Does Winter get to you as much as it gets to me? Yikes!! I surely hope not . . . but Spring is rearing its lovely head and Hubby and I are seeing green reappearing all over the place. That, in and of itself, makes us feel better! The strawberries are pushing through the straw and are looking healthy and there are tiny little beginnings of buds on the pear tree. The forsythia bush is budding and yes, we have chickweed!!! Yum!! I also picked a bucketful for the chickens and they were extremely grateful. I am now getting 4 to 6 eggs a day. I really didn't expect to get very many this year. This is the third laying year for the chickens and since they are getting older I was anticipating having to buy some more chicks to supplement my flock but 4-6 eggs is plenty!
This year I planted seeds for cauliflower, broccoli, cabbage, sweet peppers, hot peppers, eggplant, assorted heirloom tomatoes and basil. Many have sprouted already and are under grow lights in the basement. Others still need to germinate. I went out to my hotbox next to the vegetable garden and planted spinach and lettuces. I'm trying to save room in the vegetable garden for more variety and lettuce got knocked out. I also want to plant more Swiss Chard this year. It's such a wonderful green and since I have trouble getting spinach to grow well I use Swiss Chard all the time as a replacement. We are also planting extra spaghetti squash this year too. Oh my goodness! We so enjoyed this unusual addition to our diet. What a lovely, good-for-you squash and stores amazingly well. Hubby is going to try no-dig potatoes this year too. We've both decided that since we are getting a little older we need to work smarter not harder and let me tell you, digging potatoes is hard!!! This year we're planning on covering with straw but now that we know we are going to try planting potatoes this way, we'll be sure to save all of our leaves this fall for use on our potatoes next year!
Oh and Hubby and I are in the process of downsizing somewhat. We have so much "stuff" in our home we've decided it's time to do a little "Spring Cleaning". For the next little while we will be throwing away or taking to the Salvation Army 5 items a week (small or large-it matters not). We are going to be very careful because as you well know the world is crazy right now and we don't want to throw away something we might very well need . . . but on the other hand being pack rats is not good either. If nothing else it will help us to let loose of items we would never, ever use. Folks, I've probably got a dozen assorted glasses just sitting around packed in boxes and hubby has T-shirts I would be ashamed for him to wear they are so ratty. So we're going to try it. In our small home space is a premium. Might as well make the most of it!!