Spring is starting to appear

The last month or so has been pretty rough around here. All three of us have come down with some sort of cold/infection bug (and Andrew took two turns with it). The weather hasn't been overly cooperative so we didn't miss too much going on outside. It seems spring has finally started to appear though. The buds have finally broken open and leaves have started to form on most of the trees and bushes. This little guy took up residence under one of the spirea bushes for a day or so. It was a pretty chilly day and he seemed to be trying to back himself further and further into the bush to get out of the wind.

This is a mystery to me. I refer to it as "The Useless Green Plant". I'd love to identify what it is and see if it might actually bloom (or do something) if properly cared for. I'm considering digging it up after the green dies back to see if maybe it's got over-grown bulbs that need separating. Right now all it does is block out the blooming plants we planted lasted fall.

This is what we refer to as the peoni bed. Andrew's great aunt Leatrice apparently kept it meticulously cared for. At one time it was a lovely triangle shape with daffodils and tuplips around the edge and peoni plants in the center. As you can tell the triangle has gotten a bit disfigured over the years. Sweet peas have grown up wild among the peoni plants and grass and weeds grown rampant. We are seriously hoping to dig this all up this summer, split up and replant the daffodils/tulips and possibly turn this into an herb garden. I'm not sure what it will take but I think removing the bottom half of the former flagpole might be a good idea too.

I felt really bad earlier this year when I realized I had plopped my compost bin into the middle of a line of spring flowers. I was tickled when I saw that they weren't going to let a little old plastic bin stop them. It might be kind of hard to tell but there are green leaves from these flowers growing out of the grates at the bottom part of the compost bin. I guess they like the rich soil.

As spring is running about 4 weeks behind this year (this is according to the local growing experts I hear), the lilacs are just starting to make an appearance. The leaves are starting to fill in and little buds have begun to appear. If I haven't mentioned 50 times before, I am beyond ready for some warm, spring (even summer) weather to stick around. Come on 75 degrees!!

March is definitely out like a lion

It's hard to believe that April is just around the corner, yet this is what it looked like around here earlier this week. It was mostly ice with a little bit of snow mixed in, and then the temps didn't get above freezing for several days so it refused to leave!

Absolutely everything was covered in about 3/4 inch of ice. The power lines and tree limbs all sagged very sadly. It was absolutely beautiful as the sun shone through it though. It was kind of like living in Narnia.... the trees, grass, shrubs all looked like they were made of glass.

Thankfully as of today most of this frigid reminder of winter has melted. There is still some lingering ice and snow in the parts of the yard that are shaded from sun all day. March came in like a lamb and made sure to go out like a lion. Even this poor robin thought it was ridiculous. It ran around in this grassy spot next to the house really unsure of what the heck was going on and why it was here if winter wasn't over!

Winter just won't give up

I have to make a correction. After sharing the last blog post with Drew he corrected me, that this is not a "little fruit farm". He wanted me to correct the last post to read "this magnificent 80-acre fruit-laden eden at the center of the universe".... we agreed on "magnificent 80-acre fruit farm"

As I also mentioned in the last post, my compost pile has been long neglected this winter. I just couldn't bring myself to bundle up and trudge out through the knee deep snow to dump my veggie scraps in the heap. The weather was nice enough the other night that I decided to venture out and see what was happening with the pile. At some point over the winter the cover had blown off the composter and now that the snow had melted I was able to find it and put it back on.


To give a little background, this is my first attempt at composting. I received a compost bin for my birthday last July and I set it up in a place that I thought was covenient to both the garden and the house...made complete sense at the time. What I failed to take into account was where the spring bulbs were planted. As you can see, I maganed to plop my bin down right into the middle of a row of daffodils. I tried scooting the bin myself but it didn't budge. Hopefully with some help I can move it out of the row of flowers and still salvage the flowers if not for this year, perhaps next.

I had been saving some scraps for a day or two and so I added my fresh scraps to the bin. As the pile hadn't been touched in a couple of months I thought I would give it a good stir. I really hoped that underneath the top layer of brown leaves I would find some beautiful compost....

Nope, just more brown leaves. It was quite disappointing really. I am surprised how much it all has broken down and decomposed though. I have filled this bin 3 or 4 times with leaves, apple smashings (from the cider press), veggie peels etc and it is currently only half full.

After the disappointing venture to the compost pile I took a walk out to the skeleton of last years vegetable garden. The tall stalks you see are last year's okra plants. Like so many things around here, last year was our first attempt at a vegetable garden. In many ways it was quite a success (this okra is about 20 times taller than the plants we grew in Drew's parents garden the year before), in other ways it was a dismal failure - we lost a majority of our harvest to weeds overtaking the garden. I had to laugh when I ventured out here. I thought the patches of green that you see might be plants starting to come back... another NOPE. It's grass. The grass is growing up better in our garden than it is where we planted it in the yard!

On a final disappointing note, I didn't have to wait until the end of the week to be proved wrong about wintery precipitation. We had a pretty big ice storm last night and awoke this morning to everything covered in a half inch of ice. Winter just will not give up!

New Beginnings

THE SPRING STARLING

It is officially spring.... well atleast according to the calendar. The weathermen on the other hand keep threating a winter storm warning for later this week and we've had this rather nasty sleety, haily mess that happened earlier in the day yesterday.

I've decided to start writing this blog for a couple of reasons. I was inspired (and thus the name) by a starling I saw sitting on the ground outside our window today. I couldn't see the bird very well and had no idea what type of bird it was. I snapped a picture to get a closer, zoomed in look. Turns out, according to google, it was a European Starling. I don't recall having ever seen one before. In any case, it got me thinking about all the things that are going on now or soon will be here. From that same window I can see our now dead vegetable garden, the brown grass, the leafless trees and my much neglected compost pile. I'm hoping to use this as a way to capture all that happens on this little fruit farm in Grant. Thanks for coming along :)


These are some flowers that have come up just outside our front door. Two years ago we received a beautiful spring bulb basket from some friends of ours. Given how hectic times have been in the past two years the bulbs didn't get planted until last fall. At that point it was more or less a bucket of unidentifiable bulbs (to me anyway), so at this point I'm not sure what they are. I had hoped for crocus but I suspect now they might be paperwhites... guess we'll see.

These are a few more of the bulbs from the basket along with some daffodils and other things that were already planted here. This is our second spring here so I really don't remember what comes up here.

It's kind of hard to see but the sedum have started to come back up. This is a big success in my mind. One of Hope's nurses last summer brought us some sedum cuttings. I got lazy and practically let them die before I stuck the then spindly "sticks" into the ground. They seemed to survive last year but I wasn't sure what was going to happen this year. So far I would say - success!

The sleety pellets that fell from the sky. I'm refusing to acknowledge that snow or sleet or anything wintery could still head our way, but I fear I may be proven wrong before the week is out.