Yea! Spring is Here

I just love spring and planting a garden, being outside and just taking time to enjoy life. I love being outside and putzing around the yard and planting herbs and veggies. Every year I go a little overboard on the garden and get exhausted with it by the middle of summer. This year I'm trying to plan less and relax more. I will plant all the herbs I can because I just love them, but I'm gonna cut the veggies in half. I love to grow giant pumpkins and since my little one will really be able to enjoy them this year I am already excited about Halloween. My last giant pumpkin only got to 70+ lbs but it was so fun watching it grow. We went to a little Harvest festival last year and took pictures of the massive pumpkins people grow for competition.

 

The picture on the left is my Dh and son. I have always wondered why people don't set the pumpkins upright when they start to get bigger so you don't get the flat side.

We put up lights in the backyard last summer and I'm really looking forward to sitting outside at night and drinking a glass of red wine. I'm planting herbs in most of the 15 or so pots around the covered patio. I plant several of the same herbs so I have enough for constant use and also start them at different times so when some are spent the others are just starting to come on for use. I usually start my garden by the end of March. I know people always say to wait but,  traditionally that is the real reason we have spring break for kids so they could get time off to help parents plant the farm. My onions are already coming up and the garlic, shallots and green onions that I left in the ground from last year. My rhubarb is just starting and the peach and apple trees are blooming. My grapes still look dead but I'm watering to get them going. I'm so excited for the season. 

Birds Nest Painting

This is my newest painting to go with the blue bird I did a little while ago. I love all the texture of the nest. I used torn tissue paper and sealed it with gel medium.  The vintage music and lyrics are from an old Bing Crosby song. I highlighted a section of lyrics with pencil that says "But it brings back sweet memories of you." Around the painting there are definitions for wish, memory and dream. There are several layers of paint then I removed some sections with sanding. I used hard candy crackle paint by Tim Holtz on the music then antiqued the areas with brown paint. Sorry for the slight blurriness if the photo I need a new camera. I am happy with how it turned out and am listing this one for sale on etsy. I'm still holding on to the blue bird though! ;) More birds for the next paintings. Guess I'm wishing for spring already. I love to garden and be outside and now that my son is a little older we'll be out a lot more than last year.

My Garden

I've been in the house I live in now for about a little over eleven years. I started to put in some perennials when I first moved in and as plants have died I've found different ones that work for me. I have a 250 square foot section just for veggies every year. In the rest of the yard I have 2 kinds of grapes, blackberries, rhubarb and a peach tree. I planted one of those trees that has several different kinds of apples on one tree and by this spring we should have a great crop. Around the yard I have lavender which I highly recommend. I love to go and just brush my fingers through it and get the smell of the lavender. Some years I hang it to dry and put a bunch of it on presents I give. I have a whole herb garden on my patio and then some throughout the yard too. My sage bush comes back every year and if I cover my rosemary right sometimes it will also. I have a large lemon balm bush but haven't really used it a lot but it is a nice plant for the yard. My peppermint just goes nuts and I have to really thin it back but when the dogs run through it they smell great for a little while. I have three shih tzu's. Frasier my male is on the header for my etsy shop. The funny thing is I have found several shops with shih tzu headers or avatars too. Ashley and Madison are the two females. If we had a bigger house we would probably have two more. We always joke about having a shih tzu farm, not for breeding just for having. They're the neatest dogs I have ever owned. Anyway, every year I pretty much plant close to everything you can imagine in the vegetable garden except corn. In southern Colorado area we get fabulous sweet corn from the farmers and it takes up too much room anyway. When we move I'll start with more fruit trees as soon as we move in. I really have never understood why people don't have at least one fruit tree in their yard. I eat organic whenever possible so I like to grow what I can. Shallots are so expensive in the store  and I really like the flavor so I do two rows of those and if I don't get to them they just come up next year. When the spring comes I'll start to show pictures. We will probably do giant pumpkins this year for my son. We've done them before and the largest was 74lbs. Enough with the gardening for now.