Springtime!

The first day of spring may still be two weeks away, but you can tell it's coming soon!  The plum thickets and Mexican plum trees are all blooming - the fragrance is in the air everywhere.  I love this time of year when green is showing up in all of the pastures.  I'm hoping to persuade Jason to mow off all of last year's broomweed and ragweed in our pasture.

In the yard, Grandma's daffodils are just about to open up, the muscari are blooming and the white Lady Banks rose is covered with tiny flower buds.  The rose bushes have all come out - the new leaves are just wonderful to look at!  The lemon balm, anise and catmint are filling out the herb bed and the cilantro never even died for some reason.

We planted a bed of red and 1015 onions and some red and Yukon Gold potatoes in February.  Last week, I finally planted our first bed of 10 crowns of asparagus!  Yesterday, I planted 15 more crowns of asparagus - Mary Washington and a purple variety.  We are excited to have our asparagus beds going.

I inventoried the deep freezer and we only have about 10 cups of blackberries left.  We have a lot of Granny Smith apples, sugar pears, Keiffer pears and shredded Trombetta squash left.  The blackberries won't be ripe until almost June, but we may have new squash coming in before we finish off the freezer stock.  Time for more Trombetta recipes!  We'll see if we use up all those apples and pears before the new ones get ripe in the fall.  Also, Mom and I made plum jelly from juice that we froze during the summer - and I found two more bags of juice in the freezer!  Yay, more jelly!  We still have a couple of spaghetti and butternut squash left to eat, as well.

Lacey's kids are due in a month and I'm trying to fatten her up some before she kids.  Daisy is quite plump and doesn't seem to need any extra feed, yet, for her growing babies.  I'm planning on deworming Lacey in the week or so.  She definitely feels good, though - always running and bucking and playfully butting Daisy.  I've been leading them over the hills, letting them forage on acorns, pecans and oak leaves, etc.  The deer have pretty much cleaned up the acorns - nothing left but deer tracks on the ground!