Approved by Heather

 Howdy. So back in December, I posted after a long absence declaring that I was back--and then I wasn't. I've spend most of my time on Instagram were some of my Blog friends hang out and it is great seeing them, yet IG doesn't allow for writers-story tellers-photographers much of a platform for creativity and forming relationships with others of the same nature. So here I am, hoping to be more diligent in posting. 

Mostly I gave up the blog for a time because I felt that I was telling the same stories year after year and the blog had lost it freshness, nor did I want it to be about grandkids growing up and other such chit-chat non-garden related. So I'll call this return "Welcome to the Garden Spot 2.0."

As the spring bulbs reach the end of their cycle, the lilacs begin their glorious display, filling the air with sweet perfume, dancing in the breeze. I can watch them from the window by my living room chair and I know that spring certainly has arrived, all the while hoping that we won't have a late spring frost that will kill the budding fruit trees and the lilacs that we wait for all year long. I allowed myself to cut the last blooming daffodil only because it had fallen to the ground on a weakened stem. I seldom bring them inside because I get such joy in seeing them the still bare garden. Paired with the lilac, they do make a beautiful little bouquet. 

Last fall inspired by the IG Gardners who showed of their raised garden beds, I convinced the Head Gardener to build some raised beds in our garden spot that has become over run with bind weed and Canadian thistle, the worst noxious weeds that are so hard to control. He began the project last fall, left it along all winter, and now is finishing up the beds. This weekend daughter Heather came up to help him fill the beds with soil. 

What an Ordeal.

He ordered 4 cubic yards of garden soil, a  40/40 mix of topsoil and compost delivered from a local garden center, which would have to be wheelbarrowed into place.

              

We began saving cardboard--any box: a new TV last fall, a new hot water heater a few weeks ago, Amazon boxes, and a lot of Chewy boxes that happened to be just the right size to fit inside the beds. He purchased enough bags of large wood chips from a local feed store to serve as filler as they decompose and will help with chemical reactions. And he has 12 bags of top dressing--a mulch mixture.

These two long beds are His. He will plant the underground vegetables: carrots, red beets, lettuce--the seed plants and probably cabbage and broccoli, too, depending on space. Should work great.

The long beds that 16 ft long by 3.5 ft. wide will require four 8 cubic ft. bundles of wood chips. The strawberry bed, half that length will use two bundles of wood shavings.

When finished, these bed will be a great addition to the garden--as I keep telling the Head Garden. The garden already has an automatic watering system that will be redesigned to water the beds. Now, Miss Heather has just purchased a system that she can control using an app on her phone, but I think that will be an upgrade that we will pass on, but all other elements of this build required Heather's approval.   

Already we have a healthy crop of noxious weeds.

This short bed is my strawberry bed. I had two strawberry plants in a pot on the patio two years ago and they escaped and have done quite well in the flower bed next to the house, but I'm not able to get down on my hands and knees to pull the runners of to encourage the plants to produce fruit, so I requested a special raised bed to manage my strawberry patch. The Head Gardener is such a dear. 

I forgot to get my camera out, so I've missed the first step: lay down layers of cardboard as the weed barrier. Once in place, we soaked it good with water to begin the chemical process of breaking it down then added the saw dust. 

And now the hard work: The Head Garden is 73 years old and works like a youngster. We try to tell ourselves that this is good for our health. 

Heather is in her element: knee deep in organic material.

The beds are filled. 

So now with the soil in place, we will let it settle for a couple of days and then add more top soil. We can probably plant seeds next week and hopefully I can get my strawberries transplanted. 

Inspired and prodded along to living a more nutritious and healthy lifestyle and trying to reduce commercially produced food, daughter Jennifer, among other food prep changes, is making her own sour dough bread, so she brought me some sour dough starter. While it has been decades since I made bread of any kind, I welcomed the opportunity to try sour dough.  I've made my first batch, but you will see the loaves are a wee bit flat.

Because I used Press and Seal wrap to keep the dough from drying out on top while it rose in the oven, it stuck to the cover and deflated when I pulled it off before I began baking it, so the loaves fell, and thus are flat. Still tasty, especially warm with honey. So I think I have sour dough figured out and will be baking it often. To help the dough rise, Jen puts it in her oven with only the oven light on, which creates warmth to help the dough rise more efficiently. I didn't take a photo of it rising the first time, which took about two hours in the warmed over, but it was beautiful. 

Finally I have to share with you Lily's latest project: hatching her own chicks. She had been begging me for fertilized eggs since we have a rooster in our flock and her sister's flock doesn't have a rooster, but each time she came over, there weren't any fresh eggs that I could share with her. 

And her plan was to create an incubator using a cardboard box and a light bulb. My first reaction was to warn her that incandescent bulbs are very hard to find these days; I'm not quite sure if she really understood what I meant. Instead we looked on the computer for incubators and she and her mom finally found one at Tractor Supply. She was able to get 14 eggs from nearby neighbors who had roosters. She dropped one egg and now had 13.

The table top incubator is really a cool machine with temperature control, controlled humidity, and it automatically turns the eggs. It took 21 days for the eggs to hatch, And here is the first baby.

Because I had a wretched cold, it was a week before I could get over to see the babies. In all six hatched and are healthy and perfect with their little fuzzy feet. 

She thinks she just might be in business raising chicks--for her grannies, at least. 

I announced, I think, earlier that we lost POP the pony last summer so we were livestock free  but not anymore--What grandparents do for the grans!

Meet (from left to right) Mable, Pansy, and Patricia, Lucy's goats. Show pigs were moved to that barn, and to make room for them, the goats had come live with us until after fair in August. They are hilarious! Sweet and funny. We have friends from out of town who come visit and book our "B&B bedroom" (not open to the public). One couple comes to visit great grandchildren who live only few blogs away and the other couple has doctors who are two hours away from their home. I joke that there will be an extra fee for a reservation with goat yoga. Actually you won't want one of these girls stepping on your back--Patricia, maybe, she's smaller.

Happy Spring, Friends. Enjoy the lilacs in your garden while they last.

Thanks for stopping by. 

Cheers, Ann