The days are getting longer–morning coffee is still imbibed piping hot in the dark, but the sun has made its appearance by the time the kids are off to school. Brian missed the early ferry to work today so we had a rare morning together at the marina with extra cups of fancy caffeine from our local coffee shop. He caught some sweet photos at the water–a mallard lifting off; a reflection of an aquamarine boat; puffs of flowers catching the sunlight. After I dropped him off  I headed home and wandered around our property. I’m especially taken by the cloaks of intricate, lacy lichen on many of our older trees. And I found a January red rose! Delightful.

Tomorrow I’m placing my first seeds order. I’m all aflutter with excitement about it. The list has been growing. I’m also planning out where to put our secret berry garden for the kids. This is going to be one of my favorite places–the idea is to create four walls of berries, with trellises above to capture the growth. There will be little benches inside the walls, and it will be chock-full of all kinds of berries–raspberries, boysenberries, elderberries, strawberries, marionberries… Imagine slipping in to this little wonderland with a journal or a set of friends and just whiling away the hours picking berries to your heart’s content. I can’t wait.

We have just a little bit of time left to do our fruit tree pruning, so that will begin on Wednesday. We’ll have to take it slow; there’s no way we’ll get through all the trees in time.

And we’re working on moving our fence. This is a complicated enterprise, but needs to be done. We’re putting in another long garden bed and it will go where the existing fence is. We’re just beginning to design the area; our work is cut out for us to get the beds set up in time to plant in just a few short weeks.