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.