Music Monday - The Garden Song (muppet style) + April garden

It is *so* gardening season! Celebrating with John Denver, and the muppets:

I've done very little thus far this year between months' of wedding stuff and the sprained wrist... Things grow on their own none-the-less!

Given my slow start this year, I bought a number of plant-starts this year instead of doing the bulk from seed. (Here are the fateful ones I was carrying when I tripped and sprained the drawing hand).

I've begged and hired some help and gotten the initial weeding done and the strawberry beds strewn with straw....

-the plant starts put in (seeds still to come) - and SoMuchParsley! left over from last year. Pulled out lots, but it's so lush and lovely, I can't bear to tear out more as of yet. The overwintered greens are happily growing and the sweet cicely is blooming....

- the raspberry bed is cleaned out, strewn with straw and has some new babies placed in-

-and the new-as-of-last-year spiral bed is maturing nicely. Mostly traditional/medicinal herbs. Wave at the cranky chickens (they are banished to the coop until the new growth is sufficiently established that they won't demolish it).

It is a veritable jungle of sumptuous jungley growth (here are the burgeoning buds on the kiwi vines). Maybe by next week I'll be able to actually work out here two-handed!

Sunday Sketching -

 Quickie heads...

...and after the Sunday afternoon nap, the first official nearly-summer leaf, herb and flower gathering for tonight's salad. :-) Always one of my favorite seasonal treats.

Succulent Saturday - more garden photos -

I got to go back to The Hermit's Grove today -

- this time to pick the caretaker's brain about my own gardens...

- I weeded alongside of him and took notes on all his words of wisdom and experience... 

It was fun to see how much everything had grown just since last week -

-it has actually been sunny and kind of *warm* the last couple of days. Leaves! Flowers! Growing things!

And this was the most clever thing I've seen - our incredibly invasive and prolific blackberries, sort of topiaried and curtailed and wrapped in a 'wreath'. Easy to pick and easy to contain.

Inspiration right and left....

Succulent Saturday - spring garden post!

Sorry for my bloggy absence, but we've had our first sunny *week* in recent memory - and it had to be spent out in the garden.

 After months and months of studio time, it has been pretty neglected and is taking *much* clean-up before I can even attempt re-planting... I have nearly planted 6.5 out of the 8 of these beds here however!

 Need to wait on planting the beans, tomatoes and cucumbers... Not warm enough yet.

 The current and jostaberry (as well as the blueberries, gooseberries and aronia berries) are happily blooming.

 Got my *new* backyard bed rototilled and have roughly laid in the bricks so that I can start planning its contents.

The chickens are very grumpy about all of this. I keep them locked in until all the seedlings are well enough established to withstand their grazing and scratching. They perch and yell at me every chance they get.

You'll have to wait for June, girls!

WIP Wednesday - update

I have finished the final revisions on the latest book. yay.
Done and done.

Now open for a break for a bit. Which is a happy thing
(I can hear my garden calling me...)

In other news, at long last I've also updated the website a bit. Shiny new things, all in one place!

It'll be interesting to see what comes next...

Music Monday - Evacuating London

As I may have mentioned, I'm a big fan of movie soundtracks. I love the soundtrack to The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe. This is probably my favorite piece out of all of them:

It is haunting and meloncholy. Rather what this spring is feeling like (the meloncholy, not the haunting part.. It will not stop being grey and rainy...)

Even the backyard critters are feeling it. Jack the wonder dog is very reticent to go out in the rain. And  the chickens are less plucky than normal. Rain, rain, go away...?

Sunday Sketching -

...teeny purse Moleskine (blech..)...

...and late May gardens...

...raised beds and raspberries...

...currents, jostaberries, grapes and bed-of-Brassicaceae (formerly Cruciferae)...

 And here be "Easter egg" radishes, fresh pulled from the garden...

Yay, spring!

Figure Friday - addendum

In the ongoing attempt to use up my endless-mountain-of-chips, I had to start making up new places to put them...

...so one of the solutions was to expand my beds underneath the trees in the front yard.

I do not like putting chips directly on grass however - it just grows right up through. It is better to put down a nice layer (the thicker the better) of newspaper to suffocate the grass and keep it weed-free. Unfortunately, I ran out of newspaper about halfway through...

Not wanting to leave uncovered grass, I racked my brains and then remembered all the used newsprint I had in the studio! All those old gesture drawings can now be put to good use!

Life -drawing recycled! Can't think of a better re-purposing than this. :-D

WIP Wednesday - Garden Post!

It is spring break - so there are teenagers home this week.
You know what that means?

Hired garden help!

Very necessary - considering this minivan-sized pile of wood chips in my driveway...and the stack of bricks on the back patio....

See the busy-ness! the industry! The tireless adolescent muscles!

See my bricks and chips?! Good progress today. A few more hours tomorrow and the bulk of the 'heavy lifting' for this season will be done. Just ongoing planting, weeding and maintenance...

All that happy gardening stuff! :-)

Succulent Saturday - Completions...

What a couple of BIG BIG sighs of relief
I've been able to breathe this week -

First of all, after months (more accurately years) of working on the Wind Dancer series, I *finally* painted the last painting and Fedexed off the last piece of art. It took extra-extra late nights of working - and I ended up pulling an all-nighter to get it finished/scanned/covered/packaged. Got to bed after 8:30am the following morning - I think that's a personal record!

Secondly, while I was sleeping off the all-nighter, the kitchen fairies came and installed the countertops and sink! A few hours later, my fix-it guy came and hooked up all the plumbing and did all the finish-work. After waiting the 24 hours for it all to dry, we now have a working sink, disposal, and dishwasher. I must say, life is much, much easier now. I've ordered fancy-schmancy cabinet pulls and knobs and there are a couple of little odds and ends, but it is essentially *done*. Big, big hooray.

I can now take a bit of a breather to catch up on things like sleep, and housecleaning, and seeing my family, and The Garden! In fact, I got to import my mother for a week to help me with long term garden planning and organization (she's very good at this sort of thing, and I find I am still pretty much without a brain, so all help in that arena is appreciated!)

And if things go well, I may even get to go out and *read* blogs again. I've missed being more two-sided the last several months. Hope to see you soon.

Garden update -

Since I'm still too wiped to actually go out and *work* in the garden, I'm having to content myself with watching my mom whip it into shape,

and in photographing the current state of growing things in the pre-twilight light....

There are things coming up in all the beds-

-the raspberries are filling in nicely.

(For the chickens, hope springs eternal that if you are outside, then maybe they can be also? They spring hopefully to the top of their feed can and chide you for their incarceration.)

Microgreens.

Mounds of chives, getting ready to blossom.

The lilacs are full out.

And my young quince tree is absolutely covered this year!

Oh gardens, I will think loving and wistful thoughts in your direction until I can return to you....

The wonder that is my mother's garden -

Most of the seeds I planted before I went to visit my folks have started to sprout.

And a few of the seeds outside have also just begun (here you see the starts of microgreens!)

But my gardens always pale in comparison to the incredibleness that are my mother's...

She names her homes and land. This is apt - she has dozens and dozens of roses growing around her property (although there is not much to show for them now beyond hips).

Pathways and gateways...

Statuary galore...

Cold frames and square-foot beds for veggies -

-plenty of fruiting trees -

-all sorts of herbs and ground covers -

-sheds, arbors, decks, pots....

-and signs pointing the way to where we all live. :-)

Even in winter and early spring, it is beautiful and charming.