Spring Has Sprung!!

We've been pretty busy here at Ivy Hill trying to get things done! I planted those daffodils a few weeks ago, not expecting them to bloom this year, but apparently they decided that they wanted to make an appearance! We have plans to put a brick border around the beds around the porch. We also put more flowers around our crepe myrtle tree, and cleaned out around the mailbox and planted flowers there too. The mailman got a surprise when one of those flowers sprouted a little yellow daffodil as well! :-)

This picture of our pear tree was taken a couple of days ago. There are several more blooms on it now! Last year in April we had tornadoes and every single bloom, save 1, was blown off the tree! It was doing really well until the hurricane came and then we had to pull the 1 immature pear so it didn't fly off and go thru a window or anything. We're hoping that this year we have some pears to harvest! It's still a pretty young tree, so I'm pretty surprised that we are getting anything.

I did finally get the strawberry bed cleaned out! This was taken the other day as well, before I had gotten it completely cleaned out. This year, I'm not going to let them go hog wild like I did last year! Sheesh! What a mess that bed was! There are quite a few more flowers now and some of them already have the beginnings of strawberries on them!

Last year DH thought it would be a good idea to put our grapes on the fence because one of our other neighbors had done it that way. I TRIED to get him to just put up some lines for a small vineyard, but, he wouldn't cough up the dough for it. I guess it's just practice for our farm anyways, but now that I think about it... it's going to be difficult to keep the dogs off of the immature grapes! I noticed that this winter they chewed some of the vines that were on the inside of the fence. This same vine now has a few very small leaves. It's quite exciting!

We had gone to Tractor Supply and there were these ADORABLE little grey Easter Eggers! If DH would have had his way, we would have brought some home. I told him that we didn't have the set up for it right now and that if he would just be patient, then we could get a coop and get some chickens. We've decided that we're going to get some for DDs birthday. Since they will be her pets, they will all have names, and we will only use them for eggs. DH does want to get some rabbits for meat. I guess we will have to see how that goes. I'm not real keen on the idea because, while I love the taste of rabbit, they are just SO adorable!

This is DS holding one of our friends Easter Egger chicks. That little chick just attached itself to him and when anybody tried to pick it up it would cheep up a storm and as soon as you put it down, it would snuggle back into his lap and quiet right back down.

Elsewhere, we are watching our new tomatoes grow by the day! Most of them have their first set of true leaves now. Almost all of the other seeds didn't make it. We've got more that we planted. I'm seriously going to invest in the light for next year!! This is ridiculous! We put almost 2 months into those seedlings and they were just so leggy!!

Anyways, until the next time! I hope that everyone is able to get their hands in the dirt soon!