderstorm raging right now which will hopefully melt the last of the snow lurking among the trees. Yesterday was the first day it hit 60 this year, and we went for a hike. There was a glorious moment of warmth when I almost felt the need to shed my jacket. Half a mile later, we rounded the corner onto a north facing bluff where the trail was still deep with snow. It felt forlorn and discouraging, like Narnia under the witch's spell. But Spring is moving forward, and I still have faith that come June, there will be sunshine and flowers!

I used my Ever-Blooming Flower Garden book to start a plan for a flower bed in front of my house. Not so sure what it's going to end up looking like, but I'm going to try! Here are some flowers and herbs I got from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds:

I planted most of these about a week ago. Here is what they look like now:

I have about 50 different perennials picked out in addition. We'll see what the garden centers are carrying and how much time we really have to put into flowers this year. At least we have a few little things left by the previous owners, like these bulbs that have doubled in size in the last week or so from what is pictured here:

 Mike has been hard at work on his garden projects whenever the little one is napping or I'm home from work. Here he is planting mushrooms. He cut a bunch of trees down in our yard, and is using these to grow gourmet mushrooms. You order mushroom spawn, which are little dowel rods inoculated with bajillions of tiny mushroom spores. Then you drill holes in a log, hammer the dowels into the holes, and seal them over with wax. It's a lot of work, but I suppose it will be worth it if he gets a nice harvest of oyster and shitake mushrooms. We will see!

Here are some of the branches from the trees he cut down, which will be tomato stakes and potentially a grape arbor. A few of his plants were shipped early, so we have raspberries in the ground already, blueberries that he potted because it's just too cold for them since they're no longer dormant, and some grapes to get planted.

Here are some of his seed starting endeavors:

my flowers; note their small size in comparison to Mike's. Rarely do I have the energy after work to spend time with the baby, finish up paperwork, AND plant seeds... so I'm a little behind Mike in getting my stuff planted.

hibiscus and artichokes and cardoons

tomatoes, peppers, leeks, shallots, onions, kale, kohlrabi, etc...

Another fun thing this year was the maple sap that Mike collected. He pruned a large branch off a maple in late winter, thinking it was early enough to seal over before the sap started flowing. A few weeks later, puddles of sap started to form, so he collected 20-25 gallons of it in a few days and boiled it down into syrup. And unlike the sap we got in Iowa, this stuff actually tastes like it's supposed to! Looks like we'll get about a half gallon of syrup. Can't wait to have some pancakes!

The up side to all this late cold weather is that there's still time if you've been procrastinating starting seeds indoors! All you need is a little patience and a few peat pellets. And patience is something this gardener is learning a lot about this pokey, slow-to-come Spring!