I guess spring has finally come and everything is looking beautiful.  The red bud trees are in full bloom and really out doing themselves.  The dogwood are out down in the valley and now mine are coming out, making the woods look as if it snowed last night.  I love it when they come- all I have are wild ones and they are scattered through out the woods so they make the whole area so pretty.  The daffodils are almost all gone by but the tulips are blooming.  I don’t have many but what I have are really pretty.  One pear tree is loaded with beautiful  white flowers but the other one has none so I doubt if I will get any pears.  The fruit trees are not doing much this year.  We have been here 7 years and no two years have been the same.  Each year one thing does well and we have a great crop and the next it is something different to produce.  If all goes well we should get good blueberries and raspberries again this year.  Even the wild blueberries are loaded this year.  The grapes are starting to pop but it is too soon to tell what kind of a crop it will be.  The potatoes are all up now and they are calling for a frost Tuesday night so  Monday I will hill the potatoes to protect them.  All the other plants I have up can take a light frost with no problem.  I do have a few sweet potato slips growing in pots and I will bring those in side whenever it goes below 50 degrees and not set them out in the garden until the end of the month.

Today we finished weeding the large garden.  I like to get all the weeds out before Norman tills it so there won’t be so many once it is planted.  This is the area to plant corn, beans and tomatoes.  That will complete the large garden.  We will plant the butternut squash in a different bed and the sweet potatoes are to be planted in a large box that way these plants can grow as far a field as they want to without bothering anything else.  No animals seem to like the squash and the sweet potatoes we will keep up near the house to try and protect them.

I think of my father when ever I work in the garden.  He always got up at 4 am to work in his garden before going into the mill to work at 7am.  I never knew how much work he did until now and now it is too late.  I wish I had spent more time helping him.  Every time I asked to help him and asked me to pick stones-  I got bored with that too soon and never was much of a help.  Little did I know that all of the garden chores are just as boring as picking stones but they all need to be done.  Picking the vegetable was alway my mothers job and the only one she would do.  I like that one too but it is ever so much sweeter when you have done the panting and weeding before.  It just struck me today that both my father and I were taught by the same person.  Uncle Web taught my father when he lived with them in Harrisvillle and he taught Norman and me with his diaries.  We both have read them all and learned so much from them.  Have a great day.