Jacket weather is almost over, with sweatshirt weather just around the corner. I run warm, so it is already sweatshirt weather for me, but I still see enough jackets out to know the weather has not warmed up quite enough to be full-on springtime, but we are oh-so-close.

The winter months are wonderful as K and I enjoy cross-country skiing and the warm cozy feeling of it being blustery outside and warm and welcoming inside, but by February, we are both usually gearing up for spring. By March, we are all-out ready for warm enough weather to melt the last of the snow and get into our garden. We have had a cold, snowy beginning to 2018, and it has been continuing longer than we would like. Just when the snow has melted and the grass is showing, another cold front dumps 6-12 inches of snow again. It is such a tease being able to see the garden and then have it coated in white again.

The only positive thing about the extended winter we seem to have been having, is that we have had a lot of use out of our wood stove. I can’t believe we waited 4 years before getting that sweet heat up and running. Talk about cozy! I could sit and watch the fire for hours while listening to it crackle and pop. Ellie wasn’t so sure of it when we first started lighting it, but she sure seems to enjoy it now. With that fire going, and my beautiful new bookshelves decorating our rec room, I now have a new favourite place where I will be reading.

The last week has been beautiful, sun shining days with warm temperatures that has melted most of the remaining snow from our valley. There a few small patches of icy snow packs in our yard, but for the most part we are almost ready to start building some more walls. We took a walk through the yard today and the ground is soft enough that we could start putting our next walls posts in. K an I are eager to get a head start on building as we will be away for three weeks from the last week of April until Mid-May.

Our goal before we leave…assuming the weather cooperates, is to get all of our root vegetables put into their beds and prep the tomato hill for when we return. We decided not to start seeds in our small indoor greenhouse this year because we will be away right when they are getting large and need to be rotated constantly. We will instead buy our plants this year from our favourite Nursery in the next town over.

We also hope to have the next wall up, if not fully filled and finished before we leave. We will be working on the opposite side of the path that we built our wall on last year. This one will be a little more interesting, as well plan on putting a zagging path off of it about half way down. That other path will go around our future pond. If we can get these walls done before we leave, then when we get home, we can start cutting in the actual bed walls and by end of summer, hopefully have our left side ready to start fully growing in spring 2019.

It will be interesting to see the yard when we are done, as so many of our walls have been done in different styles. We are learning new techniques with each one we build, as well as new ideas on how to build them more efficiently and just as strong, so they are all going to look slightly different. But that is what will make our yard ours. We built it all by researching techniques, watching videos and good old trial and error.

There is still a few more years worth of work, but we are at a turning point, where we will start seeing the final designs starting to come together. With the wall we built last year, came the excitement of how this is all going to look and work.