Earth Day

And what a better way to spend it than digging in the dirt. Now begins the season when my feet and fingernails are not often clean. I cannot pull weeds or plant things with gloves on and I despise walking in the garden with shoes on so that the dirt clumps up in the shoes...soooo no shoes no gloves and dirty dirty fingernails and feet!
I was however feeling a tad overwhelmed with all that needs to be done. There are gardens (oh there are lots of them) to till, veggies to plant, flower beds to clean up from last year's growth etc etc etc and I am thinking, 'Oh dear friend Mary how come you didn't tell me that there is so much work in the spring' . although I think you may have and I didn't believe you until I started to dig in. Then I realized it does not all need to be done in one day...phew! I did get onions, radishes, beets, lettuce and spinach in as well as a garden tilled and then that was enough of that. Cleaning last year's dead stuff out was all worth it when I was able to see new green growth coming up underneath it all. That inspired me to get the camera out, set the macros and take some close up shots.

This is the tree that was planted in memory of my mom. I find it interesting that red was her favorite color and look at the first color that this tree comes out with!
Jess, this is the PixiE magnolia, it's going to make it up here in the northland!
Another one of our newly planted trees is budding nicely.
And this is some of what I found after I cleaned out the old growth from the flower beds
Sedum coming through
Mary what is this? You gave it to me last year-Lambs Ear maybe?
You gave me this as well...what is it my friend Mary? And no I no longer have the markers by these plants. What happens to them do you think?
David spent the past three days working on the fire pit area. We...well he as I, thankfully, had the flu when he started this project and wasn't able to help him...I'm feeling bad about that...not. Anyway, he laid pavers and then sawed them (with a hand grinder!) to make the rounded edge. In the center will be the fire pit. Nice nice nice.

I had to end with this. One day last week on a walk by a local lake we found that the ice was out about three feet from the shore. Just enough for Tack to get a good swim in!