In the Garden

This past weekend we got a 48-hour window of warmer weather, so we all charged out to the various areas around the yard that called for our attention- the hubs went down the driveway to cut some overhanging limbs, the kiddos took Suka on another tour of the field (including a muddy stop at the pond), and I made a beeline for my dull and sleeping garden.

I've been visiting my beds periodically with soiled chicken coop hay (for mulch), but those messy, chilly visits were quick and to the point. There was still the need to clear out the last of the naked skeletons of the victims of the first hard freeze, and I also had a little project waiting my attention (and the use of the drill and a few extra-long screws)...

I'm sure I got this "garden storage mailbox" idea from Pinterest or a gardening blog or something, so I can't take credit for the original idea, but when I came across this treasure in the thrift store this past fall for $2 I knew exactly what to do with it! No matter that I had no idea when I'd actually be putting it up. I knew it could wait patiently for me to get around to it. I'm so glad I didn't pass this baby by that day en lieu of better timing, I just love it out there now, being all useful and handy!

Once I got my mailbox installed, the kids and I finished clearing out the few remaining plants hanging on here and there in the otherwise deserted beds, and in the process found these:

Now, I had some seriously mutant-looking radishes and beets by the end of the summer, too... but this carrot was bizarre. All the little 'normal'-looking carrots in that pile were actually sprouting off of that big lumpy one at the top left of the cutting board. So what you're looking at in that photo is just two carrots. This was the other one:

...which I think might have been the only oxheart carrot to germinate from the bonus pack of seeds I was sent with last years' seed order. Either that or it was a second, less alarming mutant Kuroda. Either way all of them ended up in the stock pot. 

After our good cleanup, the only thing left out there now is our garlic, and hopefully soon we'll be pulling that too!

That little bit of green left out in the midst of all that brown... it really drives home the growing excitement we're feeling about the oncoming warmer weather. We're all getting excited for the beginning spring out in the garden!