The inside seeds are all doing their thing… I won’t bore you with more pictures.

But outside seedy things are happening too. Sort of.

I’ve planted three types of lettuce, some spinach, and radishes. I’ve had mediocre luck with lettuce and spinach, so I’m hoping this year is the year! Radishes are completely new.. and apparently only take about a month from planting to harvest – so they should be fun.

I just planted them a few days ago, so there’s not much to see yet. I should see some results by next Sunday.

Dave and I found this giant bird planter at Winners. He insisted I needed it and who am I to argue. I filled it with soil and tossed some poppy seeds in it.

And they are starting to sprout! The poppy I chose for this planter is called Amazing Grey. I’m looking forward to watching them bloom!

As you know, I tossed a pile of poppy seeds throughout several other gardens. I think some are starting to come out… but right now it’s hard to tell from the weed sprouts right now. I’ll have to wait a bit to be sure.

And though they are bulbs, not seeds..

The garlic is looking good!

And last…

The final seed order has arrived – so I’ve got some more planting to do this weekend!

Here we are in Mid-April ,and the daffodils are dominant

No where as much as in the catio yard! Don’t they just look amazing? I really do need to split a few of these clumps up this year, and spread them around a bit more.

Regular readers will know that I have quite the collection of daffodils (they definitely are my favourite spring flower).

These are just the ones in bloom right now, there are many, many more to come!

But it’s not just daffies.

We’ve got a couple tulips – the first a small orange one, and the second, an even smaller species tulip (the original “natural” tulip the ones we know and love were developed from), The snakehead fritillary is also coming alive. It’s actually a type of lily so now that it’s up, I have to check it for the dreaded red Asian lily beetle! It’s worth it though – those little nodding blooms are so pretty.

Every so often, when the wind blows the right way, you get a waft of the hyacinths amazing perfume. I don’t have a lot of hyacinths, but that pink clump has multiplied nicely. I can probably split it up this year too.

And last, I couldn’t resist this gorgeous pot of pansies at Walmart. They had them out front by the doors, and I had the one I wanted picked out from my parking spot. It was just calling to me.

One thing is for sure, Spring has FINALLY sprung!

It’s been raining most of the week, but Burton and I are hoping we get to enjoy some sun this weekend. Here’s hoping it’s sunny and mild wherever you are too!

I’m not the only one exciting about the start of gardening season!

The squirrels are very avid gardeners. And now that the snow is gone, they’ve set themselves to building up their caches again.

And the soft, deep soil of my raised beds is and ideal place to stash their nutty treasures.

With these busy guys, its bound the be an excellent peanut crop this year!

Of course, after all that work, you’ve got to stop and have a little snack break!

Some good progress has been made on the green splitty, slippery socks

The first sock has been finished, and the second one is on the gusset. I expect I’ll finish them up this week.

One very interesting thing about this yarn…. I haven’t found the repeat yet. Despite all the stripes, I can’t see where the repeat of the run should start and end. Just when I think I have, I realize there’s a slight difference – either another stripe that doesn’t match, or just that the width of the stripe doesn’t match.

If you’re one of those people who need matching socks… this yarn is not for you! I don’t mind mismatched socks at all so it’s just fine with me!

I promised you a new tiny needle project, and here it is…

I’ve had this pattern book since the early ’90s. There are six different patterns in it… and over two decades ago, I made the Fairy Godmother for Samantha when she was pregnant with her first child.

But I’ve always wanted to make myself the the Forest Fairie – the one there on the cover. No better time than now.

I picked up this pretty dyed aida at Michaels. It doesn’t show here but there’s a fair amount of green mixed in with the blue. It’s 14 ct, which feels a little weird for me as most of my projects lately have been much smaller at 18 ct.

I only got a very small start on it. But a start is a start!

Yesterday was a very special day! Bestie Samantha was coming to visit!!! We only live about an hour and a half away from each other, but because of busy lives only get together a couple times of year. She also brought her husband Michael and two of her three kids (Ethan and Owen – Lily had to work). The kids are all adults now, which is still wild to me! Time certainly marches on.

We had such a good time, I neglected to take any photos.

I can show you the flowers I cut for the table:

The dessert I made for after dinner (dinner was pork roast with mashed potatoes, carrots, asparagus and apple sauce)

Cherry Cheese pie! Recipe here

And the note Samantha left for me on my menu board on the fridge.

Word is, the boys may be coming back out soon to hang out with Dave and do car stuff. Samantha may even come for the ride!

No more seeds planted this last week…

But boy howdy, have the Dahlias taken off!! Because it was a long weekend last weekend, I wasn’t in my office for four days. When I went up there on Tuesday, I couldn’t believe my eyes. Look at all that growth.

Elsewhere -the first tray of seedlings is doing great…. many of the them are getting their true leaves. I’ll probably open the rolls and add some soil, then re-roll so they have room to develop really good roots.

The second tray are a little further behind, which is to be expected.

And in the third tray…

The big ones are (I think) squash and pumpkins. The smaller ones are foxglove and snapdragons

It’s quite the contrast, but things are definitely growing around here!

Now is the time when things really start to get going in the garden. The crocuses are starting to go over – though there are still a few left.

We’ve got Glory of the snow popping out everywhere.

I was a little worried because I only had one pink clump, but over the last week, more and more have appeared. And that the thing about the smaller spring bulbs – just suddenly one day they are there, looking beautiful…

And they go almost a quickly.

The daffodils stick around longer…

And I’ve got lots of daffodils.

Especially in the catio. These ones have just multplied like crazy! I think I’m going to dig some up and spread them around.

And Forsythia

And hyacinths and so much more to come!

Today’s post is less about the felines, and more about the feline confinement yard… aka the Catio.

When I created the space, I was on a budget. So I lined the paths and open areas with landscape fabric and threw down some mulch. And it worked well. It wasn’t perfect… it had to be weeded, and replenished yearly… but it worked. Then we got Lemmy.

Remember that when Lemmy was kitten, we had a problem with him using houseplants as a toilet? Well… he did the same thing with the mulch. Only there was no way to train him out of it like the houseplants. It wasn’t so bad in the nicer weather – I could get out there and clean up after him, much like you would with a dog. But in winter.. it was harder. Every spring, I’ve had to do a mega poo clean up – and toss out a pile of otherwise decent mulch (thankfully, he mostly kept it to one area).

I’ve longed to switch the paths over to stone anyway… and a little while back I go a $150 gift card for Home Depot. So I looked up the cost of stone, and figured it would cover at least half of what I needed. I ran the idea by Dave, and Monday we headed out to the store.

When we got there, he talked me out of the stone I was going to get, and into a much prettier stone. I was going to get much smaller, rougher river rocks, but he wanted the rounder, bigger beach stone. Of course, his stone was 50% more expensive, and the bags were half the size. We got 15 bags, as much as we could fit on the cart. I knew it wouldn’t do the whole catio, but I thought it would do at least half…

Not even close! It didn’t even fill the big sitting area at the end by the porch. I’m going to need another 15 bags just to finish off this area. I think it’s going to take at least 30-50 more bags to do the whole catio. So it’s going to be a much longer, much more expensive project than I planned. But Dave is right… it’s going to look pretty good.

I think the cats are going to enjoy having some cool rocks to lay across on hot summer days. And I’m going to enjoy not cleaning up poopies!