The Morning Time of the Year

The trees are budding.  New shoots greening up.  The birds are singing their hearts out.  It stays light well past dinner time.  The early flowers are showing off their hues.  Ahhhhh, it makes my heart glad.  I treasure this time of year.  Spring is the morning time of the year for me.  The season where I am most alive and alert.  Refreshed and excited to dive into all the busyness that lies before me.

Fabulous clouds north of town.  4/4/21

As we shake off our slumbery winter mode, we start to make plans for the warmer season to come, both abroad and around the house.  We planted our cool weather crops the last weekend of March--the peas, bok choy, spinach, red potatoes, broccoli rabe, and some herbs.  

Our bobtailed squirrel friend made it through the winter.  She has a harder time raiding the suet than the rest of the squirrel's do, since she can't brace with her tail.  Neither of us had seen her since the fall and were glad to do so recently.  4/19/21

Next week we'll start hardening off the more warm-weather seedlings.  They have been growing under lights in the basement since early March--the eggplant, tomatillos, tomatoes, and peppers.  We started flower seeds indoors for the first time this year, too.   We really have come around to flower gardening over the years.  

A partial view of the seedling nursery.  3/29/21

They will all be out in the greenhouse full time here soon.  We always want to jump the gun about it, but it is an unheated greenhouse and this week has been bookended with a skiff of  snow, Monday and Friday.  It is Montana still, albeit the Banana Belt portion.  

Some late April snow, nothing out of the ordinary.  4/23/21

When our friend, Jesscy, from the Shields Valley heard we'd planted our greens and potatoes etc., she replied with an incredulous, "Outside?!?!"  She's justifiably incredulous though, since I saw the best hoar frost of my life at her place the next morning.  It really is remarkable how much mountains impact the weather.  

We got to ooooh and ahhhhhh over the lambs at Jesscy's place.  Fuzzy little babies always make it feel more like spring to me.  Cuteness overload.  4/14/21

We harvested the last of the 2020 carrots on Thursday.  They were so tender and sweet in our dinner.  Ginger was very happy to keep us company back there again.  She loves gardening season.

I think the carrots and spices are the only homegrown features of this meal, but boy oh boy were those carrots excellent.  The sauce is based off something from America's Test Kitchen.  4/22/21

Matt pruned the surviving apple tree, aiming for the very unfriendly sounding "til you can throw a cat through it" benchmark that he was taught.  The front yard trees, long plagued by the neighborhood deer, didn't demand pruning like the apple tree.  They're all leafing out though.  Hooray.

I noticed that the light shining through my water bottle was making a really great mini-rainbow on the picnic table.  Sunshine is an artist sometimes.  3/13/21

I am sure that, despite my best intentions for balance, I will wear myself out with it all as the year progresses. All the people, all the projects, all the travel.  By autumn I'll likely be dreaming of the evening season of the year, autumn, where we can put everything to bed and rest awhile in quiet and darkness. 

 For now though, spring is pounding in my heart like an alarm clock.  And I am glad.