The garden is in for the most part. I’m planning to do corn against the front of the house where we get a lot of sun and it needs to be a bit hotter, and I need to turn the bed, before I can do that. We have so many new things in the garden this year: okra, cauliflower, zucchini, Brussels sprouts, eggplants and the corn. We’ve got two half barrels with strawberries on the front porch. They’ll probably be joined by a container of flowers sometime but I need another bag of potting mix for that. I’ve got sunflowers and cosmos to put in with the corn for a bit more colour on that side of the house. Maisie is very excited about the strawberries. She’d been talking for months about how we’d have strawberries in our garden. We went out to the nursery earlier than I usually do just to make sure we’d be able to get some. There’s already a berry coming and more on the way.

The back deck is sporting beans, tomatoes, cucumbers, peas, herbs, and eggplants. The lower garden boxes have more peas, radishes, turnips, beets, broccolini, carrots, more tomatoes, okra, Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, zucchini, and some onions that volunteered from last year. We had a mild winter and it must have been just warm enough for them to make it. It makes me want to try planting garlic and crocuses in the fall from now on, just in case. The beans are pole beans for the first time. I usually do bush beans because it’s just so easy to not have to provide anything for them to climb but I felt like trying something new. That seems to be my theme this year. My hope is that the bean plants will be able to climb along the deck railings. We put the bean barrel right in the corner of the deck to put as much railing as possible within reach. We’ll see how it goes. I stuck flowers - marigolds, violas and some yellow flowers whose name I've forgotten - anywhere they would fit in amongst the vegetables.
It’s really fun having Maisie around while I’m in the garden. It sometimes means things take longer or that I have to do them twice but her point of view on everything is so different than mine that it makes things really interesting. She asks questions that never occurs to me and notices things that I tend to overlook. She’s also learned the use the nozzle on the hose and is keen to water all the dandelions she can find, usually from point blank range.

The photos above show the garden over a period of about two weeks. I always love watching this transformation. The big white cat belongs to someone in the neighbourhood. It's the biggest most friendly cat I've ever met and almost knocked Maisie down rubbing up against her. Generally speaking I strongly discourage letting cats outside, much to Fred's displeasure, but I've seen this cat chase off a fox so it can get away with being the exception to the rule.

Maisie has mastered a new skill: cutting. She finds so much joy in cutting prices of yarn with this little pair of scissors. It’s a skill I’ve been both looking forward too and dreading. Cutting is so permanent. I still remember the day my sister learned to use a pair of scissors. Maisie has been doing really well. So far only designated string and yarn has been cut. Just about the same time this happened I was looking for something Maisie and I could do in the yard as the snow was melting and the birds were showing up when the perfect project popped up. Birds need all kind of nesting materials when they first arrive in the spring and we can help make things readily available. We picked up a suet feeder from Canadian Tire and filled it with bits of wool and linen yarn, wool fleece, and bits of raffia. There's almost certainly some of Abby's hair in there too. It’s hanging in the crabapple tree right outside the living room window. I haven’t seen any birds at it but the contents have moved around a bit so I’m hopeful that there is a nest or two in our neighbourhood sporting a bit of colourful coziness.

I always have so much trouble summing up things like major holidays. I think it is because they are so full of wonderful little stories. It’s hard to decide which to tell and it’s sometimes hard to fit them all together into a single post. The other option would be a whole series of little posts which would be pretty fun. I don’t know that they would get done any more speedily though. Here are some of the stories of our weekend.

We went to the Long John Jamboree and the Snow Castle. We decided to go early to avoid a possible nap time conflict and then discovered nothing opened for half an hour. We got a little cold. We ran into friends and neighbours. We had fun. We watched a play. We went down a big slide. We stood on the ice. (I need to remember to change the aperture setting on my camera to reflect current conditions.)

Maisie wore her new mittens, under protest, for exactly as long as it took us to go down the big slide, solely because they were a condition of getting to go down the big slide. She cried a bit because I picked the slower of the two slides.

Maisie did an egg hunt in our living room. She found six sparkly eggs full of fun things. Some of those fun things were play strawberries and a teeny bottle of blue nail polish.

I made Maisie’s fourth Easter bonnet. She was very excited about it. Then she hated it and wouldn’t let it touch her head. Then she was really excited about it again and asked to wear it outside. But she wouldn’t wear a coat.

Maisie did a second egg hunt with her cousins. She got a butterfly painted on her forehead by her aunt.

Maisie and I did some colouring.

We had friends over for shovelling and tea on the Monday. Grown-ups chatted. Kiddos moved snow around, stuck butterfly stickers to their tea cups, hid in the tent, and sold food from the "delivery window". It was so warm out jackets were optional. After they left we went for a walk with Abby. I carried a hat and sweater for Maisie but she never asked for them. I carried a hat for me too but never wanted it.