April

Sunshine, flowers, and birds chirping at 5 am.

I love this time of year - before the humidity comes, before the bugs come out... when the days are pleasant and warm, but not yet hot.

We took the month of April to make headway on a lot of projects. At the top of the list, we got new products launched from our Woodshop. We now have some beautiful handmade items in the storefront that have been designed and crafted by my husband. Here's a look at one of my favorites - a cookbook stand - which I personally requested for production.

Behind the scenes, we've been landscaping and cleaning things up around the property.

We've realized the garden set-up hasn't been ideal for our needs, so we reconfigured the layout.

Instead of having one really large garden that is hard to manage with hand tools, we're making it more compact, with the vision to do raised beds, enclosed within a fenced yard. We're taking the full size of the garden, and halving it.

This is phase one of a long term vision.

Here you can see the "before" - the entire soil area, with mulch on top, was our previous garden, with a long bed of rhubarb along the backside:

And here is "after", with the rhubarb transplanted to the left, the soil tilled,

and grass seen laid down on the exposed soil:

It doesn't look too different now, but give it a few weeks and the changes will show.

Next year, the posts will connect the fencing, and the raised beds will go inside.

We'll make do this year with a container garden, closer to the house. For now, it's been nice just to be in the garden, transplanting, cleaning up, and dreaming about what's next.