Signs of Spring - Last week of March

Frogs! At night, the frogs have started chirping away. When we first moved in 2 years ago, it was a big change going from hearing the highway in the background all the time to the sounds of nature all around us. The frogs were ridiculous. We read in the paper that it was a particularly good year for frogs in terms of weather conditions so that's why they were so vocal that year. It's not quite so loud but they have started up again.

Starting Veggies from Seed

I have a vegetable garden and I've tried to start my plants from seed but it never seems to work out and I end up buying plants. This year I bought a shoplight and some plant/aquarium tubes and got it all set up. Hopefully we'll see a big improvement over previous tries.

Signs of Spring - March 25

First crocus popped up! Keep it up spring. 60s on Sunday.

Turkeys

Here is the video of they turkeys in our backyard I mentioned in an earlier entry.

Signs of Spring - 3rd weekend in March

Found the first tick of the year attached to poor Red. I've definitely gotten pretty good at removing those little blood-suckers. A bath and some frontline were just the day before. Don't know if the tick was already on there and just missed during the bath or if the frontline takes a few days to do it's thing or what. We frontline him and the cats (even though the girls really don't go out all that much, conga does like to lay on the driveway though...) all the time and they still seem to jump on him all summer. He must be tasty.

Signs of Spring - 1st weekend in March

We have a little bulb garden up against a sunny little patch next to our house. They started poking out the first weekend in March. We noticed them when we returned from our trip to VA to see Phish's return at Hampton Coliseum.

Signs of Spring - Last week of February 2009

It seems like it's been a long winter here in lower Sussex County, NJ this year. Spring is definitely my favorite season so I've really been looking forward to it this year. I know it's far from time to plant anything in my vegetable gardens but the other weekend I thought I'd get a head start and throw some compost onto my beds. Sadly, spring was not as ready as I was and my compost pile was still frozen solid.

I've decided to start keeping a list of when certain things happen to remind me that the warm weather is on it's way.

Last week of February 2009

- Plants being fooled into sprouting - we had a few warm days and a few bulbs started to peek there heads out. I say they were fooled because they have not done too much since then...

- Woodpeckers pecking - we are far enough away from the hustle and bustle that there are plenty of nature sounds in our yard.

- Pheasants on CR 605 - they are really beautiful birds but they have to be the slowest stupidest things ever. There is a stretch of 605 that I can't drive along without seeing a dead pheasant on the side of the road. How do birds get hit by cars that frequently unless they are slow and stupid?

- Flock of 15 turkeys in our backyard - Our dog Red warned me that there was something going on outside in the yard. So I came upstairs to see what he was barking about. About 15 wild turkeys were jumping around in our yard. I have video of this and I'll see if I can post it later.

Welcome

Sure there are already a pile of home and garden blogs out there. But I want to write one too so deal with it.

I plan on using this more of a diary of my home improvements than anything else. Hopefully some of you will find some of my successes and failures useful in some way.