The Easter Bunny came late this year!

With my husband working weekends, we often miss out on celebrating some of the holidays that always fall on weekends. With Little M getting older and becoming more aware of traditions and holidays and that sort of thing, we decided  this year to ask the Easter Bunny to visit our house a little later than he would have normally. Thankfully he agreed - since his weekend was so busy he was glad to be able to push visiting our house off into the middle part of the following week.

When Wednesday afternoon came around, and the Easter Bunny finally arrived, Little M had lots of fun searching for and collecting eggs out of our orchard. She was well practiced, as we had attended several other egg searches over the weekend. She was also glad to see her easter basket filled with some fun presents! A big floor puzzle from Mama & Papa, and some bubbles, crayons, a coloring book, and a fun pinwheel from Grammy!

Our Easter celebrations thus spread almost a week: we had Grammy visiting right before the weekend for a couple days, then a community egg hunt in the park on Saturday, then Little M and I were invited to an early afternoon egg hunt and family dinner with some close friends & their extended family on Sunday, then today the Easter Bunny visited our house. All told, it was a great Easter. Hope everyone out there had a wonderful Easter too!

Repetitive thoughts & a garden update!

So I haven't been sure if I have anything new to say the past couple of weeks. The small portion of my thoughts that hasn't been preoccupied with our rental closing and the situation that's been unfolding with the local police departments in the newspapers has been busily thinking and planning the garden & yard projects I want to do this year and in upcoming years. And I feel that I've pretty much shared what I can of those things with you already!

However, since I seem to need to write it all out to process it, I'll give you a brief update on how the rental & gardens are coming, just so you all know where we're at :) On the rental front, we seem to be moving along to closing nicely. The step we're currently waiting on is for the buyer's house to close, since the sale of our house is contingent on her house selling. Her buyer (this time!) has 50% down and is going for a conventional mortgage, so it seems promising that it will close in a week like planned. After that, I think the next step is to wait until the end of the month when our closing is supposed to happen!

Our great renter is obviously sad to be moving out, but she knew the house selling was a possibility when she moved in, so she's been fairly understanding. However she's only moving out the day before closing, so we might be a little busy that last day getting things all tidied up, taking the paint cans up there, and getting clips of shrubs and such that we want to propagate down here.

So overall, the rental situation has been pretty exciting and positive!

Our garden also seems to be coming along well, although I'm currently hoping we get a bit of rain. Its starting to look a bit dry down there and we don't yet have the irrigation turned on since there is still a good chance of freezing temperatures. Luckily there is rain forecast for today and perhaps later this week too. Otherwise I'll be lugging some watering cans down there this weekend!

So far I've moved the garlic chives around so that we've got a nice set up for a herb corner right at the main entrance to the garden, complete with a couple of stepping stones to avoid compacting the ground around the herbs. Over the weekend I direct planted our peas as well as some lettuce, bok choy, and onion seeds. The raspberry canes are starting to bud out a little bit, and the garlic shoots are coming up.

New herb area, garlic chives the only thing planted so far. Strawberries & garlic to the left, perennial bulbs to the right

Inside, my seedlings are coming along nicely, although I've likely got too many of each plant! The lavender plants from last year are sending out lots of new growth, as are the kitchen rosemary plants. Spring is here!

Garden Strawberry Jam

Last summer, over the course of about a month, I slowly gathered enough 'extra' strawberries from our daily ventures down to the garden, and froze them in small bunches, until I had enough to make a batch of strawberry jam. My first batch ever. But then I never made it, and the strawberries just sat in their tub in the freezer for months and months.

I had been meaning to make jam, and promising my husband I would make it, and even refusing to buy jam at the grocery store because I was going to make it so soon.

frozen strawberries warming up in front of the woodstove

Well last weekend I finally made strawberry jam. And gosh was it ever easy! A bit sticky, but sooo easy! I used a strawberry jam recipe from Pioneer Woman, but instead of going all the way and canning the jam, I just froze it, even though I put it in my weck canning jars and the recipe included canning instructions. I just didn't have the energy with a daughter & husband at home sick with colds!

But oh, it is so delicious! With some fresh out of the oven tea biscuits, or on warm crepes, or just on a spoon. YUMMY! I've been trying to find things to bake just so I can put jam on top :) And I'm amazed at how much jam my 4 cups of strawberries made, plenty to last us a while, and overall way cheaper than buying jam!

I think the only thing I would change in the future is not use frozen & crushed strawberries to get more strawberry chunks, and use less sugar! :) I can see doing a batch like that, low sugar & more chunks, and a batch that is sweeter and more like jelly. Goals for this summer/fall!

Spring cleanup in the garden

I'm typing this from my office at work, taking my lunch break and doing a bit of blogging. This morning was a nice bright morning. I woke up a bit later than usual, thanks to Little M's cold which has been prompting her to sleep in a bit (yesterday we didn't wake up until 9:30, it was so nice!). The extra sleep has been exactly what my body has needed, as she so nicely shared the cold with me and the mister too.

Anyway, this morning my throat was feeling a little scratchier than yesterday, and my head was feeling a little stuffy, and I thought to myself, and then aloud to the mister, that I likely should stay home sick today, and work in the garden. He snorted and rolled over in bed. I took that as an indication that if I stayed home I would likely not have as much time to garden as I might like, so bucked up and went in to work. I still wish I had stayed home to garden though :)

This time of year I rarely can resist the 'just one more trip down to the garden'. I mean seriously, its not like the bulbs will have come up any more since the last time I was down there an hour ago, but I just can't seem to resist the draw of the soil, all ready and waiting to be worked, especially after a long, cold, snowy winter.

So far in the garden I've only done a bit of work. Raked all of the leftovers from last fall off from where we spread them over the soil to do a bit of decomposing over the winter, turned a small section of dirt over to mix in the chicken manure that we spread last fall but didn't get all mixed in, and moved some stepping stone rocks to a section of the garden that I am thinking this year of making into a herb area.

With the warmer temps and sunny days, our snow has been disappearing fast, and I just can't wait to plant the peas (this weekend hopefully!), and start moving my little seedlings out to the back porch to get a bit of a breeze. I know at least a couple of my readers are already in the thick of things out in the garden, but up here in the mountains, spring comes a bit later :) Anyone else still waiting & itching to be doing some serious gardening?