Beautiful Spring

We continue to plug away on our remodel of the house, but while the engineer is doing his thing we are getting the yard in shape so that we don't have that to do when we get going full speed on the house.  Here is a quick walk around the back yard.

 Here's the overview.  Lawn in front, then the strawberry patch that has been purged of old growth.

Then in the background is a cilantro plant on the left, peas in the middle and on the right we have

onions in front and potatoes in back.

 Our amazing lemon tree that is still alive in spite of my poor attempts at keeping it from freezing when our temperatures were in the low 20's for days at a time last December.  And then I moved it.

But it is a survivor.

 One of the newbies - a lime tree.  If you look closely you can see that it has blossoms coming on.

 The flowers are coming along nicely too.

 And look how happy Heidi is!  We moved her from over under our window to this spot under the Snowball bush.  You may recall that she has been here (or close by) before and was not happy.  

Hope she does better this time.

 And the peonies are happy happy happy too.

 One of our two miniature lilac bushes.  This is their third home since we got them 

so I hope they are happy now.  They do look like it, and they smell fantastic!

 "Little purple pansies touched with yellow gold,

Growing in the corner of our garden old . . . ."

 Happy strawberries - with blossoms!

Another newcomer - my latest venture into the world of composting.  With encouragement and lots of advice and counsel from Andrea, I am making another go of it.  Patterning my attempt after what she has been doing successfully for a couple of years, I will have a couple of these so that when one gets full I can let it cook while I fill the other one.  A challenge I think we will have is that my research indicates that there is an optimal mix of "greens" (organic matter from the kitchen), "browns" (paper and cardboard, etc.), moisture, and air.  Our challenge is to have enough browns to cover all the greens we want to put in.

But help is on the way.  Once we get back from our next trip I intend to get into vermiculture.

Those will be exciting posts.