the garden is getting ready

I love Spring. I love the smells of Spring. I love the fact that everything gets really, really green. I love getting the garden ready and I love planting seedlings and seeds.

This past Sunday, we (DH, DS (the Z-man) and DD (the princess or Cinderella, depending on her mood) . . . DD against her better judgment) spent about 90 minutes or so getting the vegetables beds ready for planting. It had been raining since last Thursday and was still sort of drippy Sunday morning. But the damp ground made pulling weeds and overgrown grass mucho easy.

We have seven raised beds for vegetables. DS and I cleaned out, prepped and planted peas in the smallest bed the second Saturday in April. The peas are coming up nicely and the rain this past week will do wonderful things for them.

In the Fall, we generally just let the plants die a natural death and over the winter toss many things on top of the beds. These things include pineapple tops, rotted celery (you know the stuff you find at the bottom of the vegetable drawer that is oozy and icky) and any flowers that had been purchased, vased and died. In the Spring, much of the stuff has been converted to a sort of mulchy mush that gets worked back into the soil.

Next weekend, we will be getting the plants and do the planting.

Besides the bed with the peas, the other six beds will be planted with tomatoes (many varieties included grape), zucchini, cucumbers, peppers (again, many varieties . . . sweet and hot), marigolds. The bed that currently has peas will get more pepper plants and beans (lima and green).

Z-man will also plant his sunflowers. He puts some in pots and some along the fence. Last year, he was on his swing set one early morning while my DH watered the garden and stood and watched as a deer ate his potted sunflowers down to the dirt. He was totally fascinated and my DH thoroughly enjoyed watching Z-man watch the deer!

Spring. I love Spring.