A "nice fun" day!

Today was about as perfect as days come (as Alida would say, it was full of "nice fun"), especially on the heels of 8 days of work responsibilities in a row!  Thanks to a surprise and rather impromptu visit from Mom, I got to spend almost the entire day outside today.  It was a cool and somewhat overcast day and just perfect for the activity which is my newest obsession - weeding!!

On Monday morning (after going for a jog together for the first time in several years - thanks Mom!), Jason and I took about 20 minutes to walk around the yard together, me with clipboard in hand.  By the time we came inside (after only covering a very small percentage of the property) we had a page full of tasks - one column for me and one for Jason.   We both would have been eager to dive in yesterday but I had to get to work and Jason headed into town to do errands AND go minivan shopping.  Our "date" last evening was test driving several - and now we're deliberating...  But we didn't do much deliberating today as we were both fully occupied having fun outside.

A few of the things that Jason and Jon did during their work day included: planting out or transplanting parsley, gooseberry, kale, ornamental grasses, phlox, wintergreen, peaches, grapes, an apple tree, black haw, and native filberts; mulching with chopped leaves, sifting compost for top dressing the spinach and lettuce which they thinned today.

I started my day by weeding the nettles (and picking some), weeding garlic mustard out of the strawberries (and picking some) and pulling some wild onions.  Lunch consisted of garlic mustard rolls hot out of the oven, pizza rice casserole with stinging nettles and wild onion, and the first spinach/lettuce salad from our garden.  It was all washed down very nicely with cold apple mint and lemon balm tea..

I spent the rest of my day on the following: LOTS of hoeing in the entry garden and our main garden in preparation for our main garden planting coming up in about two weeks; weeding, weeding and more weeding around the blossoming strawberry plants that have us all a bit giddy with anticipation, peaches, raspberries, in the main garden, and I ended the day weeding the new garlic bed.  I was having too much fun today and too occupied with my hands to have a camera on me but I did have to go up to the house to get the camera for the before (actually about midway through) and after shots below!

 Yes, I felt rather successful. Interspersed in the weeding and hoeing sessions, I got a container of mud mixed on the porch for the little mason bees that are busy filling the tubes in their little house (Yes, that's right, there ARE some bees that are making it their home and I even got to see one fly into a tube today!), I emptied the spearmint tea from my solar dryer (which I'm still loving and eager to fill it with more things as the season goes along), and best of all got to enjoy almost an hour walk with Mom while Alida napped.  Sweet, sweet day!