An adventure with friends, flowers, and frolicking...destination -Startup, WA

There is nothing like roaming down a country road, in a van full of girl friends who share a passion discovering new plants, launghing at funky garden art, enjoying humor, hard work and healthy dirt.

Whether we are working on each other's gardens, or touring inspiring garden paths, a day with the Duvall Garden Gals is a time I cherish.

This weekend we sported flowers in our hair, and kicked off the gardening season with a field trip to an antique and funky garden art shop in Sultan.

Next stop, a water garden nursery where we saw sleeping giant gunneras and met a new plant: the water hawthorn. One greenhouse was full of Hawthorns in full bloom with an amazingly fragrance. Deep breaths were taken by all.

We came home with a variety of odd but memorable treasures: from jars of marbles, jars of buttons, a dinner bell triangle, a cow skull, a pencil sharpener, a book about cooking with spirits, and boxes of doughnuts for our Sunday family breakfasts.

What's left in the garden soup

Today we woke up to an inch of snow! Enough already! It didn't take long to melt off or prevent us from heading outside to enjoy some sunshine and do some gardening. Boots on, we tromped out into the fresh spring air, to plant a cherry tree, a gooseberry bush, two tree roses and some Merion Blackberries.

Molly and Avril also helped clean up the veggie garden. It was fun to find some colorful, edible treasures left over amongst the winter tattered veggie beds.

Freshly washed beets, carrots, scallions and leeks ready for the soup pot.

Avril singing and stir'n the veggies in the pot.

Saute chopped leeks, scallions in 2 Tablespoons butter and two large circles of Olive Oil.

Add chopped rainbow carrots and four Yukon Gold potatoes.

Some shakes of Salt and Pepper.

Cook until wilted.

Add two boxes chicken broth.

Boil until veggies are tender.

Use stick blender to puree and further cream the soup or leave chunky, your choice.

Delish!

lucky four leaf

Just before dusk, Avril and I went out to find our lucky four leaf and hunt for leprechauns and fairies. We didn't see any magical little people, but did pet some visiting dogs and came across a patch of lucky four leaves. May this luck we found travel from us to you.

seedling smiles

One of our favorite things to do this time of year is start seeds indoors. Years ago, Matt built us a fantastic grow stand. It has four lights and three shelves to hold the flats. Just last weekend we set everything up and got four flats of seeds going. It was only days before we started to see our first sweet little greenies.

It is hard not to want to start everything all at once. But years of having far to many lanky plants that can't go outside yet due to cold weather, have taught me to sequence the seeds we start indoors. We started this month with flowers and plants for pots that take a while to reach bloom size (coleus, geranium, verbascum, salvia, petunia, stock and nicotianna sylvestres). Then next weekend we'll start Cole crops: broccoli, cabbage and brussel sprouts. Next month we'll get the hot crops: peppers, eggplants and tomatoes seeds tucked into little pots.

Aidan started some heart shaped strawberries... they are setting their third leaves now! He is already talking about what he's going to make with his little berries. So cute...

Geranium seeds germinate quite well!

Stock is such a wonderful fragrant flower, can't wait to tuck this little babies into pots and smell their blooms some day!

sweet & soft pussy willows

The ground may be covered with snow, but now is the time to cherish one of the harbingers of spring: Salix discolor or Pussy Willows. The sweet soft little catkins are irresistible against little fingers and cheeks. These cuttings I picked off a huge bush near a wetland field, are starting to root in the vase. They will go out into the ground in a sunny location on our property once the danger of frost has passed.

I also learned recently that Pussy willows are dioecious. Meaning there are male pussy willow trees and female pussy willow trees. The buds, or catkins, on the male pussy willow trees look different from those on the females. The male catkins are showier, and it is the branches of the male trees that we seek for their catkins. The catkins of males yield numerous tiny staminate (stamen with pollen) flowers later in spring. I must have picked these branches from a male tree, as they are starting to produce pollen in the vase.

Moonset, sunset

Today we enjoyed a crisp, clear early morning moonset and a crisp clear sunset. Ahhh so lovely.

Melting snowflowers...

I couldn't resist photographing some of the little lovelies peaking out of the melting snow.

flutter by butterfly

butterfly kisses

and butterfly boots

Busy spring weekend...

Last weekend we enjoyed a busy spring weekend with grandparents. We celebrated grandma Lila's birthday, pruned fruit trees, puttered in the gardens, ate warm scones, and a visited a local garden center.