Springtime, gotta love it!

Ok, one more quick reflection and then I'll be caught up for awhile (a few hours anyway).  It's amazing how the transition from winter to spring seems to hit us all of a sudden.  Everything is growing, especially the project list!

Jason and my dad got the last major inside project done this week - a loft in the garage for storage for us and them.  It was one of several creative solutions stemming from our decision to not build the pavilion.  While I wasn't out there much of the time, they seemed to enjoy themselves and the girls thoroughly enjoyed checking out their progress (including climbing up the ladder and exploring the loft).   It was my kind of project in that it was mostly framing (no fancy finishing needed) and so the visible progress was fun to watch (it's not often that things go faster around here than I expected). With that behind us, Jason will turn his full attention to the springtime burst.

Alida was eager to mark her birthday by doing our pea planting. Though, on the actual day, she helped for a bit and then was happier heading off to the swing-set.  She was eager to call all the shots on her birthday so suggested we stop halfway through planting. That was where we drew the line - none of the rest of us were willing to only plant half the peas. So she had fun swinging and we got hull, sugar snap and snow peas in the ground (with mouths watering all the while!).  Other than one bag of snow peas in the freezer our supply from last year has been consumed (in just enough time to make us super eager for the first ones...).  Thanks to two grandmas around, I even got to take part in the gardening, which is a treat these days!  Terah would gladly "help" garden - as in put soil and leaves and anything she can get her hands on in her mouth.  Instead, for now, we let her join Alida for some swinging, which ended in her sacking out after awhile.

When I go outside with the camera right now I don't know what to take in first.  So much color and beauty.  Here's a few of the things we are enjoying watching bloom.  We watch the weather forecast closely these days hoping the peaches will get past their most vulnerable state before the next night when it freezes. We never had enough peaches last year to can or freeze, so we sure hope they are spared a badly timed freeze this year.  There's no guarantee of fruit until the juicy morsels are on our counter. The last two pictures here are two different peach trees - it's the one way I like pink!

 

This may be the last blog post for awhile!  We are nearing the end of a stint of having my folks around and are about to enter one of my two crazy months at work (April and August). That coupled with onions wanting to get in the ground, potato ground needing to be prepped and then planted, tomatoes needing to be started, and the weeding all over the place wishing for attention will make for a wonderfully exhausting time on the horizon.  Jason also has some lingering brush pick up and chipping to do from the winter clearing for the access path. Despite the work feeling a bit daunting, our spirits tend to also rise at this time of year (the vitamin D from more time outdoors can't hurt anything). And, after enjoying eating from our root cellar, pantry, and freezers for months, it's so fun to start heading out in the mornings for handfuls of green stuff to consume.  Right now we are enjoying spinach, garlic and onion chives, parsley, oregano, and we had our first stinging nettle eggs with perennial onion scapes this morning from breakfast.  Yum!