Spring Has Sprung

I am always amazed how after a long, cold Winter, everything that appears dead suddenly blooms and blossoms. It is a beautiful thing. A few weeks ago I was walking around the yard on a gorgeous Spring day just marveling at the beauty of all the trees, flowers, plants and animals just beginning to burst with new life. 

 

Last year we planted some fruit trees and finally had "popcorn" trees. It is a small little tree but the blossoms were so pretty.

 Our chickens have been laying regularly again and enjoy the nice weather. I enjoy having these chickens more than I ever thought I would. They have been a fun addition.

 Our new little Pear tree (Top) had a few blossoms and the Plum tree (Bottom) was loaded.

The girls love playing with the rabbits. They are anxious to have baby rabbits. I'm not quite ready for that phase yet so for now, they are separated.

 This is the neighbor's tree behind me. It was so pretty, just exploding with blossoms.

 

 We planted some raspberries starts this year and already they are starting to grow.  My rhubarb has started to grow, the peas have popped up and our garden starts are thriving indoors awaiting the day they can be planted outside. Everywhere we look things are blooming.

Can't forget about Roxy. She's been such a good sport about gradually losing more and more of the yard and having to get along with the chickens and rabbits.

I love Spring. The grass is so green and everything is so new and fresh. One thing I do miss about Oregon is how green it is. I always forget until we go for a visit....which we just did. But that is another post!

Summer Goodness

With yummy summer goodness packed into little packages like this...

and this...

I spent a lot of time doing this.

And the end result are cupboards full of beautiful jars like these.

It feels good to store away some of the summer harvest for a rainy day. There is something very satisfying about seeing all the pretty jars lined up in the cupboard and it's comforting to know that I'm doing something productive and trying to be self-sufficient.

I was able to can a little bit this summer. I'd like to can more but with the kids home, it is a little crazy and once Fall starts, soccer and football monopolize most of my time. But I was able to can some applesauce, pears, plum jelly, peach-orange smoothies, freeze quite a few bell peppers, roast some chili's and freeze them, make raspberry jam, and can a lot of tomatoes. I probably could have doubled the amount of tomatoes I did except for that we got a late start putting our garden in (remember we had a freak snow storm in May) and the early snow storm we had a few days ago ruined what green tomatoes I had left. Today I finished up what I rescued from the snow. Wish I could have done more but it will have to do.

Thanks to Pene for the pretty pictures of the fruit.

Hoping summer is on its way...

...because we finally planted our garden! This year we took a different approach and are hoping to maximize our space by doing some raised beds. We had hoped to build a few planter boxes but after we (and by we, I mean Chris) purchased and built the first one we weren't very satisfied with the end result so we'll revisit it again next year. The wood we bought was so warped we couldn't build a nice looking box so we'll have to buy a more expensive wood or plastic. So Chris dug the rest of them sort of free form style. So far we are happy with that. We also invested in some soaking hoses so we can minimize water on the plants. We brought in compost and added nitrogen and are hoping these improvements will make a big difference. We are staking more things this year too in an effort to go vertical thus maximizing our space more. Chris has worked really hard in the garden for the past three weekends and the kids have worked hard helping to clean out a lot of debris. Things are starting to shape up now. We planted tomatoes...28 of them!, pumpkins, squash, carrots, watermelon, basil, cilantro, parsley, lettuce, spinach, bell peppers, a variety of chili peppers, strawberries, rhubarb and raspberries. In the fall we plan to plant some onions, garlic and maybe broccoli and more spinach, and some peach trees...since the dog ate the last two. It feels good to have it in and hopefully the sun will start to shine and we won't get an early winter. I guess the good thing is that we've only had to water once!

After a long day in the garden.