Clomping with Muddy Boots into Spring

Spring is always an eagerly anticipated season (gardening, of course!) and yet its arrival means I have very little time for my much enjoyed handwork.  Sadness and woe.  (Ya can't do everything at once, Mama Pea.)  Plus, spring time in our area means MUD.

On the up side, this is the first spring when it seems we just might get a jump start on our always too short growing season.  The piddling little amount of winter snow is long gone now (although we never had our March or April - well, not yet anyway - blizzard) and we've gone to bed at night with an outside temp of 50° more than once.  Unheard of for this time of year in these here parts.

 

The grass is turning green on our lawn areas as are the robust little weeds popping up everywhere in the garden areas.  Happily, we've been getting whole days of rain (or just gray, damp, misty weather some of the time) which is not only squelching the fire danger of the surrounding forests and still standing dry weeds of last season, but doing a good job of driving the frost out of the ground.  We've seen our chickens scratching in the wet soil to find good-sized earth worms that they happily gobble up.

 

I've been able to zip out between showers in the last several days to remove the winter mulch from the strawberries and clean up the dead ferns covering the asparagus patch.

 

Lookit all those green weeds taking hold in the asparagus rows.  Ugh.

 

Next in the garden will be to spend a day or so digging out the spring weeds in both the strawberry and asparagus patches as soon as the ground dries out enough for me to avoid becoming totally covered in mud.  This won't be until perhaps mid-week or later as rain is forecast until then.  (I can hear those healthy, new weeds laughing at me as we speak.)

 

Our old rhubarb plant needed to be moved to a new spot which was done with Papa Pea's help manning the shovel.  My, but those roots went deep.  We chopped off the newer outer parts and transplanted one clump into the center of a raised bed where it seems to be taking hold and thriving.

 

Small buds are appearing on the apple trees.  (Use your imagination.)

 

The chives which are always the first perennials to burst forth are looking good, no doubt loving this wet weather.

 

I'm no expert, but from what I'm hearing the recent maple sap gathering season in our area was not great this year.  Our unusually warm weather didn't provide the freezing nights the maple trees need for maximum flow of sap.  However, a friend of ours gathered more sap than she wanted to boil down for herself so gave us a gallon and a half of the sap as a health drink.  This "sap" is not thick at all but has the consistency of water and is often called "maple water."  It has a very slight sweet flavor and contains a variety of vitamins, minerals and antioxidants when consumed.  We shared it with our daughter who, in turn, shared it (along with a science lesson) with some of her little people.

 

These wet, gray days have been perfect for being in the kitchen and in the past two days I've made three different batches of soup for the freezer thinking ahead to the coming days when most of my time will be spent outside.  On the schedule today are two more soups to be prepared.  During the summer months, yummy soup equals a fast and easy meal and when the garden goes into production and gives us fresh vegetables for crunchy salads . . . well, I can hardly wait.  Best I get some bread made, too, to have in the freezer as an addition to some of those busy day meals.

 

It's raining enough this morning that I had to wear full rain gear to go out to get the included pictures.  A perfect day for simmering a couple pots of soup.  And maybe even making myself cozy in my quilt room and making progress on my current cross-stitch project.