I planted 1 whole bed of greens today. I didn’t get out to the garden as early as I had hoped, so I only prepared one bed with some of the amazing dark soil/compost from the corral & planted seed of 8 different varieties of greens. Swiss Chard, Red Speckled Romaine, Romaine, Loose Leaf Lettuce, two different Mixes of Greens, 2 more lettuces (can’t remember) and Spinach.

It was so beautiful today, 75, sunny & still - up until I started to plant the seeds, then it got quite windy - and as I was driving away, it started to get cooler & quite cloudy - almost like I was at the ocean, that dense with clouds. Strange.

I meant to plant some beets & radishes today too, but will do that this weekend.

Today the sign was finally completed. My wonderful mom went to the garden yesterday and prepped the sign with a pencil, and pulled a lot of the weeds & trimmed a lot of out of control brush around the garden. Today we met at the garden after I helped Cecil a bit, planted a red climbing rose by the sign & she painted the letters - Ringrose Farms (it’s always been called Ringrose Farm but she wanted the S added to balance out the sign) Everyone knows the land as that, so we just cleaned up the sign a bit & made it fresh again. Alas, I forgot the camera again, so a photo will be accompanying this post soon.

I cleaned up all the pulled weeds & brush that she had clipped the day before & she started in another huge bush while I prepared the rest of the beds & dug up more of my carrots. I only dug up half, but had a huge bunch to juice. We talked about bulldozing the house day soon - and I will probably be going out there again this weekend with someone who knows about which wires we need to disconnect, how to ground the electricity away from the house so we still have well water & which pipes to look out for etc. Hopefully the house can come down soon after that, which we will haul away to the dump.

I spent 3 or 4 hours both Sat & Sun this past weekend preparing the old beds for planting this week - I am going to plant sweet peas, a lot of greens, some herbs & some root veggies first. It didn’t take me long to fluff the soil & pull out the few weeds that have started to grow in the soil. It was an easy job & I really enjoyed it. In one of the beds I had planted some carrots that I had not dug up last year. I unearthed quite a few carrots to juice when I got home. They were so sweet & so fresh. I also dug up what I thought was a weed & it was an arugula plant that I had put seed down for last fall, so I took that home as well.

I also walked over to the corral to see if I could find some good dark soil under the mounds of hay that had been left there over the years for the cows who have been penned up occasionally. I found it. There is a huge mountain of soft soil under the hay/straw that is laying on top. I am really excited to have found this, and after helping take hay out to the cattle the past month, I now know where all these areas are full of beautiful soil for the taking. The new beds I make this year will be so lucky to get this local & organic soil!

It has been such a beautiful day - week, even. It was 81 degrees when I got to the garden today to drop off a bunch of stuff for the compost pile. I sat in the shade for an hour just enjoying the day & the birds & the blue skies and thought about how I lucky I am to have this garden space.

My parents and I came out to the garden on Sunday to clean up all the leaves & grass & set up the second compost bin from found wire. I am so lucky that they enjoy helping me, it would have been a lot of work to do by myself.

It’s almost time. Today the sun decided to come out after lunch & I thought it would be a perfect day to look over the garden, make some decisions about what to do this year & take Doc (my puppy) out there with me for a ride & some running around. It was gorgeous blue skies, sunny & around 55 F - no wind.. amazing.

I gathered all the cardboard that I had laid out in the fall that had blown all over the place, I found some fence wire & secured it for a pseudo compost bin, and started to pile up the grass clippings my parents & I saved from the ditch at the side of the road into it. I went to get the pecan leaves & shells that we collected from one of my parents neighbors so I could add them to the grass clippings, but when I went into the farmhouse to get the bags of them, every single bag was torn to shreds & it was/is about 2 feet deep of pecan branches/leaves in the farmhouse now. What a mess. I don’t know how long it is going to take me to clean it up & haul it to the garden for my compost pile. I also have no idea how many animals are burrowed into it, I’m hoping it was just a raccoon who wanted to eat pecans, and not a snake or possum or porcupine making nests in the leaves. I decided to leave that discovery for another day & continued on with filling up the new compost bin with the grass clippings.

I also made some decisions on how I am going to prune trees/bushes, work the soil, make the beds, where I’m going to plant things this year & so on. I even went as far as thinking about how I want the new fences to be (when I build a new house out there), what kind of plants & trees to plant & how many of the cedar trees I’m going to remove (all of them!).

I took my camera out there but alas, the battery was dead. It is charging as I type, and I shall take it out with me tomorrow to feed cattle & tomorrow or tue. to the garden.

This past sunday my parents and I decided to make the most of the nice day (40 F, sunny & no wind) for a drive around the county & a hike around the farm. The first stop was at the Cemetary on the South East corner of the property. It had recently been mowed which was odd to us & as we walked around looking at all the old & updated tomb stones, we saw a very new grave. It was for a 3 year old boy who had died Jan of 2007.

We decided to see where the road we were on would take us into the small village north east of us & after 20 or 30 minutes or so we arrived back at the farm house. The Llama was grazing by the sign & by the farm house although her herd was in the pasture to the south. She must have jumped the fence.

We then took a nice hike/walk by this little gorge or tiny canyon as my Mom called it. She had us walking among all the huge cedar trees & through & over a few fences before we got back to the truck. It was a nice day though & a lot of fun seeing parts of the property I didn’t recollect.

I have also procured quite a bit of leaves & grass clippings in the past few weeks. The leaves & pecan hulls were from neighbors of my parents & the grass clippings were dumped along the fence by the farm house. Not sure why someone would go the trouble of bagging & dumping a ton of grass clippings out there, but they did. I need to put together some wire cages to hold it in by the garden for compost. That is next!