Spring Gardening

We tore out a section of our railing in April.  We left the section around the door, but the resulting space is along the walk to the house is quite wonderful – no more walking all the way around a paint flaking, rusty, shaky railing to get to the yard.

After removing the railing, we immediately dug out two new beds.  I planted parsley, fennel, marigolds, purple basil, nasturtium, and sage.

My other big front yard project has been adding two raised beds.  We filled them by the light of an almost-full moon, while listening to Prince, on the day we heard of his untimely death.  Night time gardening, when else can you get uninterrupted time to play in the dirt, when you have young children?

The idea for the beds in the front yard came from the book, The Edible Front Yard, by Ivette Soler.  I have focused on planting edibles that we A. love to eat and B. look nice.  The kids have absolutely loved checking the status of the plants, weeding, and helping with watering.

The same day I planted items in the front beds, I received a shipment of live plants – hops and rhubarb.  I also tore out the giant kale root from last year’s giant of a plant.  I’ll have to look for the photo I took of the behemoth.  The root is a good indicator of how much kale likes my front yard – two plants came back from last year and are ready to start harvesting already.  A happy thing for me, but a sure sign that this past winter was not a harsh one at all.

This is how we have been spending our afternoons after school – outdide, as Q says.  We built a bigger better sandbox for these two diggin’ fools – more on that later.

Now that crazy April is over, we will be doing more of this.  I am so excited for summer this year – talk about enjoying the long days and sleep-filled nights, now that Q is almost 2 and G is almost 5.

The other best part of the beginnings of warm weather in Iowa?  Biking!  We have been getting out on bikes every day without rain.  We hit up Mullet’s one evening for dinner and enjoyed the scenery along Gray’s Lake on the way home, with a detour for DQ.  This mama is ready for summer!