I am Deluded..it is Spring, right?

Well, as much as I love beautiful, fluffy, flaky, crystalline, icy snow, I think it really stinks when it's supposed to be Spring around here. Its timing is waaaay off. We need daffodils and tulips and magnolias and nest building sparrows twittering amid the buds on our maple tree. I need to wash clothes and hang them on our clothes line. My daughter needs to be able to transplant her flower seedlings outside.

My husband loves to initiate projects with the kids. He and my son are going to build an 8 ft. trebuchet and launch things with it in the Summer. (No, I'm not concerned, why do you ask?) Any way, he thought he could help my daughter plant up some flower seeds and we'd see what happens with them. It is her job to water them and see how they're progressing. She's doing a great job of it.

My husband set up a long table in the living room, displacing our other furniture--because this is more important, that's why--in front of the windows where the seedlings will get some needed light. And, there they're growing beautifully in the egg cartons we saved from the farmers, and the plastic trays our friend Neo-agrarian lent us (and thanks for the seeds too!).

Let's look at these hopeful, bright, tender shoots leaning hard into the light. Grow little ones, grow!

Look how earnest and innocent they are:



This one still has the seed attached...



Look at this beautiful leaf growing into form.


And here, past this micro grove of seedlings, on the other side of those windows, you can see snow piled up on the bushes outside.


It's in the crooks of trees where mighty branches join up with thick trunks.


It's on the buds that are setting out their maple propeller seeds that will litter our lawn in a few weeks time.


And, the snow is on my clothes line.

Springtime in the Chicago area is a fickle thing and always has been. How I am lulled and seduced by the first hints of it every year is amazing to me. Why, why, why do I never expect any more snow after we've had our first freakishly warm day of the 70's way back in March? Why? How do I not learn from my mistakes of the past?

It will ALWAYS snow again. Always. I must remember that and never forget it again.

Plans for Spring

Do you have any gardening plans for Spring? We are just starting and we really don't know what we're doing.

I have planted perennials in the past. Things like lavender and echinacea and some ubiquitous suburban hosta. I've planted tomatoes and zucchini and even a pumpkin vine that, unbeknownst to us, went shooting into the neighbors' yard where they very kindly mowed around it until we found out about it and saw that the only pumpkin was growing over there. We pulled the vine through back to our side and it grew a teeny, tiny green pumpkin that eventually blushed a little orange on one side. Poor thing. We've never really had a sizable vegetable garden.

This year, we want to grow tomatoes--lots of them. I want to make my own tomato sauce, catsup, pizza sauce, etc. I want to grow Napa cabbage to make more kimchi. Can I just say here that the kimchi I made is positively delicious? My gut flora thanks me every day. I want to grow lettuce and peas and zucchini and perhaps some broccoli.

I want to make a raised bed and enrich it with compost--as soon as we have some compost with which to enrich it. We want to make a compost pile with which to enrich our garden.

Inch by inch and row by row, gonna make this garden grow...

Hey, Bud...

I loved our trip to Mexico. That's very true, and maybe you can tell that from the pictures I took. I could not stop photographing everything I saw--people, plants, animals, ruins...There were lots of opportunities to capture picturesque scenes. But, we have some beautiful stuff right here in front of our faces in Very-Republican-Town, Illinois. You just have to look.







Hey, Bud...

The Perfect Spring Day

It is soooo beautiful out today. My kids are out in the back yard, and I'm going to join them in a minute.

They have already implemented prong one of the three pronged attack against the dandelions. My son really hated picking the few dandelions that he and my daughter found in the back yard, but then he thought that maybe we can put them in a vase and enjoy them inside or on the picnic table on the porch! Yep, we can--it's not all bad. It's a good thing that we all like dandelions, because I think my house is going to be overtaken by them.

I still don't get it. Who could really hate the sunshineyness that they exude? Look at these images and judge for yourself. If we really look closely, these common intruding things are actually sooo beautiful. Kids are so lucky and wise that they still see the magic more readily and no longer have to look closely to see the obvious. What silly adults we all are...

Raspberry Plants

My good friend, M. gave me a raspberry plant a couple of weeks ago. I just now was able to tease out the separate shoots and plant 10 little earnest stems with stretching, reaching roots that look like thin bean sprouts. These guys are trying so hard!

The very cool thing about raspberry and blackberry plants is that when their canes arch over, fall to the ground and touch, the tip grows roots on the spot and gets even more nourishment coming up into the cane for more fruiting. So, my plan is to let the canes arch over, and just get a brambly area full of fruiting raspberry plants.

I looked up how to plant raspberry plants, and one site said that I really need to prep the soil for about 2 years. Um...that's not going to happen. I don't even have compost here right now. And, I'm not sure if I'm going to plant a cover crop in between the plants, as the site suggested I really should. The best I can say, is that I might weed, if I'm absolutely forced to. Also, I'm not going to put in a trellis to support the plants. Read my lips: Not. Going. To. Do. It. Not a "T" formation, nor a "V" formation. We're just going to let Nature do her thing and see what happens.

At Park Day, a bunch of us parents conspired to buy thornless blackberry plants from a catalog and we'll help each other plant those up and also prairie flowers and other native species. My friend, Neo-agrarian, told me I can weave the blackberry canes through my fence and get lots of fruit that way. Since I'll be planting a thornless variety, I can easily pull out the old canes as I need to, and prune any wayward malcontents.

Enough chit-chat here. My daughter is sitting in the tub, and when she gets out I'm going to prune her hair. It's Spring, we're busy around here!

Um, it's Spring, But...

Well, that was unexpected. In my naivete, I had thought that with the Spring Equinox we would really have Spring, not a giant storm last Friday that would dump over 6 inches of snow on Very-Republican-Town and the rest of the Chicagoland area. What the...

My kids were not deterred. In fact, snow is one of their favorite mediums and they wouldn't care if it snowed in the middle of Summer; you get lemons, you make lemonade. You get snow, you make a snowman.

Woo hoo!

Thumbs up kids!

Welcome, Snowman. We hope you'll be very happy here. We know you want to stay, but we only want a short visit from you --OK?

Spring Has Sprung

Happy Spring Equinox Yesterday!