Spring Fever!

It's a balmy 36 degrees outside but the sun is shining so my son and I adventured into the backyard wilderness to tame the wild perennial bed.  It always looks so messy and forlorn over winter, but I find it easier to pull out last year's growth once it's had a chance to rot a little under the snow.  This spring I need to re-edge the perennial bed, in order to make a clearer distinction between "yard" and "garden".  I'm going to do that in bits, though, and mulch as I go.

My son and I were on an adventure to find the still-emerging bulbs.  When my husband came outside, my son ran up to him saying, "Papa Papa, we found the Jingle Bell Winter Flowers!"  I love his translation of "Snowbell!" I'm pretty sure the daffodils that I transplanted from the old homestead near my friend Kate's farm are coming up, but we just need to wait and see.  

In other news from our surburban homestead today, I made blackberry jam with some of the berries that I froze last fall.  It's the first time we've had enough from those bushes to make a batch of jam...and we ate tons of berries and blackberry smoothies already!  I'm not sure if it was our really wet summer that helped the berries, or something else, but it was pretty exciting.  My son is already telling me that he is going to eat all the strawberries this year, so I hope they are productive!