Planting garlic, organizing, and parading at Mardi Gras

I'm sorry to tell you people from the snowy East Coast this: Yesterday, I dug compost into my garden in a T-shirt and then planted garlic. It felt like April or May. It felt awesome.

For most of the past decade, I've planted garlic in the fall, but last year did it in the spring, and it worked out fine. Our garlic likes the compost I make from goat bedding, and it thrives.

I put the boys to work separating garlic cloves into individual pieces, and they also helped me plant it.  Who else do you know who does this wearing Mardi Gras necklaces?

Before planting, I weeded all the pesky buttercup from the garden bed, and then double dug it with my old broad fork.  Have you ever used a broad fork?  I love that thing: it deepens and loosens the soil without disturbing the soil layers, which is great for the microbial life in there.  Plus, it's great exercise for the broad fork wielder (me).  Also, I think the worms appreciate not being torn up by a fume-spewing rototiller.

I spent an hour strutting around in the garden to plan my crop rotation.  I have a tattered old gardening journal reaching back ten years, where I record what I plant where, and how much of it.  It's important not to plant vegetables from the same plant family in the same spot year after year, and there are some veggies that are good preceeding crops for others, and vice versa.

I'v been on a frantic nesting/organizing/cleaning up kick.  Spending five weeks in a small RV, where everything has its place, I got inspired to do the same thing in my house, where messes accumulate daily and never get cleaned up.  So upon returning home, I attacked the play area, a space underneath our stairs that has been an eye sore for years, because it's in plain view of everyone who enters our house, and because it is chaotic.  I filled two big boxes with books the kids don't need any more, and a big garbage bag with toys for the Goodwill.  Then I cleaned up an area on my kitchen counter which has held bins of the boys' homeschooling curriculum.  I organized it and stashed it neatly on shelves in the play area.  Voila!

Other nesting activities:

- Collecting duck eggs.

- Baking sweet bread with the duck eggs.

- Foraging for wild greens like nettles and miner's lettuce (the nettles are up already!!!!).

- Weeding my flower garden.

- Going for walks with rainbows.

- Starting some sprouting jars so we'll have fresh green stuff to eat on top of the wild foraged foods.

I will leave you with images from the Mardi Gras parade in Concrete, a little town half an hour away from us, and filled with people we call our community.  We get together every year to party on the main street of Concrete, dressing up, and sometimes dressing up our goats.  Our neighborhood band "Jumbled Pie" played music on a trailer towed by a pick up truck.  Great fun!