Every year I take about the same pictures in early spring. It is so fun to have the first flowers appear.

I took this picture of weeds…they are all weeds, except for the shrub. One thing that has changed in my perception of gardening is weeds. Weeds can be friends, not foe. All of these are winter annuals and they will quickly die back in summer, none are too invasive.

When we first moved into our house there weren’t any weeds, but there weren’t any worms either. The soil was pretty sterile and awful. One of the best things we’ve done to improve the soil is not tilling or pouring on herbicides to control all the weeds and letting the non-invasive weeds grow as a free cover crop. We mow them down and do get rid of the more invasive ones, but weeds have been a part of developing better soil.

The big project we’ve been working on is these raised beds in the garden. They have been planned for years, and we finally had the time (and no other pressing projects) to put them in.

We built them with remnants of sheet piles that my brother-in-law picked up from a large construction project. It was super cheap, and not that hard to put together (we rented a trencher which was far worth the small rental fee).

I’m trying to do a better job of utilizing my greenhouse. I just planted tomatoes (two months early…I think I will double cover them if it gets cold again), and I’ve got peas and lettuce going strong.