Dare I Believe That Spring is Here?

As I type this, it’s 54° F outside.  It’s beautiful and feels amazing!  The frogs in the nearby marsh are awake and singing their little hearts out!  I was just puttering about my patio in a maternity t-shirt, emptying old pots of soil into bigger containers.  My plan is to bring a tarp to the patio and dump all the soil together, amend it with my compost, and some new soil from the local gardening center.  Hubby will help of course!  I have several large pots to drag out of the garage after all…  I’m just so excited for the new season!

A couple sad things to report.  The garlic I planted before the first frost was not successful.  I couldn’t find any growth and, when I dug deeper, only located one of the cloves.  It was slimy and rotted.  A bug was enjoying it.  I’m not sure what I did wrong but I plan to do more research and try again.  The beans we started indoors are not doing well.  They don’t appear to be germinating and, instead, are producing a mold.  The other seeds are fine, thank goodness, and are showing growth.  There’s no mold on them, so I’m not convinced it’s too much moisture and not enough circulation.  The beans are older seeds (I never wrote the date on the packet so I don’t really know how old) but I assume that has something to do with it.  It’s a real shame that I’ll have to go out and buy more seeds, but thankfully they aren’t expensive.  C’est la vie!  They were bush beans and, while they do well in containers, I would like to get a pole variety.  I had luck with pole peas last year in a container, so I know it’s very possible!

After clearing away some old growth, I found my chives and woad doing well.  This will be that woad plant’s last year.  I hope it produces flowers so that I can collect seeds for next year!  The cranesbill geranium is also showing growth and the lily of the valley I planted last year might be growing.  Fingers crossed!

There’s not a whole lot to photograph at the moment.  Things are just starting to grow, and I’m still in the process of cleaning the area up.  I put a few of my decorations out – a little welcome sign and a couple fairies.  My goal is to add a fairy garden this year so expect some fun updates on that!