For just a single day. But boy were we glad for it! Although it is only February and it’s likely we’ll experience a few more frosts between now and the official advent of Spring the arrival of our Heirloom seed packets + the first warm day in quite some time was just exciting enough to get us out in the garden doing some prep work.

Sample Seedling Packets

The Garden plans around our house this year are truly the result of a community effort. My friend Liz helped map out every garden area in the yard and together we designed a tomato growing structure that we hope will double as a Winter Greenhouse of sorts.

The start of our Tomatoe Project +Greenhouse

My brother tweaked and massaged the ancient tiller into growling through the soil twice now. So incredibly satisfying to see the change in soil color since we first moved here! Used to be an anemic, malnourished gray clay and now actually has sections where rich blackness are showing through. The soil was so poor before it was rare to find an earth-worm and now it seems that the Veggie garden area is an earth-worm Kingdom!

Garden Soil Feb. 2011

The Doodlebug was thrilled to be out gardening and is proving to be a big help already. The one thing our main garden area produces better than earthworms is rocks. So Doodles primary job was to run back and forth picking up rocks. She also helped to form a bit of a row or two with her child sized shovel. Her favorite time though was the seed planting!

The Three Girls Working on Seedlings

Doodlebug made her own label for *her* Seeds. Yes, that is an N for her first name!It looks like a Z but it’s really an N held sideways.

Doodlebugs N for her Seedlings

Liz came up with the brilliant idea of adding probiotics to our seedlings soil. We used Ultimate Defense because it has good soiled based organisms in it. Although we are using organic dirt to start our seedlings in we thought it would be a good idea to give it an extra boost of the “good” stuff.

Ultimate Defense

Doodles Sprinkling Ultimate Defense on Seedling Soil

The Sweet Peas are Planted and are officially the first veggies to go in the ground for this season. The first round of Seedlings are started and “the watch” to see which ones pop their little green heads through first has begun.

A highlight of our past week was visiting with dear friends of ours. I had the honor and privilege of being her Doula at the birth of her 4th child, a baby girl born the day after Christmas! This weekend we got to see them for the first time since she was born. All I can say is that she was blessed with a little Angel Baby both in looks and temperment! I’m not entirely sure she knows how to fuss in a proper way and I found it almost comical when she “tried” to fuss.

LotteBeth attempting to fuss

We all held and cuddled and held and cuddled her some more. It was baby-heaven!

Liz holding LotteBeth

She also has the most beautiful Gray eyes I’ve ever seen on a baby.

LotteBeths Beautiful Eyes

Now that we’ve all had our baby-fix for the day I’ll say good-bye. A busy day beckons and I’ve been ignoring it long enough. Anybody else started any garden things yet?