Spring Blooms

Well it almost feels like winter has returned around here, grrrrrr. It’s amazing to me how so many of the plants don’t seem to mind, though. Like the daffodils and tulips which are blooming like crazy around us. I remember the week before Lily was born two years ago, we had a nasty return to winter for a few days then too. All the tulips had bloomed, when out of nowhere we got a really wet snowstorm mixed with a bit of thunder, two things that don’t happen that often around here, let alone at the same time. I have pictures of the tulips covered in snow, but they survived.

All the bulbs in our yard are from the previous owners, but it sure is nice to enjoy all their hard work. Lily especially loves them. When our tulips opened this weekend she was immediately drawn to them and wanted to eat them. We talked about how the bumblebees go inside the flowers and eat/drink from them, but we don’t eat the tulips ourselves. I’m not sure if that bit of information will stick with her or not; I have this feeling I’ll find her out there tasting one any day now.

Compost and Worms

Lily is totally into the compost these days, compost and worms. Actually I’m pretty sure it has to do with the worms and not the compost or the idea of compost at all. For her it’s about “digging for wormies.” Although, she did head right back to the compost pit the other day, the one without a front, and pick an old gross half decomposed strawberry and put it in her mouth. The kid knows how to develop a great immune system.

When Lily’s GramS was here she went to Cedar Grove Compost here in Everett and picked up two loads of compost for part of the front yard we are turning into garden this year. Lily helped her unload it and dump it into the yard with the big wheelbarrow and her tiny one. She had a ball!

Now every time we go out to play/garden, she gets her wheelbarrow and pushes it around, or she digs in the huge pile of compost still waiting to be planted in. No matter what she’s doing she always wants to dig up worms. I love that she is getting so into the bugs in the garden, especially worms because of their part in the garden.

Here’s the gross part, the part I don’t love, she is alos into exploring how things fit together, AND how they come apart, including worms. She, Greg and I were outside the other day digging and working next to each other. I happened to glance over at Lily, and she is crouched down and stretching a worm out between her two hands. Yuck! I mean that poor worm, she was trying to pull it apart. Besides being totally grossed out, I didn’t know whether to laugh or yell.

I remained calm long enough to nudge Greg so he could see her before I grabbed the worm out of her hands and buried it back in the dirt while saying, “You have to be gentle with the worms, Lily, they’re fragile. We don’t pull them apart.” Needless to say, she quickly dug up another one and when I looked over she was butchering it. And before I could stop her she ripped it in half and said, “Oh, it ripped.” And went on with the digging. Sorry worms!

Starting Snap Peas

Lily, Greg and I transplanted some snap pea seeds into the ground tonight. We’ve been using more of the front yard for vegetable growing because it really has much better sunlight than the raised beds in back.

I started some snap peas a few weeks ago between two damp paper towels and put them on top of the fridge. I learned this technique last year from Scott Conner who has an awesome gardening show on AM 1090 every Saturday from 10-12 called Gardening in the Northwest. I love his show; I learn something from him every weekend, that is, every weekend I am able to catch the show. I swear he knows everything about gardening out here, and if he doesn’t know something, he’ll find out for you.

You start the pea seeds between two damp paper towels on an old tray or cookie sheet and place it on top of the fridge where it’s nice and warm. The seedlings are stronger this way than if you start them directly in the ground; plus it’s fun to watch them sprout up under the paper towels. The only problem for me is you have to keep them damp; and when they are up on the fridge I tend to forget about them. It takes anywhere from 7 to 20 days, I’ve found, for them to be ready to plant in the ground. They get to be more than an inch tall with almost two sets of sprout leaves and the roots start to go crazy; that’s when you know they are ready for the ground.

Greg made a pea teepee out of bamboo stakes for us, and he took pictures while I poked holes, and Lily put the sprouts into the dirt holes. She got through about six of them before she found it more interesting to pull the seedling apart into many pieces. She’s having fun pulling things apart lately, more on that later.

Feeding Chickens

Lily has had a busy couple of weeks outside. Her GramS, (Greg’s mom) has been visiting from Michigan. GramS is house sitting for our neighbors’ across the street who have CHICKENS. Lily gets to help feed them and collect the eggs and it’s become her favorite thing to do. Every morning now she wakes up saying, “GramS, go feed chickens.”
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These chickens are very well taken care of in their beautiful backyard. In addition to their organic chicken feed, their diet is supplemented by greens from the garden. They have access to the sun and outdoors every day, and nice sturdy coops for sleeping. And their eggs are delicious!

Last fall these neighbors wanted to give us some chickens, which we would eventually like to have, but we decided to wait until we could build them a nice coop and penned-in area in our yard. Unfortunately this seems to have taken a backseat to some other projects around our house that actually need to get finished. But I think in the near future we will have some chickens of our own.

Starting Seeds

Lily and I started seeds this morning. How fun and hilarious at the same time. Here’s what we tried to plant: snow peas, snap peas, jalapenos, sweet onion and sunflower. We planted not necessarily based on what seeds should be started now, but on what packages Lily liked best. The snap peas and onions were her favorite, I think. She likes the big seeds and the teeny tiny ones as well.

What will grow from those little pellets remains to be seen, because let’s just say, it wasn’t quite as organized as I thought it would be. Actually, I knew it wouldn’t be organized at all, no matter how much I tried, but I had hopes. The way it turned out was too much fun to care about the organization anyway, which is definitely something Lily teaches me over and over again. And who knows, we might come up with some interesting new hybrids altogether, like a jalapeno flavored sunflower or a snap/snow pea combination.

I thought she would enjoy watering them and watching the pellets expand, but really she liked the seed packets and the seeds best. She also had a blast sticking her finger into the water between the wells to “drink” it.

It was awesome to see that she enjoyed it far more and for a lot longer than I thought she would. We practically had to tear her away from it.

Climbing Trees

Okay, it’s taken me a while to get this blog post out, but last Saturday was absolutely gorgeous here. I’m talking 60-plus degrees, blue sky and sunshine. And not a chilly breeze to be found. We got lots of work done in the yard. And when I say, “we,” I mean Greg got lots of work done in the yard while Lily played and I weeded a tiny bit weeds and thought about all the work I wanted to get done, but couldn’t.

Greg pruned the big trees which all needed some intense pruning. As I have pretty much no clue about pruning trees aside from lilacs and forsythia, I let him do the hard work, not that I could have done it anyway in this stage of a pregnancy, but still it’s not something I enjoy. I know it needs to be done, but I just feel like cutting huge branches away is such a major commitment and could so easily make the tree look ridiculous. Greg did a great job and now, instead of our plum tree looking ragamuffinish, it looks clean and refined. And the one lilac shrub that’s grown into a tree doesn’t smack us in the face anymore when we walk by it.

Of course Lily wanted to help with the pruning because she loves trees almost as much as worms, but it’s not really something she can do yet. Maybe in ten years or so, right? Climbing trees is a whole different issue, especially with her daddy around to “help” her. I love these pictures almost as much as I loved seeing her smiling in the tree with the sun around her, but they remind me she’s not my little baby anymore and she’s growing up way too fast for me to keep up. Although, I imagine any speed would be too fast for us parents, right?

Digging For Worms

We played outside a lot this week. Greg built us a second compost bin, while Lily and I pulled weeds and dug for worms out front. Okay, so I pulled weeds while she dug in the dirt looking for worms, snails and bumblebees. Even though she only found a few worms and one snail, she was way more successful than I was. My plans, especially my weeding plans, always turn out to be larger than what I actually accomplish, even when I’m not pregnant.

But we had so much fun! I was already outside weeding when Lily woke up from her nap, so as soon as she came out and saw my tools, she was hooked. She loves the spade and the weeder, and once we found the first worm, that’s all she was interested in. “Find wormy, find wormy, find wormy,” she kept saying over and over and over again.

Every time we would find one, Lily wanted to hold it and watch it wiggle in her hand. But I think the worms were a bit shell shocked because they didn’t do much wiggling. Eventually Lily would drop it back into the dirt and just watch it and anytime it moved she would tell me, “It’s moving!” It’s so cute to hear her talk because so often her words or sentences end with the inflection of a question, so instead of, “It’s moving!” It sounds more like, “It’s moving?”

Another silly discovery we had were a few old, forgotten carrots in one of the pots I never emptied out last year. I thought we were just digging through the dirt for worms, but out came several small carrots. She only found one tiny snail, and she tried to squish the body out of the shell with her finger. Yuck!