Enough is Enough!

OK, it's closing in on a year since I've made an entry here, and quite simply, enough is enough! I'm going to TRY and write here more frequently than a few times a year. Yesterday was an amazingly warm (70+ degrees!) day for March, and Spring Fever has hit me big time, and of course along with that comes the gardening bug. So much to do, so much to do.

I was diagnosed with follicular non-Hodgkin's lymphoma in October of last year, and of course so many things were put on hold because of that. I won't go in to details here, but I have started another blog, "Cells Gone Wild" at: http://cellzgonewild.blogspot.com/ where I'll chronicle my "new normal" in living with this incurable disease. Anyway, I'm feeling pretty good now and am anxious to get back to living a somewhat normal life.

So, back to yesterday. My poor garden has been sorely neglected for the last two years due to multiple rotator cuff surgeries, a hysterectomy, trigger thumb surgery, and now cancer, and it really shows. Mother Nature waits for no man (or woman), and she will gladly and quickly reclaim any land that sits idle. My garden is no exception.

Last year I did manage to plant a small garden...some tomatoes, green beans, potatoes, squash, etc. And it was good.

I'm a raised bed gardener, and right now I can't even tell you how many beds I have! At one time I had close to 20, but 4 are completely covered in grass, brambles and poison ivy (HATE that stuff!), and another 4 or 5 got completely flattened when I had my husband rototil the garden because I just couldn't keep up with the weeds the last few years. I think I've got 6 or 7 raised beds that are in pretty good shape at the moment. Yesterday I spent the better part of the day pulling and cutting out brambles and saplings that were trying take over the upper garden beds that border the woods. The soil is still amazing there under all that vegetation. At least the weeds protected it from erosion and compaction; I just wish the poison ivy had decided not to invade.

Earlier in the week I ordered 30 chicks from Welp Hatchery in Iowa ( welphatchery.com ). I'll be getting some Welsummer, Speckled Sussex, and Auraucana chicks around the 15th of April. I really don't need 30 chickens, so will be finding a home for maybe half of them, but there was that whole 25 chick minimum order thing and I needed to mix and match in numbers greater than 5 of each type/sex, thus the 30. I'm so anxious to get some fresh eggs in a rainbow of colors from my very own hens! Now to get the henhouse built up there between my garden and the woods....