Preparations

One of the greatest things about living in Texas is the early spring.  I grew up in the midwest, and while I would give my eye teeth for the fertility of the soil in my home state of Illinois, the early springtime is a pretty nice trade-off.  We can amend soil, and we can plant so early!  It's March 18th and the spinach and mesclun lettuces that we planted in February (!) are coming up beautifully!  We were able to take off the glass exterior door that served as the coldframe lid 2 weeks after their planting, and now look at them!  We will be having salad from this in the near future!

But I couldn't stop there - for years, I have been so practical as to plant green beans as a border around the house so that we could water the foundation and gain food from the process at the same time.  This still makes a fair amount of sense to me, but lately I do begin to realize that practical can also be that which is just good for the soul. 

This morning's project was all about cleaning out the weeds from the walkway planting bed and doing something that will be beautiful.  I started with this:

and with much work, removed all the lovely green weeds by hand to be left with this:

Amend with well aged compost (again, remembering that everything on our farm is here for a reason!):

And till it in, so the soil is deeply amended:





Plant my variety caladiums for a lovely splash of color and water deeply.  I cannot wait to see how the lovely colors come up!