Spring Begins

Spring

asparagus One of the first signs of spring are the crocus appearing in splashes of color. Then there are the beautiful yellow daffodils that greet me. I love the way they turn their heads to follow the sunshine during the day.

Asparagus

Let’s not forget the asparagus (pictured above) peeking out as they appear in the rows that we so carefully planted and waited 3 years for them to mature. It is a short season and so very early, and we love the flavors for dinner. This week we picked 2 pounds 11 ounces on Monday morning and 6 pounds 13-1/2 ounces on Thursday. The picture above is the Thursday afternoon haul. I will take some to neighbors and some to the North County Food Pantry as things progress.

Tonight, we are going to pickle some asparagus to begin restocking our pantry. There is nothing better than crispy cold asparagus spears. Yum. Things are certainly looking up.

Self-Seeding

chamomille 020 Chamomille is a self-seeding plant, and it is in bloom right now. I am dehydrating these little daisy-looking flowers almost every other day. It is a large part of our herbal teas. Every year I witness life springing anew. It is a wonderful part of life to be able to see what looks like dead plants come back to life.

cosmos 054 Cosmos is a self-seeding flower that I have learned to fully embrace in our garden design. I pick the perfect place to put an area of plants that naturally re-seed themselves each spring, my workload is decreased by the self-seeder because I don’t have to plant them every earl spring. . I do have to manually weed this area but, I have to weed during the life cycle of any crop we plant.

iris 052 Iris is a colorful and fragrant part of early spring for us. They just don’t seem to last long enough each year.

Shasta daisy 014 Daisies are a pleasure to see. We love the way that the Perennials keep coming back every year.

poppy 070 poppy 071 Both the California (yellow) and Oriental poppies are blooming in a colorful array to be picked and dried to make teas and tinctures. The yellow California poppy blossoms are safe for non-narcotic teas and tinctures.

poppy 068 poppy 066 poppy 069 poppy 067 Poppies are another container of flowers that are picked in the early morning to make tea and tinctures with. You can see the wide range of colors that they bloom in.

rose 053 The roses are blooming and I collect their blossoms for use in making beauty creams.

holly Hock Red 006 holly Hock Pink 006 Let’s not forget the hollyhocks who have tall and graceful figures in the garden.

There are many other beautiful flowers across the garden. The bees, butterflies, and birds are very happy.

Spring Cleaning

strawberry 057 — Raised strawberry bed after winter

Spring cleaning in the garden is always amazing to me. Plants that are looking so totally dead, are really not. I am so grateful for the softer soil and the milder (cooler) temperatures as we work. You can grab a whole handful of weed and pull it fully out (roots and all) from the soft cool soil. We remove all of the dead, pulling weeds as much as possible as we go through the whole garden. Clearing so can start to sprout up and blossom again.

strawberry 058 — Using hands and shears I cut all of the dead out.

Cleanup begins with all the fruit trees done in the winter. Now it is the berries then on to the herbal tea garden, herbs, spices, and everything else. see all the dead hanging out on the sides of the raised strawberry bed.

strawberry 059 — All the debris is on the outside on the ground.

Big piles of weeds are easily piled up and burned in the middle of the garden. The ash is worked back into the soil with the tractor disc and rototilling, which is the next step. Ash is one of God’s fertilizers. All stalks and dead are burned.

mints Spring — Mint tea plants after winter

EXCEPT FOR THE MINT!, they are simply burned outside of the garden or else they will be growing everywhere. I only have to miss a single leaf and a new mint plant begins., SUNFLOWERS too, don’t go there with me, that takes a couple of pages of words even to begin to describe.

All year long I approach garden chores on a first come first needed basis. Like, the asparagus is the first crop so it gets cleared first. It is the only way I can keep from going crazy trying to keep up.

Purple Blossoms

First Purple Blossoms Appear

The first bright purple blossoms peek their heads out for me, as crocus planted last year along the driveway come up. All that work from the previous year rewards us with spring flowers, that I love. They are such welcome splashes of color after a period of cool grays. Pete and I took some pictures to allow me to come back in to the studio and paint them, instead of getting frosty outside. After all, the temperatures are not balmy yet.

crocus 01 purple blossoms crocus 06 purple blossoms I look up the name crocus and find that they are a part of the iris family. Really? Who would have thought that? Thank goodness for the ease of using Wikipedia, soon I will forget how to turn the pages of a dictionary.

Focus

Here is a deep artistic concept, check out these two photographs. They are a perfect example showing how a different “depth-of-field” or “focus” totally changes an image. It almost seems as though these two pictures were taken at different places, but they were not. Only the focal point changed. Clearly, where we choose to focus our attention is really important. Think about that all throughout your life.

Where do you focus your attention?

crocus 10 purple blossoms crocus 09 purple blossoms

The fleeting beauty of the crocus in early spring is a short term glance at the wonder of nature. Finding that crocus is part of the iris family kind of explains why I was drawn to them in the store last year. Since the first time I saw them, iris have been a favorite of mine. Their sturdiness, prolific qualities, combined with their limitless supply of color and combinations never cease to amaze me. If they are one of those bright flowers that give a wonderful perfume, that is even better.

I will do plein air sketches from the blossoms and post them with pictures as things progress, in the next few days. In fact, my focus artistically is leaning heavy to plein air….. I confess.

MUD Season

Mud, followed by more mud, is the weather prediction for today in mud season. I walked down to the garden and can now see patches of ground peeking through the snow. This is the blackberry row and the apple trees on the lower end. How long do you think it will be before we can plant? Hello Spring! Meltdown has begun, with the introduction of warmer temperatures. I know it is practically ridiculous of me to complain when so many are losing everything, farm and ranch to intense flooding across the midwest but…. my little self still wants to moan and say, It’s a pain;

GOOSHEY knee deep mud!

As the snow starts to melt into a much thinner level each day, little rivers trickle down the hill. Trickle, trickle into natural bog areas. Out of necessity, each town trip becomes a journey put off to the last minute and combined with others to decrease the number of times up and down the hill. Each rut made becomes its own little stream.

When, getting up the driveway involves real work for the Subaru and chains are needed on the tractor, things are serious.

Propane delivery is impossible.
UPS walks up the driveway to deliver an important package.
The dog smiles walking in with brown legs instead of white.
You realize your whole house is now a mudroom.
So, why clean?

It’s funny, this happens every year for half a month or a whole month. I think, man we got to buy truckloads of gravel and fix this. But, that gets put off later when the roads allow heavy trucks on the road again.

I’ve got an idea, maybe I should contact the Spokane Wastewater Management people and ask them to help take care of this problem for us. We are only 38 miles from the city, that should be an easy fix for them, you think? Or, is it just not a good idea to ever involve the authorities in solving real-life issues? Our taxes are high enough already with no services. Un Huh.

The painter in me still loves the promise of those great bright greens, as things begin to spring up next! Check out last year’s post. We have little starts planted all around the house getting ready to put the garden in below when we are able to quit sinking into middle earth with every step we take.