Is spring here?

Ahhh, warmer temperatures and very little snow means I want to do everything outdoors all at once. Here is a project that killed two birds with one stone... I never liked that expression but cant think of another one that fits. The alder bushes we cut a year or so ago are back in full force and I needed another compost container handier to the back door of the chicken house for the floor cleanings. Voila! Now those pesky alders are doing something useful being a compost bin. Some nipping, some hammering and some weaving, out in the fresh air, and it didn't cost a cent.

Indoors, the cloth diapers for Haitian babies has taken over the dining room table, floor, chairs...looks like a sweatshop in there the last while. Yesterday some ladies at the Vineyard church pitched in and in a couple of hours we had over 60 made. There was a great donation today of plastic pants, and here is everything packed and ready to go. I have 115 diapers jammed in a suitcase with nooks and crannies filled with onesies and sleepers. As far as I know they are travelling to Haiti with a journalist from the Montreal Gazette who will return to that country in a couple of weeks.

     We are soooo lucky to live in a peaceful and relatively prosperous place.

Going thru a lot of wood...

We're in the second week of a bitter cold snap so I am working on projects that can be done near the wood stove. This is a pile of garden aprons in the making. I sold six last year in our shop at the harbor so being an optimist I have eight in the works for next summer.

I've had some donations of flannelette sheets and receiving blankets, so the diapers for Haiti project is ongoing, with the piles of diapers growing daily. I like to jump from one project to another so the day stays interesting. I was surprised at Shoppers Drug Mart yesterday, when I asked for diaper pins and plastic pants the young sales girl looked at me like I was from Mars. Okaaaay... the pampers generation, right. Its going to take some hunting to locate some pins and pants.                                                                                                                                                               

I am feeling SO organised today. I sorted out all my seed packages into an old empty photo album, with little tags to identify what is where. Usually they live in a tangled together mess in an ice cream bucket. Today the onions and leeks went into the potting soil, as well as some oriental vegetables and greens I've never tried before, like corn salad, arugula, and radiccio. Next will be some perennial flowers, butterfly bush and others. The spinach and radish planted in early january in the greenhouse bed is doing well . I have made a hoop and plastic tunnel over the bed with pvc pipe. During these cold but sunny days the bed absorbs a lot of solar heat to be released after sundown. At night the 4 layers of plastic are pulled over the hoops and a couple of quilts thrown on top, to get the greens thru safely to the next day. Yesterday I figured we had saved enough from not having to buy organic salad greens all winter that I could treat myself to a rotating salad washer/spinner. Nifty!