Walking in Sunshine

The sun came out this morning!  For the first time this week, the sun is actually shining on this little place here.  The air is still very crisp (in the 30's so far), but the sun is beautiful, bringing out all the green shades of spring.

So, after the critters were fed, the kids were off to school, and I'd had my morning egg (free range, from the home flock) and  toast (from homemade bread) , I took off with the camera for some around-the-homestead spring photos. 

Here is what I found growing this morning:

Little pale blue perennials that I forget their name, in with the irises near the driveway.

Daffodils on the south side of the house (iris shoots in the foreground).  Quite a testament to micro climates:  all the daffodils on the other three sides of the house are just small shoots still, while the ones on the south side have been blooming for about a week all ready.

I couldn't resist a close-up of this daffodil :0)

Hops shoots.  The white ones were covered in mulch that I pulled back for the photo.  The reddish ones are the ones that had poked around/through the mulch and reached sunlight.  These are Cascade hops, for brewing with.  We planted the rhizomes in 2009, and they have gotten very well established.  This particular group needs some serious thinning.  Next week.

Centennial hops (also for brewing), beginning to stick up through their mulch.  This rhizome was just planted last year.

The strawberries are growing!  (And so are the weeds, darn it!  Will have to get out to the strawberry patch after Easter and do some weeding.)  I'm not sure what kind of strawberries these are, aside from being junebearing.  The original dozen plants were given to me by a neighbor almost 14 years ago when she was thinning her own strawberry bed.  I brought over 'descendants' of those when we moved to this little place here in 2003, and these are a few generations later. . .  So I guess the variety is This Little Place Here strawberry.

Horseradish coming up (and picture loaded wrong, ARGH!!  Confession: I am not computer savvy.  This photo was the right way in my files, but won't upload that way.  Anybody got any suggestions?)  My original horseradish root cutting was acquired from a homesteading minded mother of a girl in DS1's senior class in 2007.

Garlic shoots poking up through the mulch in their bed.  I can't wait until summer to harvest!  I loooove garlic!

Rhubarb.  It has grown alot this week (must have been that poor man's fertilizer on Monday, lol).  Now I'm dreaming of pie, muffins, bread, and strawberry-rhubarb coffee cake.  Mmmmm.

Columbine.  This was not visible at the beginning of the week, now it's about 4" tall.  Loving the sunlight today.

Despite the rain earlier in the week (*ahem*, the two days since Sunday morning that it didn't snow), DH and I have been working each evening on planting some spruce seedlings.  The local garden club was selling them 2 for 50 cents, and they are nice sized little trees; most being 12"-18" tall all ready.  We only got 4 dozen this year; usually we get about 100 annually, but the original order info said they would be delivered right before Spring Break, and I couldn't see planting 100 trees all by myself while DH and the teens were in Arkansas.  The day after they left, I found out that the trees weren't actually coming in until this week (for Earth Day), but it was too late to add to our order.  Oh well. There's always next year.

 One of our new spruce seedlings.