A Berry Good Sign!

My kids could eat their body weight in fruit everyday. The price of organic fruit, especially berries, is nuts. I love to garden, so last year I put in a strawberry patch.

I started with 6 plants and resisted every natural urge to let them flower. (It is recommended that you pick the flowers off of the plants the first year they're in the ground so they put more energy into a good root system instead of into making fruit.)

Those 6 plants sent off runners and made new baby plants. I let each plant form 3 babies, and I removed any additional runners. So this year I have 18 strawberry plants. I went out to weed the bed in preparation for the spring equinox, and found a "berry" good sign!

The presences of earthworms in the garden is a great sign that the soil is happy and fertile, which means healthy plants.

I also spied the plants starting leaf production again. I should start seeing flowers in a few short weeks!

Those weren't the only signs of spring. My chives are coming back in!

The roses are setting leaves.

Walking barefoot around the yard did remind me that we had a little over 3" of snow just 2 days ago. My husband spent the day building an igloo. Sadly, (or not so sadly. I vastly prefer warm weather to cold!) here is all that remains of it.

What is your favorite time of year? Are you planting a garden?