Yearning for warmer weather

Ay, the Minnesota winter is dragging on. It isn't the snow that is driving me crazy, but the cold! These two boys of mine need to do something physical every day. When the temperature is -10 and a windchill that will eat you alive, we haven't been outside much lately.

Instead, we've been reading. Lots of reading. A lovely trip to the library helped us find these treasures, filled with lovely images of plants, flowers and vegetables.

But this is the one that has really caught my eye.

In the past I've grown a few things, but always felt that I'll be a much better vegetable gardener when I have more space. More space, well, that's the farm. I've been thinking that I'll have to wait until we actually move there. Not with this book. I'll be able to take over the wildflower garden area that got a little TOO wild.

Fortunately, at the end of the summer I dug out all those pesky overgrown wild flowers, moved some, put some out for free on the curb, and composted the rest. What a glorious feeling to actually choose what I wanted to keep, not just because they were given to me or free somewhere. My garden matured that day. Hopefully my back will cooperate this year and I'll be able to make a few of the 4 x 4' squares that this Bartholomew guy discusses. What novel ideas... only plant what you can imagine eating. If you think you can eat 3 cabbages by the end of the growing season, well then, "Only plant three!" So many of us get excited about all the seeds in the package and then plant them all. No wonder we can't maintain all of the plants and our gardens get messy and weedy. We don't like to thin them out because we're wasting potential food. So this year... only what we can use. Fortunately for me, the boys will be out there eating sugar snap peas by the fistfull, so we can plant A LOT!

But it is still winter. Spring is a long time away. I can feel mostly satisfied by reading, drooling at the photos, longing for the sunshine.

The cleaning/organizing is going well in the office/craft room. I realize I didn't post the photos that were supposed to be in the last post. I think I'm embarrassed of how messy things really were. I'll add the before pics when I finally finish and can post the after photos too.

I haven't been crafting AT ALL since I started cleaning. A self imposed moratorium on crafts until it is organized. I'm impressed at my willpower on this one.