The family that gardens together....

eats well. 

It finally feels like spring! The kids are spending the better part of the day playing outside. Lydia has mastered the art of bike riding. She really could ride at the end of the summer last year, but lost her confidence after a wreck. This year she hopped right on, and is riding all over the place. 

The frogs are singing and laying eggs. The daffodils are blooming, and it is warm, gloriously warm. There may yet be cold weather in store for us, but we are enjoying the warmth while it is here. And of course spring means garden!

We've learned with this clay soil if you want to get early vegetables in you have to move fast. The last two springs early plants never were put in. We'd miss the opportunity when it was dry, and then it would rain and the garden would be too wet to work. The past few days the weather had just been perfect. Unfortunately, it did not coincide with my schedule. 

I'm always bugging Papaw to till the garden in the spring. This year I was trying to not be a pest about it. Saturday I was gone all day. When I returned, my little garden had been tilled. The new hillside we are planting was tilled, and there were loud pounding sounds coming from that direction. 

The pounding sounds were these posts being driven in. Do you know what these posts are for? They still need a few rows of wire added to them, and then they will be ready for the grapes that Mamaw ordered! Grapes! Yippee! That new area will also be home to strawberry plants, asparagus, and rhubarb that will be arriving soon.

Yet, another new small spot was tilled for blueberry bushes, and for extra space for corn and other vegetables. Papaw also tilled the big garden. 

I was so excited, but you know what tilling means; planting. I wasn't sure when I was going to plant the early seeds. I was gone all day Sunday, needed to get groceries, and a whole long list of things that I need to get done was weighing down on me. I figured I'd squeeze it in somewhere. 

Sunday when I was gone Tim secured up the chicken fence. (We had a few renegades that were finding their way out. Don't want them to scratch up all the garden seeds.) And when I got home there was this: 

Actually, there was a whole garden full of these markers with different names. Mamaw, Papaw, and Tim filled the whole thing with peas, lettuce, Swiss chard, beets, radish, and carrots. What a relief!  There are a few more things to plant like onions and potatoes, that should arrive soon, and some broccoli and Brussels sprout seedlings I need to harden off, but they planted everything that was ready to go! I am so grateful!