Garden Change

 Not much was going on in my garden the past couple of months....I stopped planting in January, and it has been the easy, fun harvest-to-table time that makes gardening such a pleasure.  You forget about the hard work it took to build and tend it, and only think of how many more rows of such-and-such you wish you had planted, and dream of next season.

But in the last few weeks, the warm turn of weather has turned the vegetable garden into a flower garden.  I love brassica flowers - their colors are all so Eastery and delicate - pretty purples, yellows and whites.  The arugula flowers are my favorites - they remind me of fairies for some reason.

It is a solid reminder that it's very much time to switch to the summer garden.  I've been pulling bolting pak choy and tatsoi up for Matilda and Geranium every day as a treat while they are being milked (yes, we are milking cows again!  It has added to the absolute hectic blur of last week).  I have to get the beds ready to plant sweet corn soon.

 The cabbage is heading beautifully.  I love all the different greens of the spring trees and the spring garden! 
 

The lettuce is quickly going to seed, so I have been making large salads for dinner every day.  These are (most of) the lettuces I planted this year.  I was too busy to label them, so I had to guess at which ones they were.  They are, from left to right, top to bottom:  Rouge D'hiver, Reine Des Glaces (I really like that one), Trois Coeurs, Forellenschluss (the spotted red one on the far left)....and back to the right bottom:  Swordleaf Lettuce, Yugoslavian Butterhead, and Oakleaf.  It's always so hard to decide which ones to plant - they are all so pretty.

We are nearing the end of the last row of cassava, but I have been carefully tending my potatoes this year in hopes that we will have another staple crop in the early summer.  Two years ago I grew beautiful potatoes, but since then they have been very unlucky.  This year's improvement was to first till the soil with the chickens before planting in late January (or it's possible I didn't get them in until February...I can't remember now).  They are coming up and growing very green and healthy-looking.  I mulched them with hay leavings from the goats and calves this week.