Spring planting

Sunday Brad and I went to early church. He wanted to have plenty of time to work in the garden. There had been so much rainfall over the past few weeks that the earth had been too muddy to plow. Finally, the conditions seemed right. So he went back and forth over the garden multiple times with the plow (borrowed from Elmer Loving). Once he was satisfied with that, he planted row crops. These included roma beans, butter beans, corn, okra, snap beans, black-eyed peas and kale. He also planted tomatoes, cucumbers, eggplant, and a few herbs. He followed up today by planting yellow squash, zucchini, and beets. For those of you who are familiar with our garden, you will note a couple of new additions this year. Don Davis says to try at least one new item each summer.

Here are some seedlings waiting to be planted.

While Brad worked in the garden, I worked in the house. For the third time this spring I cleaned the two porches. I even bought a new mop, and that helped with the porch floors.  Pollen has not been my friend. During this episode of cleaning I decided it was time to run items stored in the sideboard through the dishwasher. Then I opted to arrange things a bit differently than how it was done in the past. On my list this week is to make new curtains for the sideboard, although I'm asking myself do I really want them?

We bought this hanging plant at the community market a few weeks ago. We thought maybe the wren would find this to be a suitable spot to construct a nest, as opposed to the porch light fixture, but that has not been the case. I like how the leaves are green and white on the "front" side, but purple in the "back" side.

Speaking of birds, we have seen groups of baby birds at our feeders or in the yard the last few days. It's hard to believe that little fledglings have already matured so quickly. We've seen baby house finches, nuthatches, chickadees and, unfortunately, cowbirds!