Spring Makes Me Smile!

When I walk outside this time of year, one thing leads to another and first thing you know, I’ve been outside for hours. Here are a few things I see that gets me motivated to play in the dirt.

This is part of our yard and part of the land across the road. There’s henbit blooming everywhere! Last year we had a mix of henbit and dead nettle and I have been searching for dead nettle and cannot find it anywhere this year.

The plum trees are blooming.

The little cherry tree is just about ready to do something. I’m hoping for a few blooms but we just planted it last year so I won’t be surprised if we don’t get blossoms this year.

The elderberries are doing great. Hopefully they will not bloom til our last hard frost date has passed.

This little “heads” will be a big cluster of white flowers when they bloom. All of our nannyberries are outside the fence and deer love these so we may be feeding the wildlife instead of getting any for ourselves. That’s ok . . they get hungry too. 🙂

The garlic is coming along. I think I planted about 110 seeds. That’s a few less than we had last year but it should be enough to get us through the year.

We have several nice dock plants growing. It always makes me sad when I see people complaining about these. They’re so great as a nutritious green and the roots make a great tonic. There are some health warnings (oxalic acid for one!) so check it all out before consuming it. I’m not going to give medical advice but if you have dock in your weedy areas (tell me you all have weedy areas!), you can google it and find out lots of info.

Then there was this going on outside and it didn’t make me smile.

We have to call the fire department before we can burn. Our burn pile was about 10 feet tall . . really. Vince had called two days and they said no. Both times it wasn’t windy but they said it would get windy within 15 to 30 minutes. It never did. Yesterday he called and they said fine . . usual precautions – keep a water hose handy, don’t leave the burn pit til everything is extinguished. They take your address so they know where we are if we have to call for help. Vince got the fire going and it was a rip roaring fire when I first walked out and the wind came up and was very strong and very gusty. Scared me half to death. I surely don’t want to be responsible for burning the neighborhood!

Vince had to spray it with water a few times and drown some embers that escaped into our very dry yard with dead leaves that continue to appear from somewhere.

The sticks and limbs are all burned. No disaster, thankfully BUT we could have high winds and storms this weekend so our burn pile will once again be full.