i love you in springtime

Sunday it was a year since Dave and I came to visit Crockett and buy our house. Can you believe a year has passed so quickly? Me neither. Just like last year, the weather is so beautiful. I feel a little guilty posting these lovely, warm pictures since so many of our friends and family are still getting snow, but just live vicariously, okay?

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Here's our backyard this weekend:

In the back ground you can see our "bridge" across the drainage ditch. This bridge has become a neighborhood thoroughfare. This is the third version of our bridge--the first got broken, the second got washed away in a flood. This one actually got broken too, but Dave and Jed have reinforced it many times and now it's super-strong. We love our bridge! It gets us to the park a lot quicker than going around. We are trying an experiment and growing potatoes in old tires this year. We've heard good things about it and we hope it works. We have 2 tires of Yukon gold potatoes and 3 tires of red potatoes. They're all sprouting beautifully. Our peas are doing well and our beets and carrots are poking up in the foreground.

In the middle section of our garden, we're growing broccoli, spinach and lettuce. In the far section, you can see lots of onions, cilantro and garlic. The garlic has been going strong since September. My only problem is I don't know when to harvest it! You can also see our sad pear tree, a new baby peach tree we just planted and some tires waiting in the wings for the potatoes to get tall enough to add another level.

Here's another baby peach tree. We had to put the fence around them because we were afraid Jed would tear up the the string supports.

My dad has been wanting to grow strawberries in whiskey barrels for years. We decided that we'd try the experiment and let him know how things work out. Supposedly, you're supposed to be able to drill holes in the sides when the runners get long and the runners will root in the dirt that pokes out of the holes. We'll see. The strawberries are pretty small, but we've had some really great rain and they seem to be thriving. I definitely feel like some redneck/white trash woman, with the tires, whiskey barrels and other paraphernalia littering the yard, but we're growing good things. Maybe I'll find an old commode and plant some flowers in it. Then we'll really fit in!

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Maybe you remember this picture from our "snow" back in February:

That strange pile of logs was Dave and Jed's latest project. They built us a swing set!

Jed did a lot of work.

(Sorry for the screen in these two pictures. It is so hard to take pictures of Jed right now!!) Dave did some marvelous engineering and lots of drilling and our swing set began taking shape.

Dave cut cedar posts and braces and used a big knot of cedar from a huge tree that blew over at the lake to build a seat. He has worked so hard and even got hit in the head by one of the posts for his troubles (He's fine). Finally it is all together.

Doesn't it look great? I am really proud of Dave's hard work and ingenuity with this project. And I love that it was basically free, too.

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So, as you can tell, we're loving our springtime back yard. Spring is definitely my favorite season here. Thank goodness it lasts from February to the end of May!