As we spring into spring around here, we begin the season of birthdays.  Lili celebrated her 6th birthday last week and today our middle son celebrates his 31st birthday!!  Yes, I’m old enough to have a 32-year-old and young enough to have a 6-year-old and 3-year-old  🙂

Spring is also a time for renewal and this year we are renewing our garden.  We had a garden for several years after moving into our house, but caring for our oldest son who has autism and a seizure disorder, made gardening a challenge.  It got to the point that we had more weeds than vegetables and I may have been able to deal with that if I didn’t have to look next door and see the neighbors immaculate garden.  Okay, even with the neighbor’s garden I couldn’t deal with the weeds, so we gave it up and it went back to grass.  A couple of years ago we put in a couple raised beds, but it didn’t work out very well, so this year we decided to reestablish our garden.  I really didn’t want to purchase a tiller and go thru trying to till up all the grass, so we started putting down layers of newspaper to kill off the grass and brought in some clean soil.  I laid cardboard in between the beds and as hubby mows the grass, we dump the clippings on top of the cardboard.  Hubby also built two raised beds so the girls could have their own little garden areas and then he built two strawberry towers.  Between getting everything set up and all the rain we’ve had, we’ve been a bit slow getting things planted, but we’re beginning to spring into spring – Finally!!!!

Some of the things I love most about spring are the flowers and smells that permeate the air.  In our yard the lilacs and Wisteria are providing amazing scents.  The Wisteria is far from my husband’s favorite trees in the yard.  It takes over everything and will attack you when mowing.  However, when in bloom, it’s beautiful.

As I look around our yard and at our garden, I dream of the day we’ll have the bigger garden, more strawberry towers, blueberry and raspberry bushes, goats, chickens, a horse or two (if Lili has her way) and nothing but our home and landscape in photos.