Asparagus, Morels and no Time to Sit Still

12 days without a post, it must be April!  BUSY, BUSY, BUSY.  I've barely had time to enjoy my garden let alone get any work done in it or write a post.  It's a good thing David has been around to do the major share of watering, weeding, and mulching, if it had been up to me, everything would probably be buried in chickweed going to seed by now.

I have managed to get the spring garden well under way with two plantings of several things.  We have good stands now of young carrots, beets, fennel, turnips, peas, lettuce, radish and kale.  The onions are growing as are the garlic, the strawberries are flowering and we've started harvesting asparagus.  I also set out some cabbage plants and sowed seed for bok choy, tatsoi and swiss chard last week.  We'll be working hard in another month to eat all the vegggies we've planted.

Tomatoes are stepped up to bigger pots and have been hardening off for a week, hope to plant them next weekend.  After the hottest first week for April on record all the leaves have flown out and the tulips and daffodils made a quick exit.  Thankfully the temps have cooled back down to normal.  The weeping redbud has been putting on an excellent show.

I took my first real spring bird walk yesterday with my friend Stew, still a bit early for the migrants but managed to see ovenbird, northern waterthrushes, yellow throated warbler, common yellow throat and heard but did not see northern parula and hooded warbler.  It was a splendid day weatherwise and we enjoyed each others company while getting warbler neck from trying to spot those darn parulas, always in the very tops of the tallest trees straight overhead. David caught this pileated woodpecker messing around in the yard, seems he may be considering our vicinity for a nesting ground this season, that would be very fine.

And to top off the season, morels!  Perhaps the best harvest we've found on the land near our house in all the years we've lived here, it's such a matter of timing and then just being able to spot the things, they look exactly like the leaf litter and D has a much better eye for them than I do.  I can be starting straight at them and not see them. But oh they were yummy.