Wisconsin Changes Color - Green is Surging In

Winter Has Hightailed It Out Of The State

What Snow we had left melted fast with 62 degrees all last week and now
40 degrees so far this week is cooler but warm enough to keep the greening
effect developing.

My son bought me a Gulf Cart for my birthday, making it easier to get to all the places around our 21 acres.
The back seat folds out making enough room for 2 bales of hay or maybe a few grand kids when they visit.  It is electric so no noisy motor like our John Deer tractor.  I am so blessed!
 My husband Dick will put a clamp in back to attach my small garden cart full of tools.  I will be all set for the growing season ahead.

Chores are starting in full force now that the earth is starting to show.  The Potting Shed is first to 

be attended.  It holds many pots still full of dried off plants from last season of 2014.  They will come out and sit in the rain, and warm up from the sun.  Soon either growth from the grasses, or dormant plants will come up or the pots will be emptied and new soil put in with fertilizer for 2015's season.

Potting Shed Dick built me a few years ago.  Some things have been pulled out
to the outside decks surrounding it.

Statutes, birdhouses and lots of do-dads will come out and placed back into their places.

An out door shower is on the North end of the Potting Shed.
it will get cleaned up and ready for Dick.  Needless to say I am
too bashful to shower outdoors.  The area is in the middle of the
21 acres set way off the road and no one is around but I still like
the inside better!

Garden cart will be pulled out and filled with many trips of rubbish being pulled from the many gardens and dumped in compost piles.  Grandkids toys are hidden under the shelves of vases and containers to hold flowers, picked from the flower beds as the year progresses.  

For a few years we put a chicken nursery in the potting shed.  But after the Racoon damaged the floor we took that out.  

There was an outside run in the back with a large patio umbrella to protect
the chicks and their mother from the hawks. That has all been eliminated too.

A raccoon that must have lived under the Potting shed chewed a hole through the floor and a lot of the clay pots fell through to the ground below.  Thank goodness there was a double floor for the chicks area and they were safe.  Dick here is repairing the hole.  That was the last year we kept chicks in the Potting Shed.  Now we just purchase grown hens for laying eggs. 

     Over the years the potting shed took many forms of use.  Life changes and so do my needs.  What I felt was so important and needed now has become obsolete.  The potting shed is back to being just that.  A shed for pots and storage during the winter months.
      One green house I had is taken down and the other is also being used for storage.  Fuel costs sky rocketed during the energy crisis so Dick insisted we needed to conserve fuel and had it turned off.

Here was the second green house that was taken down.  I started all my plants
from seed or cuttings.  The excess of the first green house would go into this one.

This was my first greenhouse built against the hill.  This time of the year was always so busy.  I spent every waking hour in there.  The screen was rolled down when the heat of May became too much for the plants and me, when I worked in there.  Now it has become a storage area for Dick's supplies he uses in his metal art and remains unheated.
     I miss working and planting in it.

Like the potting shed, time changes and uses of things and life changes.  Health issues and age were a big factor.

The boarder garden was eliminated along with the green house being taken down.

     Another season has started.  Snow is melted, temperatures are climbing, Raking the winters left overs away to freshen the land for growth, finds me once again outside for hours but now I have my grandson Brett helping and doing a lot of the heavy work.  He came Thursday and Friday and we got a big section of clean up done in one of the upper perennial beds.  I showed him what we discovered last week.  a clump of Snow drops up and blooming.  

Snow Drops flowers are the first to bloom in Spring.

      We took a break from the raking and went for a walk to see if we could discover something down by the creek in our woods.  The pachysandra was almost blooming.  Now big patches of evergreen leaves to draw the eye towards it.  We noticed lots of deer tracks on the trails some trails Dick and I made and some they made themselves as they walked down to the creek for a drink.  More dead Ash trees are showing what the damage those Ash borrowers have done to nature.  

       Gracie our cat followed us around as we went down one trail and onto another, taking a drink in the fresh clear cold water as we got down there never fazed her. We discovered the creek was way down.  Our snow fall this year was a lot less so there was no flooding from the melting this year.  Could be good or again could be bad if we do not have enough spring rains for moisture this year.  As with life, we never know what the year will bring in nature  or in our own lives during this season of 2015.

Quotes I believe I got from Ann Voskamp's blog: 

 "Brilliant doesn't matter, if you can't get out of bed.  Talent doesn't mean a thing, if you let fear be some terrorist that take you hostage.  Potential doesn't add up to anything, if you get addicted to perfectionism because perfectionism is slow death by self.  Listen:  Fire your perfectionism and your procrastination will quit too."  She has a nice blog called A Holy Experience.  

This was a card from Christmas, and I put the song notes on it and wrote a quote I do not know the author of.  Framed it and keep it in a spot I see each time I go out my computer room.  

Nature Within Cherish The Moment!  Each moment!  you never know when you will get my age and have to wake up one morning and find your world changed.  Cherish God's gift to us His earth, His Grace and His life within us.  Keep your dreams and they soon become reality.  Mine did and I am still dreaming.......

                              Kate