Garden happiness.

Succulents from Earth Flowers.

My first harvest of Lacinato Kale.

See the potatoes growing in our compost bin?

Foxglove bud.

Chris raised the rain barrel which makes it so much easier to use. The flow is better and it's easier to get the watering can under the spigot.

Yarrow.

Echinacea.

Callirhoe.

Butterfly milkweed.

Peony.

Foxglove.

Precious little mushroom bursting forth through the mulch.

First broccoli harvest!

We are making a lot of garden progress lately. We have definitely thought BIG. But after we do all of this really hard work of putting in the raised beds and building the fence the next years in the garden will be a breeze. All we will have to do is haul a load of compost and a load of mulch. Easy peezy. Well, until we come up with some other huge project.

Kitty loves to drink out of the pond.

Oh yeah. I decided to take out the straw and put in mulch for the paths. I spend so much time in the garden, I might as well have it exactly how I want it. I think it looks so much better. Don't you?

Make my bed.

Chris is working so hard (surprise, surprise!) on my raised beds for the lower garden. They look so great and should be done by the weekend. We'll have to fill them with soil and compost and then they will be ready for planting! We decided to go with raised beds in the lower garden because we basically carved the garden out of the front yard and could not keep the grass out. It's nice too because it's on a hill and these will make it so it's kind of terraced and easier to work in.

Our first daffodil is blooming! It's here! Spring is really here!

All of my tulip bulbs that I planted last year are coming back up! I don't know why, but I was kind of thinking they wouldn't come back up. Maybe because the soil is rocky and saturated with ground cover? Sure enough, there they are!

The Tulip Magnolia is in full bloom and looks gorgeous with the gray-blue overcast Spring sky.

And so it begins...

Well, I think it's safe to say that Spring is finally here. I know because the grackles have arrived. They are so obnoxious and they bully all of my other sweet little birds. Last year I actually had to take down the bird feeder because they were hogging all of the bird seed. I think they will be here for a month or so and then fly on their way. But they always come back through in the Fall.

Chris and I are busily getting the garden prepared for planting. Chris is outside right now building me some fancy raised beds for the lower garden. I'm so excited! I'm feeling like this is going to be a great gardening year!

Everything is beginning to bud.

My lemon balm peeking through.

We are tearing down the old reed fence and replacing it with fancy new wood fencing.

It's so nice that we have a truck now so we have no problem hauling loads of compost, mulch and soil.

Upper garden layered with compost. Now we just need to till it under.