Eric working
Complete
Chamomile volunteer
Strawberries
Planting tomatoes
Chard
Baby lettuce
Red Deer’s Tongue lettuce
Today’s lunch
Henry’s sunning again
Seedlings cleared out
More vol chamomile
Lime tree
Leek in bloom just about
Tsatsoi and Kohlrabi
Tsatsoi
Selfie before the kitten destroyed my favorite hat
Chevre – Salt and Pepper
Secret recipe cornbread
Perfect lettuce

It’s go time.

Not really. It’s just time to set out some “spare” tomatoes.

I have so many extras!

Our last average frost date is April 15. It’s now the 24th. We had some chilly nights earlier this week, but the rest of our weather looks like we will be fine for the warm weather crops – or the warmish ones – like tomatoes, cucumbers. And my little lime tree went out. It was torture to keep that little tree inside – it wanted to see the sun!

We have a leek that made it through the extreme winter we had and is now setting up a bloom stalk. I will keep the seeds because this leek is a survivor!

We got the side garden under control, too. The berry bushes are all tidy, and we weeded, and I used high-octane vinegar to kill the roots. Most happy-making is we used the same bricks that we put around the garden beds to create a border between the berries and comfrey bushes and the rockway. It looks so much better! To think, when we landed here, it was just all crabgrass and mud.

I think I am the best gardener I have ever been at this point. Spending the winter with my pal, teaching her how to sow and grow seedlings has caused me to be more methodical, more thoughtful. Mistakes, sure, but less so than ever before.

I think one of the things I have learned is to refrain from direct-seeding most things. I will always start in starters, and keep them aside until the garden is ready for them. It gives me a great advantage when space is limited.

I didn’t take a picture of them because some things are just meant to be remembered.

I started making goat’s milk chevre again. It is so good. And now I am also making something called bovre – which is like chevre but with cow’s milk. All our milk is raw so since I don’t heat it up at all, all the nutrition remains. The bovre is a wonderful, creamy cheese that is perfect for pairing with fruit.

And y’all. I am making the best cornbread muffins ever. Like, for real. I had been trying for a long time to get it right. But I just failed. I had some stipulations though: Southern-style – no sugar. Also no flour. Crispy edges (cast iron muffin pan). I found an old recipe that didn’t use flour and I made a mistake – the mistake ended up making perfect cornbread. Not too crumbly (always a problem for me), not too spongy. Just perfect. And like many laides-of-the-manor, I ain’t spillin my secret recipe. 🙂