FULL Sunday!

I awoke at 4:31 AM and have been going ever since. I read a bunch of Blog posts and watched a couple shows on TV Links with the headset on so as not to disturb the others in the house that were still sleeping soundly. About 6 I did my best to "quietly" gather all the laundry and got it started. Scott got up at some point and made a wonderful breakfast. After breakfast I did our taxes - we are getting refunds! Our plan is to put it all toward the car loan so we won't have that hanging over our heads anymore.

Soon to be PAID OFF!

After the taxes were completed I decided to clean my car inside and out - it's a "yearly" thing for us; or so it seems. Cleaning it now will help us see when the pollen starts settling on everything... yellow shows up so much better on a nice shiny clean surface.

How about that Carolina Blue Sky?

When I was out taking the picture of my nice shiny car I noticed the very first bloom on our tulip tree. You can see all the buds yet to open and I am hoping this beautiful weather continues so I don't loose them to a frost.

I decided to walk out back and photograph Scott's gorgeous garlic in the garden. It's doing amazingly well this year with a good mulching.
You can see where we need to do some weeding and why we need another roll of rolled roofing for our walkways.

We are going to get some newspapers from Scott's Mom tonight so that I can make up some seed starting pots. I'll be starting seeds this week.; tomatoes, peppers and perhaps some summer squash and cucumbers. We are very much looking forward to fresh produce from our garden.

I started work on another quilt block; it's one of the two I have remaining to do for the FQ swap. This block will be "hopping the big pond" to England to Irene. What looks to be tan is really a golden yellow; the sun has started to go down so I have little natural light coming in through my sewing room windows. Hopefully she will forgive my horrible delay.

A "little" garlic

OK! So Scott decided to harvest the very first hard necked garlic... are you ready?.............................................

A single bulb of garlic - nearly the size of a soft ball.

Happy Garlic Farmer holding soft neck garlic in his right hand and one single hard neck garlic in his left hand.

Soft neck garlic is what you find in the produce section at the grocery store and hard neck is more of a gourmet variety. To say Scott is thrilled is quite an understatement to his face in the above photo. He came in and said... "GRAB THE CAMERA! You gotta see this garlic!"

Garden in Spring

I just went out and took a few pictures of my garden and you can see the 4 raised beds to the left that I cleaned up/out yesterday well you can see 3 out of 4 anyway. Here are the 4 all cleaned up...

We used rolled roofing between the beds to keep the weeds from becoming a problem. We need some more to put down between the beds we added last year but it's not a financial priority so I will just have to keep after the weeds better by hand. The green you see in the beds toward the top of the photo are of Scott's garlic. Most of it is hard neck garlic and thats what we really like to use the most as the flavor is SO MUCH better than the soft necked garlic you get at the grocery store. Scott has found a couple sites that sell gourmet hard neck garlic and we plan to order some for next year.  Here is a close-up of some of the hard neck garlic...

I still have a lot of work to do out there but it will have to wait until Friday when I am off from work again. Scott and I are trying to decided where to plant some tomatoes where they would get a bit of shade as our garden gets FULL sun constantly and our harvests haven't been too great the past couple of years. I've even toyed with the idea of putting a frame over every other row with lattice across the top to create some dappled shade for our poor plants. And I need to amend the beds with more organic matter or clay so that they will hold water a little better.  It's all a work in progress and I love the smell of the earth when it's fertile ... most of my raised beds don't have that REAL Earthy smell yet.... COMPOST! I've got to find more organic matter that comes from yards that aren't chemical happy.... no fertilizers, bug killers, weed killers and the like. People don't understand that all those chemicals kill beneficial plants and bugs too. We will never control Nature; we must learn to PARTNER with her.