ok confession time...letting my freak flag fly..sorta

The weather has been glorious! My hands have been gloriously dirty! My play clothes have been gloriously dirty! This is not simple mud but good healthy soil..finally!

We have been here for 2 full growing seasons. We are entering our third growing season. When we first came here we had heavy clay.  Each shovel full was clumpy with clay.  Our property was once part of a sod farm.  The top soil was taken off and given to the foundation of the Millinocket Hospital.

It is so great to see the magic of soil take place.  Some parts of the garden we sheet mulched;essentially, laying down compost, cover with cardboard and hay. This is a no till method of gardening that allows the critters and microbes in the soil to do what they want to do: eat and feed the soil. Other parts of the garden we grew cover crops of winter rye, clover, buckwheat or soybean; then sheet mulched on top of the cover crop when it was full grown. This adds extra nutrition to the soil and some of the cover crops fix nitrogen to the soil.   Oh and we also amended with sheep poo, wood ash, and compost from our bins.

After a couple of years of doing this we have loose, dark, rich soil.  Can I get an Amen!  I planted shelling peas, spinach and beets this week.  A few weeks we will be eating some tender veggies!

So after playing in the dirt mom deserves a long luxurious shower in which she decides that this night is the night to take care of another spring ritual.  The shaving of the legs.  Once the shorts are packed away for the season is there really any reason to shave?  Used to be a time when I dispensed with the razor all year long.  But like packing away the wooly sweaters, shaving my legs in the spring is like shedding layers and lightening up.  And it buys me a few extra quiet moments in the shower.  And the muscles...well they could use a little heat too.