Spring is Springing leaks!

I know lame title.  Spring is here and then it's not.  I can go out and enjoy some days and most days not.  Some days you get a few min of Spring and then it snows.  What ever - I am enjoying every minute I can outside.  I love being outside in my nature.  I love seeing things in bloom and the color of green being unveiled everywhere.  My mind is clear and I can just think to myself.  Really I can't think of being in my yard working on getting my garden really as work.  It's pure enjoyment - not fun, mind you, that's not the right word for it.  It's seeing my little piece of Earth that I have stewardship over become something I can call my little piece of Heaven on Earth.  It calls to me, it brings me peace it brings me joy and fulfillment and I feel that it is where I am most in tune with Spiritual things. I can watch my kids play around me and teach them about plants and the earth. 

I have spent the last few weeks (well the moments I can of the last few weeks) in my yard preparing for my vegetable garden.  I am so excited - I hope I have some nice vegetable plants this year.  I love love love those yummy fresh vegetables.  I think if I could do my yard all over again.  I would make it so I had a huge space for a veg. garden.  I just didn't see me and my garden really being friends like we are.  I hated yard work and bugs and really anything but planting flowers was not my thing.  When I was young we had quite a large garden.  I didn't have much to do with it.  We had lots of bean plants for many years that our family would pick all summer and sell to our local (family owned) produce market.  Each morning bright and early my Mom got all of us up to pick them.  After much complaining and crying over bugs.  Me running around like a crazy person every time something touched me my Mom came up with a new plan.  My brothers (4) would continue helping my mom get the buckets of beans picked and I would go make breakfast and clean the kitchen up.  I liked this plan much better.

It wasn't until I had a yard of my own for several years that I became in love with being outside.  I felt awkward for a long time being outside with neighbors who could be looking at you.  I grew up on a main road that was back then not really very busy. (now it's crazy busy).  I had neighbors on both side one of which was my Dad's sister's family.  We had a nice large yard and it was very secluded with fields in all other directions.  Now I don't care who is looking because who cares!  I would not say that I have the best yard by far.  I never spend enough money on it like fertilizing it and getting insecticides. But I like it and each year I feel like it gets a little bit better.  Except my front yard.  I hate the front yard.  I have a big cottonwood that I did not plant but we left it there anyway.  It gives the front yard nice shade BUT that roots are crazy and they are near the top of the ground so planting anything or weeding anything is so hard because there are roots everywhere.  And then there is some kind of terrible ground cover that I have been trying to get ride of for like 6 years.  It just keeps getting bigger and it's so hard to dig up and I can't decide if I want to really round up everything else that's in that garden.  I hate it so much that I told Robert that I am sick of it and just want to get rid of the whole thing and plant grass there, because really I have enough in the back yard to take care of.

Even though I hated yard work when I was young I know that my Mom's example to me in her love for it was why I love it now.  My Mom had fruit trees and grapevines and vegetable that she took care of and we used.  Every year she made and canned grape juice with grapes from our amazing vines.  She canned peaches and pears and made relish and canned green beans.  We froze corn (I can't even eat-or smell- canned corn). I am sure that there is more but I can't think of any right off.  It was good to be raised that way.  I am not there but I have canned a few times but sadly not anything that I have grown myself.  I have a lot of jars I need to work on filling up.

Next week I am going to make freezer Jam again.  I made it a few years ago and my kids still talk about it.  I didn't have a large freezer then so it was really not the way to go.  BUT NOW we are ready and so excited.  The girls are so excited to help and so excited to eat it on some yummy homemade bread!  Now that is the good life!

I made 3 of them!

So I kind of got off there so anyway I have spent the last weeks cleaning up and getting ready for the beauty to happen!  I pruned by vines and made grapevine wreaths.  I was so proud of myself, I thought I was kidding myself when I decided to making one.  I think they turned out rather well.