Snowballs (almost) in Springtime in California

I was told that we need more pictures and less narrative on our blog, so here it is - the Snowball Bush, almost in bloom. (you weren't really expecting the white cold stuff were you?) I'll post again when all the blossoms are out.

Here's my attempt at an artistic shot of a pretty little red flower with our little pea fence in the background. We expect our bush peas to climb up on this fence.

And here is a shot of our pea garden. The plants in a row are bush peas and the ones surrounding the poles are pole peas. With the warmer weather and continuing moisture, these plants are popping up fast. We are looking forward to eating peas if the neighborhood animals don't get them first.

And here is a shot of our lilac blossoms. For the big bush we have, we think we should be getting more blossoms, but are grateful for what we get.

And finally - this is the "square foot garden plot", watched over by the Mexican Turtle we picked up in the old barn in Midway, UT at Swiss Days. "Plot" seems to be the proper designation for this little place as it seems to be the place where seeds and plants go to die. Those pretty yellow flowers might be organic headstones for the lettuce & spinach seeds we buried there a few weeks ago, never to be seen again. I guess we are better at the big gardens, not the little ones, as our square foot gardens haven't really worked out.
In other news around the back yard, the spuds we planted between the seed graveyard and the peas are doing very well. They are up and healthy.

We have squirrels! For the last few weeks we have been watching as now and then a squirrel runs back and forth along the back fence. This morning we noticed that we obviously have an entire squirrel family living in the Italian Cypress on the west side of the shed. We saw at least 4 running up and down the trunk. They are all pretty good sized, so we figure they've been there for awhile. I guess this signals the departure of cats from the area as I would assume that our previously healthy cat population would keep (& probably has kept) the squirrel population in check. While it is fun to watch them, we do fear for our crops as they appear this Summer. We'll be watching closely what happens to our peas.