Bear here... We had a busy weekend outside and I thought you would like to see some pictures of what we were up to:

I used the currants to make juice (top left mason jar) and currant syrup (top right mason jar), both of which can be mixed with water or seltzer to make current soda.  Theresa used the sun oven to bake currant yogurt muffins, and was grateful she didn't have to turn the oven on in the house on such a hot day (heat indexes were in the high 90s- good thing we were working in the shade).

There's our weekend.  We finished off with grilled steaks and watching the new season of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.

Type at ya later...

From Theresa:

There hasn't been much time for blogging or adding how-to pages to our website lately. We've been too busy getting things done, which I bet can be said for many of the rest of you, too. So with this blog I'm catching up a little, or trying to justify and make sense of the last few months of business to myself. Either way, here are some brief glimpses of what we've been working on this Spring, some of which will hopefully and eventually evolve into web pages of detailed instructions.

Side note from Bear:  Theresa's been really freaken busy...
​you'll find that out if you can make it to the end of this blog... Just sayin...
​

We had an incredibly mild Winter, which meant an early Spring,
and an early start to yardening projects.

In the photo below, I have added compost and straw mulch to our stock tank garden,
​which is where we grow our annual vegetables (tomatoes, basil, green onions.... dreaming of salad!).
Notice the stock tanks are at chair height- you can sit in the chair to weed and harvest.  
With a nearby rain barrel for watering, this garden is very easy to take care of.

From Bear:  Canned gardening... interesting.

The new Spring bulbs I planted last Fall emerged (Winter aconite):

Plant orders start arriving.  
Here we have fruits- honeyberry (similar to blueberries but easier to grow)
and hardy kiwi (grows in our Zone 5):
(Bear suggests not yardening the kitchen stove... after a while Theresa agrees.)

I took my Spring vacation early and redid a lot of the Celtic Cross garden.
The rose briar, along with a lot of grasses, had taken over this quadrant, so I had to dig it up:
​(Bear here...The girl was on a mission and I ain't gettin in her way. Just sayen...)

I installed a metal barrier of aluminum flashing to (hopefully) keep the roses back:

I also installed drain pipe throughout the bed. The black tubing has small holes in it and is attached to the nearest downspout, so that when it rains, the water runs throughout the garden,
​which (again hopefully) will be become more self-watering:

I ran the drain pipe under the paver path and stone walls where possible,
​and covered it with mulch bfefore replacing the stones.
Then I added another layer of rocks to the stone wall,
so that it would show up more in the middle of Summer when the plants are all tall.
This bed is ready to plant!

I also revamped most of the rest of the Celtic Cross garden. For instance, 
the chives that had overtaken the central herb spiral were moved to the edge of the property,
​ where they would help keep the neighbor's grass from coming into our yard,
​and help protect the two new columnar apple & mayapple trees I planted.

I tried to repair the hole in the pond liner,
​but the patch I applied lasted for only a few hours before it just peeled away...
(Bear here... I said to use duct tape but no one listens to Bear, noooo...)

The Spring flowers started blooming and the bees woke up:

The seeds I planted grew in the tiny greenhouse:

Bear read a new book about outdoor cooking, and tried cooking some of the last of our storage vegetables by burying them in coals in the fire pit. He says it was an epic failure... 

His new hair cut turned out better... a Bear with horns:

We harvested a lot of Spring veggies- fiddleheads, chickweed, nettle, chives
(starting with the yellow colander and going clockwise);

We also harvested a lot of rhubarb, and Bear learned that the larger stems are much more tart:

But when cooked down, strained, and with honey added,
​ it makes a great juice concentrate that we froze into cubes.
I like it added to plain water, but Bear prefers using seltzer:

Our kitchen sink stopped working... and hasn't been working for almost 2 months now,
but I been too busy with other projects to try to fix it.
​Also, carrying water from the bathroom is teaching me a lot about water conservation.
I've hopefully finally broken my dependence on having continuously running rinse water.
I've even started to figure out how to use less dishes, so that I have less to clean...

I've been letting wild salsify "go wild" in the yard for several years,
​and Bear finally figured out how to eat it... and found that the stems are great grilled:

I finished knitting Bear's Winter grilling hat for his 50th birthday present
(complete with flames and a patch showing his first grill)...
I was only two months late.

The Spring shade garden bloomed gloriously:

It took us a whole day to install this new rain barrel that has twice the capacity of our old one.
Now that it's set up, though, we're not sure the design will last,
so the jury is still out as to whether the switch was a good idea:

We had another bad weekend trying to dig post holes for the fence that will become our catio extension. We rented a gas powered hole digger, but found out we have a lot of gravel under our soil
in that part of the yard, so had to resort to the human powered version:

I took another shorter vacation and spent a couple days digging out the 10 post holes by hand
(when I finished one I put in a wooden pole with a red pipe cleaner around it
in order to keep myself going. If we hadn't already spend $500 on fence parts,
​I would have just given up):
(Bear again...  SURE... Now she tells me she would give it up!)

Life continued to grow in the yarden, even if I was exhausted.
​We got tadpoles!

... and the plants grew:

As usual, plants kept arriving in the mail, and I went to too many plant sales
and bought too many plants, for which I then had to find room...
because I'm an idiot. 
(Bear suggested I bold that text.)

This year I focused on getting edible ground covers, to supress weeds between plants.
Years ago I started thyme in the front yard garden.
​It spread everywhere, and now I don't have to weed at all because the ground is totally covered:

I also worked in the garden behind the shed, where we moved a lot of plants to better locations
and added edible cactus and succulents that should like the heat there:

I rescued a frog (or is it a toad?) from the cats, and it obligingly held still for photos afterwards:

I found out the compost I spread all over the garden was full of kale seeds,
so have been harvesting totally unexpected bumper crops, and have even frozen some.
Maybe I can do this on purpose next year?

Since I ended up with more plants than I had room for, 
I talked Bear into letting me get another stock tank. Happy Theresa:

I saw an online mention of peony jelly, and was glad to finally find a use for these plants.
We have a lot of peonies, planted by the former owner. They're not my kind of plants, since although the blooms are lovely, the plants can't hold themselves up. Why would we breed a plant like that?

I infused the peony flowers overnight, then used the water to make a jelly that tastes like the peonies smell. It was an odd taste, and the jelly didn't set, so I really ended up canning peony syrup.
But Bear has been adding seltzer water to the syrup and made a great peony soda.
(Bear here... Surprisingly, peony soda also mixes well with old school Mt. Dew.
Since there are lots of new "Dew" flavors.... maybe...?)

Bear tried to fix the kitchen sink, but couldn't get the old fixture out...

But his hair grew in better:

We learned that mixing cement was a very tiring job,
​but we got the ten posts for the catio extension in the ground:

And the yarden continued to grow...

Yes, there is a pond in there...

Spring is a time of beginning, when we start new projects...
the seeds are sown, the plants are in the ground, the new catio has begun.

Now at the Summer Solstice, we turn toward manifestation...
we wait to see what will result- will our projects work... what else will be harvested...
will we ever add fencing to the new catio posts?

Whatever happens next, or however our efforts are thwarted,
hopefully we will also remember to count our blessings...

(Bear here... I'm sure the blessings are in double digits by now... Just sayen...)

​I ask myself if I will ever wise up and take a break... that hammock looks awfully nice...
​those fish look lonely.

We sat at the campfire pit in our backyard and watched the Sun's light slowly brighten the sky:

By 5:00 am the we were still waiting for the Sun to float above the horizon...
so Bear made us breakfast- beans, veggies, eggs, toast.
I know he loves me because he gave me the last egg:

By 5:30 it was light and the Sun had appeared,
​but all we could see was a bright dot through the trees:

We found that the view was much better from a different corner of our property:

​Before the dawn,
still captured in the 
hush of night,
I hear the rush of wings.

Is it just the wind
or have You come to me?

In the darkness I wait,
caught in the tension
of the moment,
between night and day;
hope and trepidation.

I have longed for You
for so long...
gently, a feather drifts
past my face.

I arise and take Your hand.

- Galen Gillotte
Book of Hours: Prayers to the God

Tomorrow on Solstice morning, we'll be at Blue Mounds State Park watching the Sun
​rise from the East Observation Tower, where it looked like this in 2014:

See more on our Celebrate Early Summer page.