Thank you for all the visits yesterday, 128 hits a new high for me.  I had two old friends stop long enough to chat which really made my day.  Nancy, when I reply to your comment do you get an email to let you know I answered or do you have to go to my blog and look under the comments?   Yesterday I finished up the transplanting and got the new seedlings set outside on shelves, then the weather forecast was for high winds and heavy rain so we took all the trays of seedlings onto the lower deck to protect them.  The weather station is out of Nashville and not too reliable for our weather here so this morning we woke to very calm winds, 63 degrees and no rain.  Now they are forecasting the storm are on their way east but weakening as they come.  I do hope they stay together long enough to bring us some rain, we need it so badly.  If we don’t get rain by this afternoon we will have to water well this evening.  They are also calling for frost next week.  Not surprising to have frost the end of April so we will cover the plants once more but will wait until nearer the time before deciding that.  Today I need to get outside and weed the strawberries.  I see many in bloom.  I didn’t think many were still alive.  When we moved here 5 years ago I brought about a dozen plants with me from Blairsville, GA.  On the south side of the house we planted the fruit trees and at the top of the very steep sloping land we put in two single sticks of forsythia and half a dozen iris tubas.  Behind that we put in the dozen strawberry plants in a row hoping they would spread down the hill.  The first year everything just sat there.  We had not prepared the soil at all and this was all fill soil with a small layer of top soil put back on when the contractors left.  The second year the strawberries had spread down the hill some and the iris were growning and spreading like mad.  By the third year we had good strawberries and I had to transplant some of the iris as they were taking over the hill, the forsythia had starting to grow and as I pruned it I put the pieces I cut off back into the soil near the roots.  The fourth year we had strawberries the full lenght of the hill almost to the pear trees and got many quarts of berries, enough to make jam, sauces, and shortcakes.  The iris I transplanted all over the place, into every garden I could find room and even made some new gardens in the cleared forest where we walk to the lower garden.  The forsythia had grown into a very large bush and was begining to walk down the hill too so by last year the iris were mostly transplanted out because the forsythia had taken over most of that row and most of the first row of strawberry plants.  The weeds, mostly violets were so thick in there that it was almost impossible to pull them out but I tried and spent many, many hours doing it.  When I got most of the violets out I found I had almost no strawberries left so I got some new ones and put those in.  They didn’t make it so I got some more and prepared the soil better and put those in but they didn’t make it either.  We dicided to forget strawberries as we didn’t really need them with the raspberries and grapes.  We love a shortcake or two in season so would get some strawberries at the farmer’s market, that was cheaper than trying to get anymore plants started.  And so we forgot them.  This spring I didn’t see many plants so didn’t spend any time weeding those.  We would let the weeds have that area and just mow them with the lawn which is mostly weeds also.   Well like everything else around here, the plants do just as they dam well please and now there are alot of strawberry plants blooming away between the weeds.  These are in the area where the old plants were spreading, not the new plants that I bought and put in last year.  I have weeded them some and will today go out and week more.  The lawn is coming back better too and I think the weeds are losing that battle too.  The soil is perfect here to grow most anything you wish to plant, now if we could get the rain it would be truely a “garden of Eden” .   Today I must thin the Swiss Chard and get another meal of fried Swiss Chard.  Yesterday was the beet greens again, it took two days to thin those this time as they are growing so fast and nice.  The next thinning of those will have small beets on them.  We love the thinning as they are always so small and tender they just melt in your mouth.  The spinach will need thinning by mid week.  Today Norman will put in a new row of lettuce down below in the large garden.  We are still having a salad every night with lettuce that we are thinning from the house garden.  I will keep pulling lettuce plants for the salad until the plants are about 8 inchs apart then leave them to get full size and pick just leaves for my salads.  The onions are starting to bulb out a little and I have a lot of them to use as green onions as I planted them in much too close together to leave them to grow to full size, but that doesn’t hurt my feelings any as we use lots of onions in my cooking and the green onions work the same, onions are very good to build up your immune system.  Must go and get breakfast and get to work weeding while the sun is still out.  Have a great day and remember to leave a comment for just a short visit.