Confined to Ten Acres

At last, winter is over and I can get back to gardening. I'm dreadfully sorry for everyone's situation at present, but thought I might just check in, in case anyone was wondering what became of me.
After commuting two hours daily for years, I am content to stay home for long stretches, so it isn't a great hardship on me. Of course, I am worried about relatives who work in a grocery store and my son works at a warehouse deemed essential.

Every couple of weeks, my grown kids are bringing me groceries even as we keep our distance from one another. The farmers passing by give me big waves, even when I'm in the living room. My place is close to the road, but I somehow thought everyone went by so fast they didn't see me. Apparently not.

The hens have started laying, more eggs than I can eat. They are in clover.

While waiting for the ground to ever dry out, I have been knitting for a school whose students really need warm winter duds. In fact, knitting was the only thing I could do for a couple of weeks into the pandemic. I made these two smaller sizes of socks with leftover yarn ball ends. I never throw out yarn. I learned the double cuff hat technique from verypink.com. I will ship the collection in late October. I just keep knitting because it is calming and there is a use for my embarrassingly large stash.

April has been full of wild weather, including snow after one day of eighty-five degrees.

For privacy from the road, I have this lovely field and pond. It's rather a large secluded spot, one of many places I can knit and listen to the frogs and birds. I mowed it with the self-propelled push mower with the bagger to get the wonderful leaf-grass mix.  Then I hauled two big cart loads on the lawn tractor up to the garden for mulch. This is one of the only level spots on the place and would be great for a garden if it weren't so shady in summer.

What I've been doing is what I always do at this time of year, weeding and mowing and enjoying the beautiful spring green color everywhere.

The winged seeds on the two big maples are gearing up for a bumper crop. I believe they are genetically programmed to all wind up in my gutters.

After the snow, I rescued some daylilies and irises out front from rampant larkspur, already growing like the weed they have become. It all started when I tossed out some bouquets of larkspur.

I left a few at the back to grow tall and start the takeover again next year. The white blooms are Star of Bethlehem, which grow from bulbs. They are a native wildflower that  create a great wad of bulbs, apparently overnight.

The fences are to keep the hens from scratching up the mulch under the daylilies. This is the first year I didn't order more daylilies because I finally have ENOUGH. I do love them, though.

It rains seemingly every other day, making it impossible to till the early garden. I did get the broccoli and cabbage plants tucked in a section of the garden that I started as a Perma bed last fall. Bagged leaves did a good job of breaking down over the winter and are now full of earthworms, bless their little hearts, if any.

Morels are luring me into the deep woods.Another rain should encourage some more to pop up.

Yesterday, I was able to run Tille on the hillside garden. I planted three Regale Lilies and some gladioli. It's all very exciting.