Spring

Spring is definatly here. Everything is green and blooming. We decided to plant a garden. We've got corn, green beans, wax beans, cucumbers, watermelon, carrots, tomatoes, bell peppers and onions. They seem like they are doing pretty well. We'll see how it goes. This is the first time I've dealt with a garden since I was in 4-H in elementary school. This is everything but our corn, we have that in 2 seperate areas.

After weeding a bit, Mike headed out on the tractor to work in the pond. You can see him just a little bit kind of in the center of the picture above. When I finished, I headed out there to check on the blackberry situation. I thought I saw some bushes, I wanted to try and look again. So I'm walking around the perimeter of the pond, and I see these purple flowers. I dont remember seeing these last year, but it was a jungle out there. I have never seen anything like this, they are very strange looking. Pretty, but strange...

They were all over out there. I dont even know where to begin to try and figure out what they are. Does anyone have any ideas?

After looking at those for awhile, I went back to looking for Blackberries. Found em! There are quite a few bushes out there, all pretty loaded with young berries. Hopefully as Mike is cleaning up out there, he doesnt rip them all out! I havent had fresh blackberries in years, and the store bought ones just dont compare. Maybe I will try my hand at making blackberry cobbler this year. I remember going out back and picking a bucket full of wild blackberries, and bringing them in (minus the ones I couldnt wait to eat!) and my mom making cobbler. Yummy!

Walking out of the pond, I noticed these elephant ears. These things were WAY overgrown when we moved in here. They are a pain, but I thought the beads of water pooled on them were pretty.

And, Cypress Knees! We have several Cypress trees behind the pond, so you can tell it was wet at some point back there. But we have heard from neighbors that there hasnt been water in the pond in years.

Oh yea, our roosters have begun trying to crow. It's so funny to hear them out there. You can hear the roosters down the road start going, and then ours chime in. I will try to get a better picture of them than the one I posted before. We've got two of them and they are both black. Chicken dinner and some of the hens were more yellow. I would love to have to have some Araucana's that lay the blue eggs. So pretty!