Garden Update!

Ha ! Not the garden update I had planned,  but here you go!
We are in the midst of a spring snowstorm.  Luckily, we knew it was coming and covered lots of stuff and have the fireplace on for the peach tree. As you can see, the greenhouse is nice and steamy (well, maybe not steamy, but there is condensation, so I take that as a great sign that it is at least warmish in there!) I haven't planted much outside the greenhouse, but our trees, lavender, roses, grapevines, and butterfly bushes were flowering, so some of the lumps you see in the snow are various buckets and tarps.  The snow cover on the table (center this photo) is accurate though--about 8 inches so far!  When I checked the greenhouse Thursday night, the celery, lettuce, peas and kale were growing nicely (sorry, other veggies, I can't remember what else is in there!).  The tomato, cucumber, and squash plants are still inside the house, so they are fine....I'm just happy this is today, not two weeks from today for Lobstafest!

A Snow Day menu and activities

One of the beautiful things about Colorado is that  it can be 75 degrees one day (yesterday) and blizzard conditions the next (today).  Since we're all home, I figured I could cook.  Mr. IM even opted to stay home--it isn't very nice out there.

Although the response of The Girl was "more soup?"  (We had soup from the freezer last night), it smells tasty enough that I think she'll eat it.

This is a combination of the broth left from the corned beef, a bag of Women's Bean Project soup, a bag of frozen mixed veggies, and the lone tomato that was sitting on my counter.

I'm multi-tasking and also making a couple pans of Chicken and Rice Cassarole, hoping that we have a couple more cool-ish days and can use the oven if I freeze one for later.

For an added bonus, I just popped a couple loaves of whole wheat Oatmeal break into the oven...I may just eat that myself...

Meanwhile, Morrison's status has been upgraded from "forced invalid" to "take it easy", since it has been 19 days since her spay and elective gastropexy surgery.  She was allowed to go outside by herself (no leash) and (gently) play in the snow for a few minutes this morning (while Liberty watched sadly from the window).  Now she is enjoying her morning nap while I cook.

The Girl is allegedly cleaning her room and The Boy is doing something...hmm.. Mr. IM is trying to convince the media computer to cooperate so we can stream a movie on the big tv...snow days are exciting!

Springtime in the Rockies

It seems like my blog posts are either plentiful or non-existant...this has been a week of plentiful posts, these pictures are actually from last weekend, when we had a little cold snap and didn't get much done on the yard or garden.  I did take a minute to snap a few pictures.

 Blossoms on the apple tree...we're at year 2 in our yard, so it is possible that in 1-2 more years we'll have apples.

 That mystery plant by the composter has leaves again--I'm thinking it is actually a tree, rather than just a finger of the neighbor's tree.  We'll see.

 The cherry tree has leaves, but no blossoms yet, which is ok, because technically this is year 1 of possible blossoms and at least a couple more years to go before we'll have fruit.

 Potatoes are planted!  In buckets!

 And the lettuce and spinach are coming up--soon we'll have fresh salad from the yard!

Quick! Plant Stuff!

If you've been reading the blog for a couple weeks you know I've been itching to plant stuff in the garden, but knowing that it will most likely snow (and freeze) several more times before the end of May....despite it being in the 70's quite often...and that we can expect there to be hail in May and June...and maybe in July..

I really wanted to plant stuff this past Thursday--I didn't have anything planned (other than dishes and laundry) and figured it would be a good spring break activity.  But, hey, guess what?  It snowed on Thursday!  The snow melted quickly, but Thursday was a no-go for planting in the garden.

See my new cement duckies in the garden?  Well, you can see one of them...

This afternoon I gave in to the itch--carrots and onions will be fine, even in the snow and hail, and lettuce should be ok, too (or we'll plant more, right?)

Step one...turn the soil.  We don't own a rototiller, there isn't room in our garage and the garden just isn't that big.  My plan was to turn the soil, rake, and get a few things into the garden.

As I turned the soil I found some fun things---a carrot (pictured), some rogue garlic (not pictured), and

 a lot of worms (yay!)

 There!  All turned and ready to rake!

While I worked on the big garden, The Boy worked on a couple of the flower boxes--digging out the old plants and getting it ready for more seeds.  (See my ducks in the background again?)





Unfortunately, by the time we finished turning the soil, this is what the sky looked like...d'oh!

The Boy and I scooted inside...and checked on the indoor plants--check this out--we have growing plants!

 The dogs were not very excited...

We watched the rain turn into snow and figured we were done for the day.  But, we do live in Colorado, so about an hour later we were ready to (quickly) plant.

 The Boy was very excited to help--here he is planting onion seeds.  We also planted lettuce, carrots, scallions, and garlic.  We planted garlic and onions last fall as well, so that is some of the green pictured.  Near The Boy's feet are last year's asparagus plants...clearly we don't know how to take care of it, so we are just leaving it for now.

As Mr Ranch pointed out, we finally have some good soil--seven years of adding garden dirt from the store and composting everything possible has finally led to something other than clay in the garden.  Maybe our carrots will be longer than two inches this year!

There!  The first seeds are in before the second round of rain/snow!  Yay!  If all goes to plan we'll have fresh lettuce in a couple weeks.