Spring is Coming!

A high of 71 degrees and an unusually un-busy work day prompted the first garden clean up of the season! Nevermind being 38 weeks pregnant... there was yard work to be done! It's amazing how you can go from snow and ice to green leaves and flowers in such a short time in March. It's been a ridiculously warm and non-snowy winter this year, and usually I crave the pretty snow, but I think being really busy with work and finding a new job, having to park my car outside, and being pregnant all combined to make me more than happy to see brown the entire season long. Really, I don't think we ever got more than 2-3 inches of snow! And if we did, it definitely melted within 24-48 hrs, so it didn't even matter.

So here's Mike uncovering the strawberries; the 2nd pic are his rows of garlic planted late last Fall.



And here's a carrot that made it through the winter. We had this with dinner tonight.



In my flower garden I had tons of leaves leftover from Fall, partially because I was too busy to clean them up, and partially because I wanted them to protect Spring bulbs from bunnies!



There were a lot of little yellow bulb sprouts hoping for some sunshine, so I'm glad that I dug them out!


Look at all this stuff already growing:



And there were a couple plants that were still COMPLETELY GREEN and happy hanging out under the leaves. I do not understand how they did this!


I was also interested to see the snapdragons have bits of green on them. They never completely died out. Should be fun to see what they look like this year.

So the best part of the day? Gotta love the millions of pictures of not much garden goodness, but it's just so exciting when you see your FIRST FLOWERBUDS of the year!! Below are a white and yellow crocus bud, hard evidence that Spring is on its way!

Beautiful October

The weather is still absolutely fantastic, and I'm feeling well enough to get back out into the garden! A quick view of the garden now:

hummingbird feeding station
they're still around in October!

sunflower that I swear I didn't plant


the roses look great in Fall


calendula

trinidad scorpion
hottest pepper in the world


carrots


cherry tomatoes


kale and chard

basil

After cleaning out some of the dead stuff in my flower borders, it was nice to see the pretty blooms that are still there; it also gave me a chance to see what areas could use a few new perennials for next year. I love October plant sales. I got these 5 perennials


for $6 total. (The pack of pansies was an additional couple $. The sign said they will live through winter and bloom in Spring. We'll see if that works.) Seriously, fall-sale perennials are one of the best ways to build a garden cheaply! I also recommend buying small mum plants this time of year. The 3" mums won't look too exciting this year, but if you plant them in the ground now, they will be gigantic $20 mums by this time next year. This is also the time to buy Spring bulbs. They're one of the absolute best parts of Spring, and you can never have too many, so there's no reason not to go plant at least a few new ones!

So with those new perennials, I'm going to work on my front yard garden. There are parts of it I really like


but altogether it's... underwhelming.

So, I've started work on that, and hopefully I'll have it looking a little better before the freezing weather hits! I'm also going to add a little something to the boring garage garden... it's just not landscaped for Fall.


I think the addition of a couple dying, potted, crusty mums that didn't get watered over the summer will help a lot!

Another area I'm thinking about sprucing up is the area between the open patio and the under-the-deck patio. These hostas just look brownish and tired, even earlier in the season, and I think it's time they were replaced, or at least divided. We're going to need something smaller there anyway, once Mike builds the steps in place of that stack of concrete blocks.


Lastly, here are pictures from our most recent trip to the apple orchard. Almost every single one of the apples was picked, but we found a couple, and bought the rest in the shop. The best part was the branch full of tiny apples I kept for decoration. Mike tried them and they tasted horrible. He didn't want me to spend $2/ lb for horrible tasting apples just to look pretty, but I did anyway. :)