Springtime Sunday Evening

It is Sunday evening and I have just finished in the kitchen after having a delicious dinner, - baked potatoes, sweet carrots and pork ribs with whiskey BBQ sauce.  Lovely!!!

The pork ribs were fabulous. but it was the potatoes I wanted to tell you about.

When I went to the cupboard to find the spuds, rub them with butter and wrap them in foil for the oven I discovered that they were sprouting eyes!!!  In the old fashioned way.

So often, - perhaps always, - the potatoes you buy in the Super Market have been chemically treated to prevent them from sprouting, probably to increase their shelf life.  So it was quite exciting to see these wonderful brown and fertile garden opportunities!

I immediately thought about the potato growing bags we have been using for the last couple of years, since our veggie garden space has been reduced.

The year we left the farm and moved to 10th avenue we planted potatoes on the 3rd of March, so surely the 8th of April would be an appropriate time to bury these beautiful morsels under a coat of rich brown earth.

Mind you, the garden on 10th was quite unusual, - the first time since our retirement from the farm that we had been able to devote all our energy to it, - which Farmer Finch did with great enthusiasm.

Will probably never have a garden to equal it, but nevertheless, the signs of spring are everywhere.

The lawn awash with violets, a few daffodils and tulips blooming, but the rest of them busy making

gigantic leaves and buds to attract the bees and butterflies.

The neighbours apricot tree is in bloom, and I did try to get a decent picture of the flowers, but you would find them blurry, I fear, and so I have added a picture of last year's apple blossoms, with a springtime bee filling his little tumy, or honey sacks.

The house has forsythia which I slipped away from various children's gardens

and brought in to blossom

and the Hellebores are in full bloom

the catkins have all fallen off the hazel nut tree

 and lie abandoned on the lawn like so many little worms

replaced with tiny fresh green leaves

We are badly in need of a good two day rain to replenish

the poor dry earth

and I await eagerly for someone

to shovel all the lovely compost from the bottom of its bins

on to the beds which will welcome

its richness!!

Springtime, and off we go to another summer

of gardening!!!!

In the morning I shall plant the potatoes

that have been languishing in the cupboard!!!