April Delights

I wish I had a video camera so I could take you on a virtual tour of our yard.  Everyday seems more spectacular.  Trees are leafing out, many things are budding.  Crab apple, redbud, dogwood, deciduous magnolias, and azaleas all blooming at once! 

We've just come inside from covering up plants.  The weather today is to be first crazy stormy and then the temps to plunge from 70 this afternoon to 29 degrees tonight.  Many things may be too tender to endure.  But we only have so much remay fabric.  We covered the strawberries, in full bloom, the potatoes newly sprouted and quite tender.  And the spring veggies and salad garden, probably could take it but very tender.

Yesterday in the sunshine:

 Taters on the right, beets, spinach and garlic in the middle, salad to the left

 Baby salad greens and peas on the trellis

It has been a strange spring weather wise and I guess this is the new normal in our days of climate change.  Lots of wild extremes and tough storms.  But plants just go on and do their thing.  We hope the blueberries will not be harmed, nor all the brand new leaves on trees, but there is nothing to be done but wait and see.

We did cover this little maple (to the left, yes, that is a dwarf tree), its been nipped in years past.  Always the Japanese maples seem to be among the first trees to leaf out.  Here you can see Davids big project from last weekend.  He moved this path that previously went to the left of the dogwood in the center of the frame past that little maple.  He so carefully moved everything around that you can hardly tell!

One last thing to share, this flowering cherry Hally Jolivette.  This has been its best season ever.  Right outside my office window the tree has gotten fuller with the dainty pink and white flowers everyday for two weeks and now is starting to wind down.  I imagine the cold nights will be the end of the flowers for this season.  But what a joy it's been.

The blog my only voice today

Camellia sasanqua Alabama Beauty

It's been a tough week of battling a cold that seems to continue to get the better of me, the latest insult as of yesterday being that I have lost my voice almost completely, whispering, mime and written word are my only current forms of communication!  I do feel a little better than I did earlier in the week, but really, the night coughing has taken a toll on my sleep and the loss of voice is disconcerting.

Today is also the final big event for our community garden project, a harvest festival/potluck dinner for the 45 families that have been a part of our three Growing Healthy Kids gardens this year.  Always a wild scene with many children running through the space and people speaking three different languages, it's fun, challenging, exhausting all at once.  And me unable to speak?  I just finished preparing a brief powerpoint of the highlights of the year that another staff member will get to present for me.  I'm sure I will arrive home ready to fall into my bed.  Tonight may be the night I break out the heavy duty hydrocodone infused cough syrup.  Meanwhile, I've got a pot of chicken soup simmering on the stove.

Excitement from a couple of days ago was this golden-crowned kinglet that crashed into the back door.  David went out and held it to keep it warm and encouraged it until it was strong and alert enough to hold itself on a branch, and the tiny bird flew away a bit later when D went to take a peek at its progress.  Hopefully no permanent damage was done.

We've been thoroughly enjoying the tiny crabapples on the Prairie Fire crab tree this week as they have gotten riper and redder and hang like ornaments from the branches.  We are waiting for the day when we may look out and see the tree filled with robins or perhaps waxwings eating them up, so far we've only spied a squirrel clambering around up there.