Not that kind of “Nature’s calling”….I know you thought this would be about that, but it is not. It’s about the fact that Nature is calling us to get our butts in gear! The birds are swarming the trees, chirping merrily. There are more sounds of kids playing and outdoor activity. The dog is regularly knocking on the door to be let out and bask in the sun on the deck. I think Spring has finally come, despite the fact that I can still clearly see snow on the hill across the river from our house. It’s only a bit, but it is there.

Kurt and I have been chatting about how this week we are going to start getting out into the yard to do some clean up and get the last of the rock wall filled. Last week we considered it but it was still pretty soft, mucky, mud that we didn’t want to deal with, so we put it off to this week. Yesterday, I ended up taking the day off work due to some appointments and other things to deal with, so I decided to take advantage of the sunny weather and get out there and do some work. Well Spring can be a finicky bitchachio, and decided to blow in some mighty black clouds and strong winds right as I was getting into a groove. Luckily, it held off while I got a few tasks done.

I decided to start on the steep hill wall that needs to be filled. Both are going to be a little awkward because we can’t roll the cart to where we will be filling the walls, and both are in an area where throwing the rocks to the wall while the other fills isn’t really ideal. So instead, we loaded up on some yard buckets and will fill those and walk the buckets to where we need to be. One wall is going to be in a flat area, the other is on a hill. I decided to get the hill out of the way first because it is my least favourite thanks to the awesome leg burning action you get from standing, bending and lifting while balancing.

The one that I filled wasn’t super long as it is the corner of the intersecting walls, but it is tall and the fabric was all bunched and awkward. It didn’t take too long to get into a groove and use my long fingers between the wire to get the bottom rocks placed nicely. As it filled, I was able to reach into the wall and get it sorted a little easier.

Once I had it filled, I decided not to wait until the spiders had moved in to finish wiring the top, and just got it done right away. So much nicer when you aren’t worried about angering a wolf spider or black widow. Thanks to it being early spring, I also didn’t have to contend with any spiders that were thawing and starting to move about. It was a pleasant spider-free experience, which was nice.

I had some leftover rock from my last load, so I started on the next section of wall. I considered continuing with it, but the weather continued to get worse, so I decided not to push my luck.

This afternoon, Kurt and I decided to go do a little walk around the yard to see what we needed to get started with. We got caught off guard with snow in the fall, so we didn’t do our final yard cleanup. Luckily it isn’t too bad and just a few of our plants that we need to take out. We will also need to de-commission the strawberry tower due it quite literally falling apart now. We also wanted to check in on our garlic and rhubarb to see what was happening. Maybe see if any of our herbs made a comeback this year.

The garlic is so fun to watch at this point. This is our first year growing it and every day more and more are sprouting up. I’m already so excited for it, and it is only just starting to grow! But look at it, it is so happy and reaching for the sky.

We noticed that next to the garlic patch a few onions have started to re-grow. I’ll just leave them be and see what happens. I guess I didn’t do as good a job as I thought harvesting that area.

The rhubarb is starting to show it’s little heads. The bright red orbs are starting to poke through the dead materials that are covering it from last year. Spring has truly sprung when the rhubarb starts coming up. I guess the same will be said about the garlic now that we will be planting that every year.

I checked out the herb planter and low and behold, the tarragon is once again making a comeback. Thicker than last year, and with some new shoots off to the side as well. I’m so excited because so far my herbs haven’t come up in the greenhouse yet. I need to look at my spreadsheet from last year, but I feel like there should be a lot more growing by now. Perhaps we got some bad seeds this year. Who knows. It is still only just April but majority of the stuff was planted almost 4 weeks ago now.

Anyways, I have a few other projects that I will update you on in the next couple posts. We have been busy finishing a few in-house projects before we really gear up outside. With the Easter Weekend almost upon us though, I have a feeling we will be spending a lot of it outside.