My 5 senses

I can smell it. I can feel it. I can hear it. I can see it. I can touch it. Spring is on its way. And with spring comes the thoughts of gardens, flowers, fresh peas, juicy tomatoes, tiny carrots, onions, canning pickles and Zucchini cake. I can imagine long days where Ali and Ashling spend the whole day search for and catching butterflies. Even though the temperatures are cold now the days are longer. The sun hits my windows in a whole new way. The birds are making their songs heard. At night the raccoons are on our deck enjoying mating season. A pleasant surprise is that the woodpeckers are not assaulting our house this year.

Last year our garden did not work out. Gophers ate it and the cold and lack of water destroyed it. What was not taken over by those critters was ate by the birds. It was a big dissappointment after the wonderful garden we had in Provo. But gardening in the mountains takes a lot more effort.

We have been preparing our new garden. We moved the location to a place where there is more sun. It is up against a wall and we think this will help it stay warmer at night so the tomatoes will be happy. (tomatoes have a very hard time growing if the temperature at night gets below 50 degrees.) We are setting up a system to protect it and a way to cover it in case it is too cold. I am also not pregnant and vow to spend entire days out in the yard protecting the garden. I will sleep by it if necessary!

We dug down about 10 inches and moved all the dirt. Then we laid chicken wire (the gophers can't come from underneath and steal the plants while I sleep,) and built a small retaining wall with some random cynder blocks in our yard. We also put this disgusting combination of cow blood and cayenne pepper down that is supposed to deter gophers. We have put poison in the gopher holes.

Right now we are working on getting the dirt back into our garden bed. We are sifting all the dirt through a sifter to get rid of pine needles, rocks and other debris. It takes a long time. We are mixing that dirt with garden soil that we bought. After work each night poor Cameron puts on his "work clothes" and goes outside to dig and sift. I try to help as much as possible but Annika is not particularly happy when she is not held in the evenings. So I am mostly moral support although my legs do hurt from bending over to push the dirt through the sifter.

Soon we will be planting. We have peas and carrots that are ready to plant now. Later- summer squash, cucumbers, brocolli and green beans. We have some tomatoes in my window sill waiting for warmer temperatures and we will have onions as soon as I find them at a store.

I am very excited for our garden and hope that the critters will all stay out of it this year. The bee bee gun got rid of the wood peckers so I am hoping that the poison and gopher repellant will get rid of the gophers. Do not mess with the Browns!