This is getting to be a habit

Another Friday, another once-a-week post. That's still far better than my dressage blog; I went six weeks between posts there! Ah well, I don't think anyone is giving out performance evaluations. 😉

There's been more weeding, gardening, riding, spinning . . . but unfortunately, no more fleece harvesting – yet. I'm hoping to catch up on the reserved fleeces on Sunday, then keep working steadily (ha!) to harvest the rest and get them advertised.

The weather is truly alarming. It is much too soon to look and feel this much like summer; area hay is going to be weeks early. But if you can't beat it, you might as well grow food, right? So yesterday I bought garden starts – tomatoes (Super Bush, Sweet 100, Heirloom Yellow Pear), eggplant (Japanese Long), peppers (Red Beauty, Valencia Orange, Sweet Banana), cucumbers (Patio Snacker, Lemon), kale (Redbor) – and got them all in the ground today. Then I pulled more rhubarb so I can make a rhubarb cake for our supper tonight, and plucked a couple of leaves from Rick's row of lettuces to snack on. Imagine my surprise when I realized that he had inadvertently planted two varieties of kale – he hates kale! (One plant's leaf was rather 'hairy' so it may be some other kind of green, but it's definitely not lettuce.) Rick was dismayed to learn that I'd bought some kale starts; now I'll have plenty – ha! I just hope our well holds up to an extended watering season on top of the ever-increasing development on our hill....

The garden on April 26; lots of weeds along with Rick's lettuce, onions & peas

The garden on May 1; yay – Rick weeded what he planted!

The garden today, after I planted all the starts I bought yesterday

My herb barrel is flourishing

The flowering cherry at its peak (now the petals are faded and dropping)

My baby fig tree is leafing out; we need to decide where to plant it

The smaller lilac bush is blooming; the bigger one is toast

My weeding 'helper'

I got the bed to the right of the stairs grubbed out

Rick has mowed twice now

We are being overrun by beautiful eggs

Eat that grass while you can, girls!

This morning's bluebird of happiness

Spotted this gorgeousness on a ride through the woods

Chuckie is back to his engaged and charming self. He still favors his right front foot, but it isn't slowing him down now. I have some cute photos of him, and some of the dogs (speaking of slowing down), but I think I'll put those in a separate post and maybe schedule it for tomorrow in case I don't have time to post for another week. I'll end with recent sunrises and sunsets I haven't had a chance to share yet. I'm not always up in time to see the sunrise these days, but we've had a couple of occasions that required it.

These three were taken at sunrise on April 22:

These two were taken on a sunset horseback ride on April 26:

On May Day, I was up early enough to catch the moonrise AND the sunrise:

That's it for now from . . .