Weekly Update: 4.12.26
Of Starting Our Garden
It was a beautiful Easter week. The alternating sunshine and rain fueled the annual greening, with each day seeming more lovely than the day before. Tiny wildflowers now accent the grasses, and some of our domestic plants are blooming as well. We enjoyed spending lots of time outside — gardening and just enjoying nature.
We had a belated birthday celebration for Bonnie-Jean on Easter Monday. We sisters had an actual day off, which rarely happens. We started the day by making our first ever batch of European-style fermented butter. Bonnie had seen several Instagram Reels on how the butter is made, and it looked so simple, we decided to try it. We mixed a quart of heavy cream with a half cup of yogurt in a mason jar last Saturday morning, leaving it out at room temperature until Sunday night. We chilled it at that point, then whipped it until it became butter on Monday morning. The recipe called for salt, but we skipped this as Bonnie sometimes prefers unsalted butter. The result was delicious — sweet, creamy butter with the slightest tang. We served the butter on homemade sourdough bread with some cherry jam we whipped up last week. It was quite the treat.
We spent the rest of the day watching TV and snacking on a somewhat redneck Easter charcuterie spread.
On Tuesday, we started in on some spring cleaning. Our new curtains and curtain rods arrived in the mail, but we don’t want to put them up on dirty windows. We also did some reorganizing: we cleaned off our lighted plant shelf so we could start our seeds. We had been storing appliances on the shelf over the winter, and we had to do some shuffling around to find them a new home. We managed the task, however, and dispersed things so efficiently, the house doesn’t look any more cluttered than it did before. While most of us cleaned, our dad helped Bonnie-Jean and then Grace install trim in our loft windows. Our new curtain rods install on the trim, so we needed the windows finished.
Tuesday evening, we planted six flats of seeds — each containing 72 seedlings. There is one flat of tomatoes (four varieties), one of peppers (three varieties), and another of okra (all one variety — some Clemson Spineless we had leftover from last year). We planted one flat of herbs — two varieties of basil and some cilantro. Lastly, we have two flats of flowers — two types of zinnias along with cosmos and marigolds. We kept the flats damp, and by the weekend, we had little zinnias and cosmos popping up.
For the next couple days, we started our mornings in the garden. I worked on repairing trellises that winter left a bit worse for wear. My sisters and nieces worked on breaking up the soil and prepping rows for new plants.
Grace and I worked a bit on our shelves, though we are still dealing with finish issues. After we tried adding additional stain to a couple boards, we made the decision to sand several down and start over, which was rather discouraging. Still, the weather was lovely — and our dogs kept us company.
On the bright side, we think we found a wild plum patch growing just beyond our garden. We could be wrong, but the fluffy white trees certainly look like wild plum trees. Grace did some brush cutting and weed eating in the area so that we can keep an eye on the trees and see if they fruit this summer.
Speaking of fruit trees, we also started spraying our apples with a fungus prevention routine. Our niece Chloe took initiative, asking when we needed to start spraying the new leaves. We had issues with cedar apple rust last year, and we are hoping this year will be better. We started the trees on a baking soda routine that we hope will make a difference. Bonnie-Jean also pruned the persimmon tree we found last year.
It was the most outdoorsy week we’ve had in awhile, and it was good for our souls. It was such a delight to get started in our garden again, to feel the dirt between our fingers and beneath our toes. It felt good to be so immersed in life itself, to put on hats and overalls and still get a bit sunburned. Missouri’s last frost date is less than two weeks away, and I’m already counting how many things can be started in the ground by the end of the month. This week felt like a new beginning, as if the year is finally starting for real. We are all here for it.
