And the Garden Begins....

    The weather over the long weekend was as predicted, beautiful!  We spent most every daylight hour working outside, tilling the garden, cleaning and clearing brush and putting in the cold weather crops along with some new roses and 3 new fruit trees bringing the tree count in our little orchard to 14.  It was so nice to get our hands in the earth and to feel the warmth of the sun.  I am now sporting a  farmer's tan right down to the point where my garden gloves covered my hands (try to imagine white hands, tan arms with a distinctive wrist tan line :-)    After nearly 2 days of work,  our 30' x 42'  vegetable garden is beginning to look quite lovely.  We have 8 rows of beds divided into 3 sections.  This year we dug much more prominent walking paths between the beds and around the edge of the garden and raised the beds several inches higher than last year in hopes of reducing the amount of weeding.  We plan to till some more over the next few days to extend it to about 34' x 55'  This will hopefully give us enough space to add a few new crops this growing season.  

We planted peas, cabbages (red, napa and jersey), broccoli, cauliflower, brussel sprouts, romaine, baby bib, arugula, spinach and a mustard mix salad this weekend.  Our spring onions have been up about 2 weeks now and soon we'll be picking some green onions for our salads.   The chives also popped up over the last few days - a few chives made it to the dinner table yesterday -  and our family favorite lemony chive potatoes will be on the menu very soon.

George relaxing after all that tilling, planting and brush hauling

Our long Easter weekend was finished off quite simply,  just the 4 of us gathered around the table enjoying a delicious sun-dried tomato, olive, rosemary and garlic stuffed lamb, roasted baby potatoes with chives, 

and of course, our traditional colored eggs (the large red ones are goose eggs from a nearby farmer - they're huge and take color very well).   

Our mulch delivery will be here any minute and then a bit of school before we head to a quick ortho appt; this afternoon I'll hopefully be back in the garden :-)