I got my seeds in the ground this weekend. Flowers in the front and veggies in the back. We should be eating peas, beans, carrots, beets, radishes, potatoes and spring onions later this summer. I tied Abby up in the back yard to keep me company while I was working. She seemed to have a good time watching the birds and squirrels that were visiting our feeders. My seed potatoes are leftovers from my harvest last summer. They started to sprout before I used them up and I just never got around to throwing them into the compost. I picked the five best looking ones and put them in the garden. It's so exciting to think I'll get a whole new crop of potatoes from them.

Are you wondering about that last picture? Does it look like I took a few handfuls of peanuts and put them in my garden?  Because that's just what I did. Every year the squirrels bury peanuts around the yard and one or two will sprout. Last year one of the sprouts was just starting to make buds when we got our first frost; I thought this year I would plant a few handfuls intentionally and see if we can find out what peanut flowers look like. I'm pretty sure only the whole peanuts can sprout but I didn't feel like sorting through each handful. Those that don't sprout will just compost and that's fine with me.

That first trip to the greenhouse in the spring is always a bit special. So colourful and so fragrant. All I was getting was a few bags of potting soil but I took my time looking around first.

I checked out the animals: chickens, goats and a couple of donkeys were all I could see but a friend of mine said she saw a couple of sheep last week.

The shrubs and trees outside are still very bare and grey looking but inside the green house is moist, fragrant and colourful.

If you also happen to be bespectacled you'll know what happened as soon as I walked into that warm, moist air after being outside in the chill.

So for the first little while things looked a bit like this. Still smelled fantastic though.

Once my glasses had adjusted to the humidity I was able to enjoy the beautiful colours before me in much more detail. Some plants are so strange looking; I want to get some just because they look so odd. If you look closely you'll see some of the smallest workers in the greenhouse keeping an eye out for pests.

Thanks to warm temperatures and a bit of rain over the weekend and this afternoon, there is only a tiny patch of snow left in our yard. I walked around when I got home today just to see how things were and was happily surprised to discover signs of life. The weeds were not a big surprise but it was nice to see some chives coming up - I wasn't sure they would make it over the winter in containers. I pulled the dead leaves away from the rhubarb and found new growth there as well. The beginnings of rhubarb always look very strange and primordial to me. A squirrel came to the feeder while I was in the yard. He got a little nervous when he noticed me but ultimately didn't seem to feel that avoiding my presence was worth abandoning the peanuts.