Some of the things I love about Spring

One of the things I love most about spring is a new garden. We have been doing our garden different than in the past, instead of removing everything and rototilling before we replant in the spring, we just rake the top soil a little and plant the new plants where the old ones had been. Our garden is going great right now. We have a ton of broccoli that we planted sometime in the fall and it is about ready. We also have carrots, swiss chard (yuck), peas, potatoes, yellow squash, lettuce, yellow onions, tomatoes, and hopefully in a few days when the seeds come up, green beans. I enjoy in the spring going out to the garden and checking out the plants and seeing how they grow and sometimes even picking weeds.

Once summertime comes, I am more busy with the kids, it is hot and there are tons of mosquitoes, so I don't enjoy it as much.

Lettuce is a new thing for us, but our kids have been really enjoying eating salad lately (only Caesar, but that's good enough) and it has been nice to go in the garden and have lettuce available to eat.

Our fruit trees we planted last year are starting to get fruit, and I am excited to reap the rewards in a couple of months---they are still small so it won't be a lot, but we have some apricots, plums, and peaches.

This next picture is of a fascinating flower that grows on a vine here, called a passion flower. There are maybe 5-7 that open every day and it lasts through the summer.

This next picture is my sage. I have planted sage before, but it has never gotten this big and flowered. It is so pretty, every time I look at it, it makes me happy. I love to have fresh herbs around, whenever I make spaghetti sauce, I just walk out to my planter and pick some oregano, thyme, basil and parsley and add that to my sauce, it is so yummy. Plus, I think that herbs when they grow large make for really pretty planters.

Recently, Joe redid the stone around our planters in the front yard. All of the other houses in our section had stone all the way around their front planters, except for ours. Joe found this really nice stone, and replaced the small amount of stone left by the builders with it. It turned out really nice... and when you drive up to the house it looks really sharp in the front yard.
It's really nice to have a husband who is not only capable of working, but actually enjoys working. It's really nice to have all the neat projects that he thinks up done around the house!