April?

My goodness, the time it does fly. How can it possibly be the first of April? AKA April Fool's Day. Do you pull pranks on people today? I mostly don't. Mostly because I can't think of any good harmless fun. Or I just forget and then the day's here. Last year Caleb taped the lever down on our sprayer at the kitchen faucet, hoping to get Zach to spray himself. That didn't pan out so well since I was the first one to use the sprayer. A few years ago (like five), I did pull a prank on the boys with some frozen breakfast, but it was all good fun and they ended up with a box of cereal they wouldn't normally have, so it was a treat after all.

But this year, I have nothing. Which is fine. It's just not a big deal to me.

It also would've been my cousin's birthday were she still here. She would've been 49. I think that would've freaked her out a bit. But instead of freaking out about almost hitting the half-century mark, she's rejoicing with Jesus. So while we miss her here, how could we ever want her to not be there?

On Saturday, I cleaned up the garden out front. In the fall, I always think I should clean up all the leaves and dead stuff, but I think it makes for some nice insulation for the bulbs into the next spring. It's like finding treasure as I clear everything out and see all the pretty green plants popping up. I'm pretty excited about the bulbs out in my garden. There are SO many plants. There's always been quite a few allium out there, but this year, I think it's going to be rather crowded. The tulips seem to have spread, too. I used to have none. Then I had one for a couple of years. Now there are no fewer than six tulips beginning to grow. I also have some small ornamental onions and some lilies. Hopefully this year, my lilies don't get beat to sticks by any stupid hail. That was so sad.

Our neighbor's cat uses NUMEROUS locations in our yard as a cat box. Which I absolutely HATE! This cat will not stay away, either. In years past I have poured chili powder in those areas. I'm thinking it works for a little while, but I probably didn't get it out there often enough. So this year I'm using coffee grounds. They're free from Starbucks, plus they're good for the soil. And I'm really, really hoping this will keep the darned cat away. I even chase him and shoot at him with a wimpy little airsoft gun (I don't hit him, just try to scare him), but he's rather unaffected by my efforts.

Today is the first day of water restrictions here. Sadly, our precipitation (snow and rain) has been terribly low these past few years with no relief in sight. The restrictions just apply to sprinkler watering (like the lawn). But I need to remember to get out and water my garden. Until the past week, it's been covered with snow, so it was getting a nice, slow soaking. I'm not looking forward to another super hot and dry summer. Last year was not good, so I'm hoping they're wrong (sorry weather forecasters) and that God brings some wonderful, much-needed rain to Colorado this spring and summer.

Well, there's much to do today, so I'd better get cracking. But hey, it's a post, right? And it even has pictures.

Happy April to my three readers!!

This Makes Me All Giddy

We have apricots!!!!!

This will be the fourth summer we've had in this house. The first year, the enormous tree on the south side of our house had tons of beautiful flowers that smelled fabulous. They lasted about 4-5 days and were gone.

The next year, the same lovely flowers returned, smelled wonderful, and were gone.

Only a few weeks later, I discovered a little ovalish piece of green fruit on the ground. An apricot, perhaps?

Turns out they were apricots. I was thrilled. You can check that out here.

So last year, I was very excited when the apricot tree bloomed.

But then, nothing.

I know little to nothing about apricot trees (you'd think I'd have read up on them, right?). But I have learned that if we get a freeze at the wrong time, the fruit won't be happening. I assume that's what happened last year.

We've had an incredibly mild winter this past year. The apricot tree bloomed a bit early. Colorado is notorious for bad weather in March and April. This had me a little worried.

And then I walked around the south side of the house and discovered little green fruit. And lots of it! While we're not beyond freezing, it's looking pretty good for my apricot tree this year. I've even been diligently watering it - juicy fruit requires plenty of water, after all.

There's a lot of fruit out there. The little cluster below is a teeny little fraction of what's on that tree. I realize we won't get to harvest all of it, but I'm sure looking forward to a nice big apricot harvest this summer!

Dill

I really dislike dill pickles and anything flavored with dill. But I kind of like the light scent of fresh dill because it brings back happy childhood memories of my mom making pickles. Even though I didn't eat or like the pickles.

We have dill growing in our front yard and it's kind of pretty. It also brings back those happy memories. But as of last year, it's good for another thing. It hosts these beautiful caterpillars.

As near as I can tell from my research, these will be black swallowtail butterflies. If they make it that far, which most of them don't. I wish we could see their cocoons and watch them become butterflies. That would be so awesome.

If we didn't have the caterpillars, I'd probably thin the dill out. But I'm happy to leave them there for the caterpillars to feast upon.

Wordless Wednesday - Restrained

For more wordlessness, check out Live From Waterloo and the Wordless Wednesday hub.

Learning Curve - Watermelon

I've been living in Aperture Priority for awhile now, but decided it was time to just move on over to Manual mode. A big issue is that I have to remember to check ALL my settings before taking a shot.

Obviously.



A little on the dark side, but at least you can SEE the watermelon. LOL!


Secondarily, I'm really excited to have watermelon in my garden!! I've never grown it before. It grows super fast, too! I can hardly wait to dig in when they're nice and ripe.

Fried Modem on Friday, Other Thoughts, and a Photo

Our modem fried Friday night. Hmmm...that has an interesting alliteration to it. Anyway, other than bumming hubby's laptop and blackberry tether program and some limited cell phone updates, we were mostly internetless this weekend. And you know, it really wasn't so terrible. Mostly. It did bring to light the fact that I need to have a slightly better back-up plan for bills and bank balances and such. Going green and paperless is groovy and all, but what happens when you have no internet? You can't just pop online and check balances and such things.

The other thing? It's really nice NOT being online so much. Of course, now that I have to play catch-up, I'm actually on more. My friend, Emily, is limiting herself (and her family) to 30 minutes two times a day online. I'm not sure what my limits will be...yet...but I definitely need some.

In the meantime, I'm nearly caught up (again) with my 365 Project. I have a couple more days' of photos go post and I'll be back on track. Actually, I was, and then we had our Modem Fry. And no, I do not want fries with that.

This has nothing to do with anything. But I really don't like posting without a photo. It's sort of like chicken enchiladas without sour cream. They're okay...just a little lacking. This is from one of our apple trees. Maybe this year we can find a way to keep the squirrels out of our apples. Yeah, right. They trashed ALL of them last year. We didn't get a single good apple. They were all on the ground with a bite or two out of them before they could ripen. And we have four apple trees. BTW, I just LOVE our blue skies here. This shot is SOOC (straight out of camera) - no editing whatsoever.

It's too windy in Colorado lately. I've had quite enough, thankyouverymuch. Buh-bye, wind. Don't let the door hit you on the way out.

We went to see How to Train Your Dragon this afternoon with some friends. It was loads of fun. Not in 3-D, though. Thank you to the theaters for further raising their crazy prices. No wonder we wait for movies to come out on DVD.

I think that's about it. Must be, cause it's time to go to bed. G'night.

Harvest

Here it is. The big tomato harvest.



Aren't you impressed? It's the first and only tomato from my garden. In all fairness, however, there are quite a few more green tomatoes out there. Hopefully they ripen before the weather gets too cold, though. We were down in the 40s the other night and more of that is on its way.

The Lettuce is Growing

When we moved into this house, I was very excited about planting some veggies and strawberries in the garden out back. It's already fenced off and has obviously been used as a garden for some time. We got some seeds, soil, and little peat pots so we could start a few plants indoors while still in winter. I thought it would be wonderful to go pick our own fresh salads this summer, so we started a couple varieties of lettuce, cucumbers, peppers, and tomatoes. We also started some herbs.

I should probably mention here that I'm not particularly good at follow-through. I start out well, but I sure do fizzle out - a lot. I also have zero experience in growing vegetables. I manage some houseplants or flowers okay. Sometimes. Other times, I just kill them.

The garden area is fairly large (about 36' x 16'). I didn't intend to utilize the entire space this year, since I don't really know what I'm doing anyway. So I worked a small section in which I could plant my little salad. I also discovered from my neighbor that this garden plot is actually incredibly fertile and wonderful and had hosted one of the best gardens ever for many, many years. I was excited by the lush and healthy soil and stories of its abundance.

The time finally came that it seemed we should get those plants in the ground. But life happened and they stayed in the house that week. And the next. And probably another week (or two). By the time I got them out there, some were looking a little sad. Maybe getting them in healthy, fertile soil would help out. The lettuce was looking kind of dead already, but I stuck the tiny peat pots in the ground anyway. Of the four tomato plants a friend gave me, one died, two were looking good, and the other didn't look like it would make it. I planted it anyway. Either the cucs or peppers weren't going to make it - I forgot which one that row was. The other one looked good, so it made it outdoors.

So I had lettuce, cucs or peppers, and tomatoes. Not much, but it was a start. The poor lettuce - it was already too far gone. The two tomatoes were hanging in there, but the third was on its way to compost. And whatever that last row is - cucs or peppers, it's doing quite well. I think.

The cucumber or pepper:

We've had quite the abundance of rain this past week, so I finally got out there to assess the potential for our salad garden. In the course of pulling out a few weeds and checking over my veggies, I discovered that the entirely dead lettuce had new growth!! My lettuce is growing! I had no hope for the lettuce at all. Not even when I put it in the ground. But it's growing! I am SO excited!! Now the tomatoes are another story - their leaves are turning a little yellow and I should probably offer them a little better protection or something. Maybe some water walls. Not sure there. The cucs/peppers seem to be thriving, so I look forward to what that will bring.

Sorta sad tomato:

Even though we may not have a huge, bountiful harvest, I'm hoping to have a few salads here and there. And I do have plans of buying some more plants to get out there. Who knows, one day we may have a lovely garden from which we can help feed our family and maybe some friends and neighbors as well.