Digging In

Today was the beginning of the gardening season for me. Jim hauled three and a half blocks of peat moss to the raised beds and I started the process of digging the peat moss into the beds. We've been growing our veggies in the beds for seven years now, and it's time to lighten up the soil a bit. Last year we added manure to the beds, and this year it's peat moss. We have eleven of these beds. Some are used for perennials, some have permanent plantings of strawberries, and the others we use for growing our food for the year. This bed is about 8 ' by 40'. It's our longest bed. I plan to begin with lettuce, spinach, Swiss chard, and peas. The sugar snap peas always grow next to the fence on one of the northern beds. But I like to move the green peas from one bed to another. Then the next summer I plant corn where the peas were. This bed will probably also accommodate the beans as well.

I'm just back from a five day visit with Dear Daughter #2 and her family. I drove up on Palm Sunday and came back on Good Friday--needed to be home for a rehearsal of Easter Sunday's music. It was just such a treat to spend time with them, especially with our 9 year old grandson and 5 year old granddaughter. They are very sweet children, well behaved and affectionate, even with each other. The whole family usually spends a week with us each summer, but DD #2's job will be changing this summer. Her office (in an oil patch company) is being sold to another company, and she's not sure how this will work out for her. We hope she will be able to keep her job, as she enjoys it and is good at it. But with a change of management, you never know. So she phoned about two weeks ago and suggested that I come to see them. An hour later I phoned back and said, I'll be there next Sunday. I'll bet she was surprised, but I had been thinking of a visit for a few months, and jumped at the opportunity.

The two days before that my friend Jan and I went up to Edmonton for an organ recital. A daughter of friends of ours had years of piano studies behind her when she switched to organ a year and a half ago. She gave a brilliant recital, and it was a thrill to hear her.

On the way home Jan and I took in the Red Deer Quilt Show, which was lots of fun for us. We both are musicians and quilters, so this was just a great two day outing for both of us.

While I was visiting D.D. I managed to make the 100 squares needed for another wall hanging, like the one last posted. I promised to give a quilted item to an auction sale in support of a team to the Philippines and didn't want to give away the wall hanging I had just finished. So now I'd better get cracking on that, because it needs to be finished by Friday.