Spring Blooms

Hello, friends.  I've been enjoying all the spring blooms, and gathered a few for a bouquet.  Last week, J and I pruned trees and cleaned up flower beds.  Some years, there are beautiful days in February when I can get a head start on these things, but this year wasn't one of them, or maybe I happened to be away those days, so we're getting to it now.  I had hoped we could gather leaves for putting on the asparagus and berry patches, but it's been too breezy.  Hopefully, things will quiet down this week.  Suet was made for the birds.  We attempted to turn on the WarblerFall birdbath, but there's an issue with it, which J needs to look into.  

It's been nice to begin harvesting some things.   I'd mentioned the low temps killed the primary broccoli stems over the winter.  Last week I was able to harvest the side shoots.  Nothing like a nice big broccoli head, but any broccoli is a good thing, in my opinion.  Also harvested were chicory and lettuce, and the first of the asparagus.  Most of the potatoes are up, but sadly, the rabbits are really putting a hurting on the peas.  I expect they would be a lovely, tender thing for a rabbit.  Ah well, I suppose they need to eat too.  The largest of the Amish tomatoes were transplanted into individual cells. 

All laundry was dried on the clothesline.  A number of items were hand washed, with homemade soap gel.  I'm still making biochar, for as long as we have the woodstove going, and am gathering material to use for it.  The number of days is rapidly dwindling on that front.  We haven't had a fire for a few days, but we do have some lower temps coming up, so we'll have a few more.  It looks like we'll end up with about 16 gallons of biochar, possibly a little more.  Some of the wintersown plants were getting too tall for the containers, so I raised the lids, where squirrels then dug around in two of them.  Sigh.

It's common for me to break out a jigsaw puzzle, for J & I to work on, whenever we get snow.  We didn't do that this winter, so I decided I needed a puzzle fix, and pulled out this one, of NC craft beers.  I had fun with it.  I believe it was passed to me by one of the local potters, and I'll pass it on down the line, to one of our neighbors.  As I'm typing this Sunday, I'm on the final day of the cleanse, and very much looking forward to enjoying potatoes tomorrow.  I hope your week is a good one!