Growth

Homemade butterfly net.

When I asked Nora how she felt when she couldn't catch a butterfly, this is the face she made.

CHARGE!

I've moved all the seedlings into the shed so they might acclimate to their outdoor life, which is now.

Ila's gift of perennial plantings going back fifty years now.  The irises bloom.  

Feathered ferns, another gift from a life that walked before mine.

Using a couple of butter knives, I was able to rig Nora's hammock up in the corner of the fenced area.  She's reading Gravity's Rainbow on the kindle right now.

The rhubarb (Ila, thank you) is up again.  Unfortunately for my addiction to apricot rhubarb jam, I don't think I'll have any apricots this year, the bloom on the tree coming so early, before the bees arrived.  But there will be rhubarb crisp.  And this is plenty.

Flowering chives.  My gift for the next one here.

Working together, we put our broccoli in today.  Transplanting often leaves the seedlings looking hesitant about the new setting, but they soon find the soil beneath them, the sun above. 

Below the chapped earth, onion sprouts.  We had hard rains, and the soil has crusted over.   I'll have to go over much of what has already been tilled to loosen it again, so the green shoot doesn't struggle more than necessary.

And the asparagus continues to grow.  Soon they'll move into their seeding phase, and we'll wait for them another year, and when they arrive, we'll throw another Spring party.