After a week of the most wintery weather we've had all year, (the snowmen lasted for two whole days!) we finally had a bit of spring warmth this weekend. And how better to celebrate than by bringing home a new little flock of chicks!
This one is an Australorp, a beautiful black-feathered breed purported by our farm store to be record-setting egg layers.
We also got a Rhode Island Red, a Golden Laced Wyandotte, and a Delaware. All but the Rhody are new breeds to us, and we're looking forward to observing their habits and personalities. Egg production aside, I think this will be a flock of beautiful birds!
The warm sunshine beckoned us all outdoors for lots of gardening. Dan mowed down the crimson clover cover crop to prep a bed for potato planting.
The greens will go in the compost, and the roots get gently tilled in to the soil by hand with spade and fork to add organic matter and nitrogen. Our little helper was such a champ, staying with us outside contentedly for hours.
We potted up the calendula and cilantro...
...and salvia. They're all happy in new pots with room to grow.
The air is fragrant with freshly mown lawns, daphne, flowering plums, and star magnolias. It's a nice change from the stagnant air of winter fog and woodsmoke.
Other garden notes:
~We planted basil, pepper and tomato seeds indoors.
~Dan dug up last years strawberries that never performed well and prepped the bed for brassicas, which we'll plant out soon. We'll try some new strawberry varieties in a different bed this year in hopes of harvesting a healthy crop.
~I re-potted the mint for a fresh spring crop. I keep it in pots to prevent it from taking over the whole garden. Each fall and spring I dump out the root-bound plant, pull two or three hearty roots from that plant and re-pot it with new soil. This method has worked great for me.
~Ate more over-wintered leeks and greens with dinner!
Happy Spring gardening!
Oh, such lovely photos! It looks like we both did some indoor potting this weekend!
ReplyDeleteOh the golden laced wyandotte will be beautiful- we have silver laced wyandottes. They seem to have a better knack at escaping coop than our red stars and buff orpingtons! We don't like them to free range during garden season, at least not at first.. . .
Beautiful birds, and beautiful curls in these photos! What great achievements in the garden, you are reminding me we really must get planting our small selection of items!
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