Spring is Here

It's officially spring and I thought I'd blog about a few gardens I've come to know.

Homestead Garden

My mom planted a vegetable garden and every year we'd harvest it and can green beans and freeze chopped up tomatoes and carrots but what I remember best was weeding and "my mistake" sometimes pulling up those fresh carrots, brushing off the dirt and popping them in my mouth. Sweeter than candy. The memories of my mom in her housedress, ankle socks and white nursing shoes as she crawled on her knees pulling weeds is also a sweet reverie, especially since this month marks the anniversary of both what would have been her 92 birthday and her death. Sorry, no photos of that Wisconsin garden.

When we began our grand adventure with our homestead in Oregon, my friend Sherrie Gant and I planted a garden... in August! The photograph doesn't do the garden justice as the sun beat down on our carrots and peas and beans and lettuce but you can see in the background how we were roughing it those first months while the barn and later the house was being built. We pulled our trailers into the shade of ailanthus trees where our neighbor had both running water and an old machine shed. Now that site is the home of wonderful people who built a lovely house there. They don't get to spend much time there so...no garden.

Our garden was well fertilized with the goose guano we scooped up on the gravel bars of the John Day River. We mixed the guano with the soil that hadn't been tilled for thirty years or more and it produced a luscious crop. In the fall, we moved our compound to the actual homestead site but I'll never forget the camaraderie nor the good memories of that first garden along the river.

This Spring it's going to start getting busy around here....

• April 17th Where Lilacs Still Bloom will finally be in stores!
• WaterBrook Multnomah Publishers is giving away a Flower Membership for a year.  Who wouldn't want flowers delivered every month for 12 months! Enter here
• April 23rd will be the start date of one great Blog Hop to meet some other creative authors.  Of course there will be some prizes to give away.
• And for fun, a Pinterest Community Board has been created to share your Spring Pins. 
• With the release of Lilacs, lots of events are scheduled.  Maybe I will see you at one of them?

Share your Spring photos with me on Pinterest, or feel free to load them on my facebook page too.

Do you have a garden tip to share? Please do!