Happy Monday morning dear friends. I hope Easter weekend found you peaceful and rested. We watched Andrea Bocelli perform live from Italy on the big screen tv to start our Easter morning. It was beautiful…moved me to tears. I’m missing my dad, Easter dinner was the last dinner we had with him before he passed on the 19th of April 5 years ago. It still hits hard at times.

I’m also missing my grand babies and the relationship I had with my son and his girlfriend. I didn’t hear from them yesterday, it was so odd not having a dinner for everyone. We did make a dinner of ham, scalloped potatoes, and mixed veggies. We loaded up a plate for mom, and a plate for her neighbor lady. My daughter requested raisin gravy, so I made a double batch of that for her and her boyfriend to enjoy with their ham & mashed potato dinner they made for some friends yesterday. I snipped off a few tulips and narcissus to make three vases – one for each stop we made.

I also transplanted several plants and made 3-5 planters for each stop. Mom received a Chinese Lantern, Petunia, and some Nasturtiums. Her neighbor lady was the one who requested and purchased the seeds for the Nasturtiums as well as Morning Glory, she also received a Petunia. My daughter was very excited about the little plants she got, I actually bought her some very nice planters to go with the plants I gave her – Lavender, Rosemary, Chinese Lantern, Petunia and a Gerbera Daisy. It was fun to make the delivers and see everyone.

Joe and I arrived home, ate some of that fabulous dinner, took a walk around the property watering the little bits and pieces that I’ve planted so far. Which brings us around to an update on the actual topic of this blog….gardening…flower growing…you know, not so personal stuff…

I finally put the Ranunculus & Anemones in the ground! Goodness not sure I’ll grow those again, between the prep for the area & the weather it worked out just fine to not have them in the ground as early as recommended, but now the weather warms up…we’ll see if I get blooms out of these cool weather flowers.

I am officially a gardener in raised flower beds, I’m so excited to have raised beds, this makes it so I can plant a few things a bit earlier. Joe snapped together five long beds for me. I’ve planted out my Sweet Peas (100’ish) and Snap Dragons (100’ish) in the same beds. I’m hoping I don’t regret it, but I think they will look nice together, after all, it’s not all about just a working farm, I wouldn’t mind it to look nice too! I’m chatting with him about maybe a few more, you know, so I can plant Bachelor Buttons and Larkspur perhaps 🙂 Do it for the flowers, for the love of nature.

Speaking of Larkspur, I scattered my seeds, along with Poppy Seed, extra Snap Dragon seed, Sweet William and a few others, in the tulip patch, to grow when the Tulips are finished – land-oh-lakes did that wind ever kick up….three damn days of 35 mile hour winds….if there are any seeds left it will be a miracle, I’m sure we’ll be finding flowers from here to Joe’s brother’s house across the road if we are lucky. If I had the raised beds, at least I could have nestled down the seed a bit more perhaps…? Who knows….

And don’t even get me started on the Tulips…..one of my posts talked about how I never should have planted them, I never should have been led to believe that I could grow them. Turns out that indeed they will grow, the three yellow ones I picked have 3 inch stems, but they are beautiful just the same. Turns out that we had an invasion of Voles, and apparently they really like Tulip bulbs…I have a big pile of the tulips they nibbled the bulb off of, and empty beds with no bulbs. Over 300 bulbs….they must be some fat Voles by now. We are thinking that perhaps if we planted them deeper next time – apparently there’s going to be a next time. I’m not sure my heart can take it. But the ones that did make it are so pretty, so I’m sure I’ll try again. I do have a few that haven’t opened yet that are 9 inches or so tall and more short ones, a pink one, a red one and several yellow ones – apparently Voles don’t like yellow….how odd is that? The Daffodils were never touched, but I didn’t realize that I bought miniature types, makes me chuckle….they are very cute, next year I will pay closer attention to the types. Always a learning process over here!

The weather is getting nicer and nicer with each passing day. I’m almost breathing a sigh of relief that we’ve made through another winter – I can’t even imagine being an old settler out here-or anywhere really. We have life pretty easy. This weekend we had an opportunity to visit an old house that was built in 1890, beautiful old place, very fancy for it’s time, and very well built. The things they could do back then with no technology, no machines, all work done by hand. Joe has heard stories about it all his life, so it was a treat to take a walk through it and explore some great history of the area.

I hear there is tilling this week, the horse/goat manure we picked up last week was spread out over the garden beds last week, so this week it will get tilled in – and the seed bed will be ready! That means I can start putting in my Glads, Dahlias and Joe can put in the important stuff – food! Then we can start to assemble the irrigation and lay out the fabric cloth. I asked one of the neighbor boys if he was interested in helping out when the really tough work started, he said he’d be happy to, I’m sure the idea of some extra cash helped sweeten the deal.

There will be no gardening for me today — I have sewing projects to take care of, my daughter needs curtains hemmed and I promised a pennant to the young lady who gave me a ton of Dahlia tubers for FREE. I also have to work from home today….all week actually….so I will find that tricky line of feeling pressure to take care of things at home, and also earn my paycheck. Last week was bits and pieces of Spring break. I was able to take some time in the craft room to make 12 masks for the people in my life that might need them. There are so many different patterns out there, I picked the one that fit best and are comfortable, we’ll see if anyone uses them.

I hope your week goes well, hopefully the weather is nice in your part of the world also, the sun sure makes a difference! Until next time, hugs to you and yours.