Spring Garden 2015

I’ve been avoiding working in the garden this year which is confusing for me because our weather has been really oddly nice this winter and spring. Usually, come December 26th I can’t get my Christmas tree down fast enough and my garden catalogues out. By January I want the earth to be ready for me to start digging and planting. This year I knew I should take advantage of our great weather and get some starts planted, but I could barely drag myself out of my own hibernation mode to think about the garden.

We didn’t even start our own sugar snap peas inside this year, instead I just planted them right in the dirt as fast as I could one day by myself. I also got really lazy and bought some spinach and lettuce starts from the co-op and plopped them in the raised beds. 

Maybe I don’t believe in this great weather just yet. Or maybe I’m waiting for all the busyness that’s to come in May to settle into June so I can really spend the time I need nurturing my garden. Truthfully I think I’m in a garden rut, or more likely, an Everett rut.

So I’ve been weeding and weeding, killing tent worms, and observing strange things happening in our garden again. Of the organic sugar snap peas I planted, only 50% of them sprouted.

I planted a few more from the same packet in the same area, and then I planted some older sugar snap pea seeds from last year in the ground by the fence. Guess what percentage of the peas I planted by the fence have sprouted? Zero. Yup, zilch, nada, none. What’s growing instead? Sunflowers. I must have stirred up a bunch of sunflower seeds from our flowers from last year when I planted the pea seeds because the sunflowers are popping up all over. 

And without me doing anything, the garlic, chives and strawberries are looking great.

Maybe some day I should just have a garden full of garlic, chives, strawberries and sunflowers. Easy, beautiful and delicious. Except, I really do like a little bit more of a challenge and variety. 

If I only showed you pictures of our tulips, I could make you believe our garden was gorgeous right now. I love that about plants like tulips, plant them once in the fall and be rewarded every spring with beauty. I’m not sure which ones I enjoy the most, the orangey reds,

the deep purples, 

or the ones that look like fruit punch and have this amazing frilly top.

The rest of the garden is kind of a mess right now, pig watering cans and turned over buckets,

unused potting soil and empty pots,

egg shells and coffee grounds waiting to be turned over.

Who am I kidding, this is our garden all the time, even when the garden is lush and full of veggies, fruits and flowers, there’s always some task waiting to be done, and it still always screams out, “A family lives and plays here!”

 What’s growing in your garden? Are you still hibernating or are you working hard in your garden this spring?