Easter Eve

There are two things that stand out for me about Easter: first of all, it brings with it food traditions (different ones in different parts of the world) that are interesting and sometimes fun for me to replicate. Secondly, the holiday wakes up my sometimes sleepy friends in Poland. All my best pals there reach out on this weekend and it is grand to connect with them once again. 

Oh, of course, I love the fact that Easter comes at time when the earth here, in south-central Wisconsin, is also waking up. You already know that I'm nuts about spring!

Besides those factors, I've never latched onto Easter in the way that I have latched onto Christmas even though I'm not Christian. Bunnies and chicks -- it's all very charming, but there is a heck of a lot of sugar thrown into the mix: more than even on Halloween and that's saying a lot! Coloring eggs can be beautiful, but then you have all those hard boiled eggs in the fridge and only Ed is a fan of egg salad for a meal and he doesn't care how pretty the shell may be. So we do a very low key Easter: I make sure we have something special for breakfast and if the young family is here for dinner (and they will be), I'll prepare something out of the usual rotation. And yes, I'll put out some chocolate eggs (indeed, Snowdrop and I bought some in our travels just for this purpose), as if anyone needed more chocolate!  

Still, I recognize that many people love this holiday and it has great meaning for them, so if you are an Easter person, or indeed a Passover person, well then, happy holidays to you!

Our hens join in the chorus of good wishes!

(Morning walk: Snowdrop had asked yesterday "how come your neighbor's grass is so much greener than yours?" She got a very long explanation from me, with many references to the insanity of lawn maintenance! Still, you can see the green color coming back to the farmette lands, no?)

Breakfast, ordinary, but splendid with the pastel backdrop.

My day today is a marathon of gardening. Honestly, I really did work like a person possessed and Ed was not far behind, helping me fill tubs, fix the lavender field and do some of the grunt jobs that I happily hand over to him. Here's what we did:

I planted all the strawberries. We hit 64F (which is 18C) today and it is only going to get warmer this week. They will survive any frost that may still come our way. This is the set up we came up with for this year's crop:

I also planted all the phloxes that came from the same nursery (meaning early). And the astrantia, and the clematis, and the dianthus. Some plants were bare root and I'm not sure if those will fare well after the mudroom hiatus. We will see.

Then we got busy with the tubs. We have pretty much eliminated the attractive but short-lived cedar tubs and have replaced them with the aluminum ones which I admit, do look like the tubs my grandma used to do the laundry outside before we had running water. I wasn't sure how these would look in the yard, but after a trial run last summer, I decided that they were indeed farm-like and once they are filled with flowers, they look terrific. So we got them ready for planting. It's a tedious job and I'm glad it's behind us. 

Then I planted the lavender cuttings we wintered-over in the sheep shed. The whole lavender field is a work in progress and I was disappointed to see how fragile the roots of these baby plants were, but maybe they will survive the transplant. I'm hoping!

(the lavender field, before I added my row of baby plants...)

And, too, I planted peas. That was easy! The trellis was already set up. All I had to do was weed the dirt and push in several dozen peas. And water all the new plantings. And pull out endless weeds and creeping charlies in different flower fields. A marathon, I tell you!

At the end of all that, I said to Ed -- things are looking good, honey. (That's my standard line at the end of a work day outside.) He responded -- until the weeds grow knee high again.

Well yeah, he has a point. In early spring, everything looks grand and under control. It really does feel like you are the champ and the garden is your great work of art. Nature hangs back and lets you strut your stuff. Then it doesn't hang back anymore and you get the not so gentle reminder that you are a mere peg in her grand scheme for the land around you. You may contribute, but she is in control. The weeds thrive, some plants topple or wilt or are done in by any number of viruses, bugs, weather crises. It's all just so much bigger than you! Still, you contribute and in these early months of the growing season, you are rewarded by splendid buds and tips and all those other signs that maybe, just maybe all's right out there and maybe your successes will outnumber your failures and in any case you will have learnt a lot and the farmette lands will be the better for it.