It’s spring. So I’ve been gardening. I planted three flats of flowers, rows of veggies, and all my bare-root trees leafed out. And I’ve also fallen behind in weeding, and tried to resurrect lawn that was played on too much when it was dormant.

The garden has done pretty well this year. I think this Asian pear tree might tip over with all the fruit on it. 

The raised beds did great. I planted way too many tomatoes, and the summer squash exploded. I’ve been feeding extras to my chickens. 

We’ve had quite a few good melons. I was sad to find out my striped Armenian cucumber died soon after transplanting. Instead, I have pickling cucumbers, with no intention to make pickles. 

This is the first year I also felt like I’ve got enough eggplant. I use it exclusively to make ratatouille and have quite a few batches stored in the freezer. 

I signed up for Chip Drop years ago…and was pleasantly surprised to drive home and find a huge load. It’s all conifer trees and full of pine needles and smells amazing. The whole yard is getting a new layer of mulch, and we don’t have to spend a dime or use our truck. 

The garden hasn’t been a huge priority this year, but thanks to our greenhouse and raised beds, and a bunch of plants we already had, the harvest has been pretty good.

The garden is growing. It’s doing pretty well. My greenhouse tomatoes are pretty close to ripening. The hollyhocks I planted last year are blooming. It’s nice to see the yard kind of coming together after five years of working on it.

And a bonus poppy picture from up the canyon.

One of my bucket list items is to raise bees. I’ve learned a bit about bees, and one of my strange desires was to see a bee swarm. This year, we had one come and nest in our tree. It was awesome.

But a bee swarm in my tree is pretty useless, so a few hours later, we had a beekeeper come by, and the next day, the bees were gone.

Here are a few more pictures enjoying all the spring flowers.

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.

I was in a picture taking mood.

It’s nice to see the bones of the backyard now that most of the plants and weeds are gone. We are letting the chickens free-range the entire backyard, which is working out well.

A better shot of the dead hedge. I love this little project still.

Front door, all decked up for Christmas. We really need to redo the concrete stain. It didn’t bug me that much until we redid the door.

This herb spiral is looking pretty good for December.

This is in the kitchen. We painted it this weekend. It was yellow. I didn’t mind the yellow until I painted over it, and then I realized the yellow really didn’t work. I like this green instead.

We had a bunch of extra branches. So many…

(Horrible picture. I couldn’t find a good picture and didn’t think to take one, so this is a screen shot from a video.)

The pile is gone. Or rather moved. We made a dead hedge out of them.

It has the following function:

• Screen from neighbor
• Future source of firewood
• Place to put yard clippings
• Wildlife habitat
• Used up old branches

It was a fun build and went faster than anticipated. We simply used eight t-posts as a border, and filled it with sticks.

I like how it looks better than, say a white vinyl fence. But it is a bit wild. It does do what we wanted and screen the neighbor’s yard, and it only cost $50 for the t-posts.