The garden is looking like a garden now!

 Remember the other day when I was going out in the pouring rain to check on the garden? Yeah, well...that day saw the opening and subsequent ripping of my rain suit. 😅 It seemed to fit fine, and I wore it over my regular clothes. I walked around for a few minutes in the driving rain, and just as the rain began to slow down, I saw a carrot top peeking out of the soil. As I bent in for a closer look, I felt the rip. It seemed small, but when I pulled off the rain pants, I saw it ripped from the crotch seam aaaall the way down to the ankle! I stayed dry, but I can't wear those again. Twenty dollars down the drain.

But with the April showers come mid-April, well, maybe not flowers. Take a look!

(Above) The little tree frog who eats stink bugs and moths

 (and probably spiders) on the porch.

I'm really thankful for nature's helpers!

                                             (Below) Various garden beds...

(Above) This comfrey is flowering!

(Above) I love mullein's health properties!

All these things have sprang up since the last rains. I'm so proud of my little corner of the world. I can't wait to see some tomatoes and peppers, though. 

April Showers

What do you when it rains for three days and you are desperate to get into the garden. I went out and bought a rain suit. I haven't tried it on yet, but I am not above going out in pouring rain and pounding wind to baby my baby spinach!😆

My daughter's Great Dane escaped into my garden yesterday, and she almost got stuck out there coaxing him out, even in rain boots! He didn't like how his paws were sinking in the mud, so he decided he was just going to stay out there in my brand new strawberry bed...forever.🙄

You've seen Zeus before if you've kept up with my Youtube videos. 

Each paw weighs, like, a thousand pounds. He doesn't drink water from cute, dainty bowls. He drinks from a bucket. Like a horse. And where did he remember lots and lots of buckets? Noooow you're getting it. And the only way I can assess the damage is to go out in driving rain and 45 mile per hour wind, with mud boots that will probably get sucked off my poor, innocent feet. I'm not very fond of the cold, muddy watery feeling creeping around my toes. 

I'll keep you posted. If in my next video, it looks like I've been crying and covered in mud, you'll know why.

Welcoming The New Into The Old

 The garden that I've been envisioning is coming into its own now. April has seen lots of changes from the heartbreaking brown of winter to bursts of color as some of the perennials of the garden (along with transplanted starts) are blossoming. Well, some are blossoming while others are just debutantes. 

The strawberries planted among Peppermint Forest are beginning to peek out. I'll be adding more strawberries, but to grow bags instead of inground, just in case I decide this isn't working here.

The strawberries in the second pallet A-frame (below) have minds of their own. 

I have been enjoying the biodome experience from these Sterlite totes! They started out as seed starter greenhouses and have ended up finishing out some of my vegetables all the way to harvest. I have a head of Green Ice lettuce that grew from seed to harvest inside one of these clear totes!

This comfrey (below) is coming back after a mild winter of slumber. I can't wait for the flowers!

This lemon thyme (below)  is beginning to flower. It provided its yumminess all winter long.

The perfect-looking mullein plant (below) is going to make a great tincture!

These Sugar Daddy sweet peas will taste great in the pod or as dried peas. I plan to make some pea powder this year to go into some of my protein shakes.

This Zinnia flower mixture is going to be a beautiful addition to the west entrance of the garden.

The beautiful soil in the repurposed soil bed has been hiding underneath a shallow bed of weeds.

Cleanup is a grueling process

I take pictures of my garden as it is, and then I load them and photoshop pictures of what I want to see in the garden. Sometimes, this visual helps. Other times it stresses me out because I feel like my actual progress falls short of my expectations. 

But I'm gonna give it a shot. I'll show you the garden, well, part of it as it looks now and later my Photoshop goal.

DIY Biodomes/Cheap greenhouses for winter sowing

 In about 5 days, we'll have our last frost (fingers crossed) and I'll be able to put out a lot of my plants. I've got mixed feelings about taking my plants from the Sterlite totes that have been their protective biodomes. I'm gonna have to release them to the weather, the bugs, the birds, and whatever else is running around out there in the garden. If the video refuses to open above, feel free to click and watch it here.

I'm not ready to let them go, but I feel some of this hesitation is a mashup of feelings with my preborn twin grandsons and my daughter.  It's always been a little weird watching my kids make their own life choices and being completely responsible for the outcomes. And it's always been weird watching my garden take on a life of its own without my constant control over every single aspect of it. 

Am I really comparing plants with kids and grandkids? I don't know. I'm just putting out a weird brainstorm (more like brain scramble) and pondering it. My kids have always been a bit sheltered, just like I have sheltered my plants. Ed has informed me that if I insist upon leaving the plants inside the protective Sterlite containers, the awful southern sun and high temperatures fond of this region will bake and shatter the plastic. I have no choice but to let the plants out into the unknown. 

I never thought of myself as the controlling kind. Maybe a small bit of me is like that?

Google Satellite went over the garden...

 Why on earth did it have to take pictures of the entire acreage with the garden in the hot mess, dead of winter stage?  It's right there, for everyone who is a fan of all that's fallen over, brown, withered, and disgusting to see.  Of course, it looks a little better now, but only a tad. 

Ed and Ethan moved some of the pallets around that won't be used this season. I'm re-doing quite a large portion of the garden layout. Whether it will all turn out like I have it in my mind will be fun to see. Some of the things that won't be coming back are the sunflowers. Apparently, the horse flies love them as much as I do.  I just don't feel like fighting them as passionately as I did the last two seasons.  I'll miss Sunflower Row, but once the horsefly breeding population is down some, I'm sure I can add it back in following seasons. 

Last year, I said I wouldn't grow anymore tomatoes or squash this season.  Well, after discovering Jellybean, Supersweet Candy Town, and other varieties of salad and cherry tomatoes, I'm growing lots of the littles. Tomato sandwich tomatoes and the gigantic slicer varieties take too much space.  I'm also going to grow one type of squash early this year-- a golden acorn variety.  I don't know why, but I know I will harvest them and dehydrate them in cubes. 

My focus this year will be peppers, mainly cayennes and bells. I have Albino Bullnose pepper seeds, but they didn't do well for me last year. I don't know if it's the seeds or the me.😆 One of us did something wrong, though, I'm sure of it.

I need to get another coffee grinder, because that's how I grind my dehydrated foods into powders. Do you know of a better kind than the little handheld Mr. Coffee one I reviewed a year or so ago? Let me know. 

I didn't grow corn last year, but I am probably going to do some next season now that I have seen a gigantic decrease in rodents.Those ultrasonic pest deterrents really work.

I've still got a variety of greens and other brassicas to put out. Some are sitting in clear totes outside already, eagerly awaiting their release into the garden. 

Hopefully, the last of the building of our house will wind up, and there will be less traffic through the yard. We'll see.

The Curvy Roads Go On Forever

After that last bomb I dropped, I disappeared for a while. I don't even know how long it's been since I posted about the twins. Thanks to the marvels of modern technology, we can see their facial features. I may get a little detailed here, so if you get squeamish about inutero stuff, feel free to skip this next paragraph. 

We can also now ponder how all the extensive testing that has been done on them-- I say "testing," but the more appropriate wording is probably akin to "studying"-- has determined they are identical twins which share one placenta, are both males, and two weeks into the third trimester look nothing alike. Identical twins, as determined by DNA and other testing, who are no longer identical-looking because of experiences that are happening to them individually. Although the multiples specialists my daughter is being seen by assure us this is completely normal, this equally puzzles and fascinates me because I've always thought identical twins had to look identical from birth. Apparently, if one of them is getting all of mom's fatty nutrients and the other is receiving all the sugar and caffeine, it creates conditions similar to postutero feedings, i.e., one kid's gonna be a chunky butt and the other a hyperactive gymnast. Take a look at them from this 4D ultrasound visit:

One's face is muscular and thin.  The other's face is a little more broad, and he has chubby cheeks. The muscular one  (the one at the top) is the one doing most of the moving and complaining. You can't see it from the photo, but the one on the bottom is actually laying his head on the chest of the one on top. And he's heavier by half a pound, which is apparently enough weight that the one on top can't do the cartwheels he enjoys. Most of this photo shoot was the smaller one complaining about the heavier one.  We only got one photo with the smaller one with his mouth closed. The snuggle bunny only complained when the ultrasound tech asked my daughter to turn to her side in hopes he would move off the smaller one so we could get a better picture of the smaller one. 

Is this blog gonna turn into one of those annoying "Look at my grandkids" snoozefests we all know are out there? Hardly.  These two are a part of the curvy roads I'm currently traveling. A big part.  

Our house is almost completely built now, and at the beginning of the journey, babies weren't a part of the build. Well, not baby humans anyway. I still have paddocks and barns and coops to build. I still have a garden that is all kinds of hot mess to get together. Somehow, all this is happening, and I totally am a believer that it all happens for a reason and nothing is a suprise to the Creator. I wish I could get some hints in advance of some of them, but I guess if I did know how every single thing in life would turn out, there'd be no reason for faith.