T his is one of those times where spending a whole weekend outside doing yard work is a luxury. With the sun shining, warm days, toes defrosting and the green, green, green of all things growing, hours spent outside are so invigorating.
The spring kick-off for for our yard work comes when the irrigation water has been turned back on. The irrigation district does this in early April every year.
The water splits off and flows by gravity to our house from a water box just up the hill from us. Amazingly, it's the same water that irrigates the pear and cherry tree orchards down the road from us.
This is the pear orchard down the hill from us, which is in full blossom right now.
Thankfully our irrigation needs are much smaller than that of a working orchard, but still leads to the arduous task of checking that all the sprinkler lines are intact and functioning properly. Hubby uses orange flags to mark which sprinkler heads need maintenance.
All the sunshine, warmth and running water has also lead us to start in on our very new vegetable garden. Hubby carved out a plot by the grape vines. This will be our first vegetable garden at the house. In previous summers, we relied on the Farmer's Market while we busied ourselves with other projects.
Lucy supervised the entire project.
As sprinkler lines were being checked and rearranged, I considered dusting off the old rocking chairs for the porch. But as you can see, we didn't quite get around to that.
But rumor has it that we'll have seventy degree temperatures this week, so I'm sure we'll get them out soon.