Welcome to Spring! Starting the Garden with a Photographic Interlude to Appreciate the Beauty of the Season!

Today — March 20th — formally marks the first day of Spring, which is also the Vernal Equinox... which marks the point at which daytime becomes longer than night. Technically speaking, anyway.

Of course, we're talking about the Northern Hemisphere, here!

Our Apricot tree is starting to set bloom... finally!

Welcome to Spring Gardening Season!

Lately, I've been talking a good bit about how winter has been rather cold and wet, and things are "running behind," in the plant and garden area.

This weekend, we finally had a couple of days where the temperatures crept just above 50 degrees (10C) on a sunny afternoon... so we "celebrated" that with a day in the garden, cleaning up and taking stock.

There's a LOT of work to be done here!

This post is going to be a combination of a garden blog update, along with just a photographic celebration of the beauty of what little spring we are seeing, so far.

I have to say, though, that it felt awesome to just be out in the sunshine, without feeling like a storm would arise and it would become minus 6,000 degrees in a few minutes!

As per usual, the Hellebores are among the first flowers of spring!

What Shall We Grow?

Aside from starting to clean up the raised beds (we currently have 7, with 3 more in the works), we also took some time for the more fun work of deciding what we're going to grow, and where.

Since we're very much (sub)urban homesteaders, space is at a premium so it's important to distinguish between what's just fun and easy to grow, and what we actually eat the most of, each season.

Our roses are showing signs of life!

We typically end up with a list of "must haves," a group of "nice to have's" and another group of "not so much's."

The "not so much's" tends to include some growing favorites like zucchini, summer squash and pumpkins... but we honestly don't tend to use them nearly as much as we grow them.

The forsythia... another traditionally early bloomer... is finally showing some color!

At the other end of the scale, the perennial "most used" crops from our garden have been potatoes, garlic, green beans, lettuce & arugula, tomatoes, strawberries, blackberries and onions.

So we're going to prioritize space for those. We'll be making more space for snow peas, this year, and we're planning to give a "second go" to red beets, rutabaga/swedes and leeks.

Our lilacs are starting to bud!

Of course, we always grow a fairly large patch of herbs. Again, we try to prioritize what we actually use, over just "what's fun to grow."

We pretty permanently have a couple of kinds of parsley (prosaic, I know!), thyme (which seems to do really well here), and oregano/marjoram. Add to that a lot of annual dill, basil and cilantro and we're pretty happy campers!

Putting wildflower seeds in the beds around the fruit trees

Yes, it Also Needs to be Pretty!

On addition to what we have growing "inside the fence," we also have a substantial planting of lavender (100+ plants), cooking sage and catmint growing "outside the fence."

In our corner of the world, the local herds of deer are about the worst of the "garden pests" we have to deal with... they eat pretty much everything, including lots of plants that allegedly are "deer resistant."

I think they have just become so used to the greenery of human gardens that "deer resistant" has become pretty meaningless.

Our garden has a fair amount of whimsy mixed in!

We were always wanting to have a flower cutting garden, because @cosmictriage really likes to keep fresh flowers in the house... but so far we are limited to the fenced in area, because of the deer.

Likely, we'll be adding a number of pots and tubs inside the fence for flowers, to the extent we can do so while not completely impeding our walkways.

Happy Crocuses!

Alas, it Was Short Lived...

Sadly, we only had a couple of warmer sunny days... this week is forecast to return to lower 30's at night and mid-40's during the day and more rain and even a little "wintry mix."

But that's OK.. at least we got a start!

Besides, there's still a lot of cleanup to be done outside the food growing area; lots of branches that came down in winter storms, and some tree trimming still to be done. Important stuff that can be taken care of without sunny days for inspiration!

Thanks for stopping by, and I hope your first day of spring was a good one!

Comments, feedback and other interaction is invited and welcomed! Because — after all — SOCIAL content is about interacting, right? Leave a comment — share your experiences — be part of the conversation! I do my best to answer comments, even if it sometimes takes a few days!

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Created at 2023-03-21 00:30 PST
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