Getting rolled under this one even as I post.

I planted twenty-seven new perennials in the front yard in two hours Sunday night…using a pick axe to dig holes in the clay. That was just the icing on the cake of a physical labor weekend that comprised seven straight hours of shoveling compost into a wheelbarrow, muscling it out of the woods, across the field, and into my garden, then shoveling it out of the wheelbarrow and around the seedlings. A ridiculous exertion especially considering the tractor that sat idly by much of the day because the compost pile was getting too low to scoop with the bucket, and the tractor’s too big to fit in the garden. The next garden I make is going to be tractor-accessible!

For strawberry cake!

A friend gifted me with 10 lbs. of strawberries that he just picked out of the field at Seaman’s Orchard in Roseland, Va. All who enjoyed them agreed that they were the best berries in memory. Go pick some today before they’re gone!

The bluebirds are at it once more, again with five eggs.

This time around I am trying to be a better bluebird hostess and check the eggs every day. I hope I will get a better sense of how the babies develop. Then when they disappear, I can more accurately determine if they fledged or were eaten.