Spring is here, but the growth is coming along sluggishly. The other day on an otherwise dreary afternoon I looked up from some garden chores and this enormous, glorious rainbow was suddenly stretching across the valley! I tried fussing with filters and contrast and whatnot to try to give you all an idea of how tremendously beautiful it was, but this is not even half as beautiful as it actually looked.

This year I have a new garden "helper" in Little Forager. There he is helping me dig in the raised beds with his own shovel. All those little round things are nasturtium seed pods. I have no idea if they are actually going to grow again, but it would be nice to have those again! They are so beautiful and are also useful edibles! I always love it when something is beautiful, beneficial to pollinators, and tasty for me!

Here is my seed starting setup this year. It hasn't been all that long since I took this photo, and already the seedlings are HUGE! This year I had the idea to keep the plastic cover on (normally I have the door down and zipped up as well) partially to keep Little Forager out, and partially to capture any heat that might come off the light bulbs. I wasn't thinking there would be all that much heat generated from them, but it has seriously made a huge difference! Since I don't have a heat mat, I normally get really bad germination with anything that needs a little heat to get going, but this solved that problem entirely. I will be doing it this way every year now.

As you can see I probably over planted for my actual needs, but I am used to having poor germination rates, and also carelessness claiming the lives of many of my seedlings so I always over plant. This year everything is going really well (so far - fingers crossed!) so I might need to have a plant sale or something to deal with my extra seedlings! Everything is looking super healthy, and I am really excited about that!

We also tackled some outside chores. Little Forager loves "sweeping". There is still so much clutter left over from not really tidying up the garden before winter hit! We'll get to it. You can really see in this photo how slowly things are starting to grow. It won't be long now though!