Well spring has sprung!!!! Thank you God!!! I love spring with all of its promise. This is when you just know you will get all of those projects done that you want to do, you will keep all of the weeds out of the garden, stay up late each night, get up early each morning, there are no limits to what you will accomplish in the spring!!!! Now by the time august comes around...that is another story!! Ha, ha.

Well today it was rainy to start. After getting all of the fecen post holes dug yesterday, we couldn't put the post in anyways. So the girls and I did house work, Cale and Brady did some cleaning and organizing in the barn. Then we split wood and started filling the shed for next wnter. We had a big pile of wood to split, and by the time we had it all done and stacked inside the shed, it is now about 1/2 full again. It is nice to have the kids to help!! But my back still hurts tonight!! After a late supper we sat on the porch a while and now we are off to bed soon. The kids want to hunt mushrooms tomorrow and we are going to a fish fry tomorrow evening. This is always a busy time of year for us, and with the yard sale coming up Saturday it is even more so than usual. I want to do a lot of baking this week to sell also. So it will be a busy week, but nice t rest tomorrow!!! Have a good week everyone.

-- Melissa in SE Ohio (me@home.net), April 13, 2002

Answers

It was beautiful here at home today. I walked the dog, and then Ann and I loaded the car with a pitch fork, a shovel and 4 32 gallon tash cans plus 10 plastic bags.

We went and loaded up on compost and aged (aging actually) mulch.

We spread it around, and put down some cardboard and paper and covered with mulch. We have an area under our clothes line back to the patio where we keep mulch, to discourage Sam our Husky/Shepherd from "going" there. Then we spinkled it with some funky rainwater from our collection vat (an old 55 gallon pickle barrel).

10 pm, and we still have the windows open!

-- Rick in SW West Virginia (Rick_122@hotmail.com), April 13, 2002.

Started out gloomy and overcast here in Al and then the sun peeked out late this afternoon..we splurged and went out for breakfast this morning..I LIKE that idea! We did that last week too..maybe it will become a habit...I spent the majority of the day transcribing two Civil War letters before the pencil writing fades..we have quite a collection of them, and I'm trying to get through them all one by one. They are under cover and free from air and moisture, but they will still fade over time. One of the letters today made me laugh..from a wife to her husband, she was reminiscing over how "forward" she had been to allow him to hold her hand when they were not yet married..good thing she cannot see the world today! I spent the afternoon on the porch, painstakingly transferring those tiny little growing plants from seedling containers to larger pots. I dislike doing that! But now that it's done, we have a bunch of veggies on the porch, waiting to get big enough to make the next step into the raised beds in the garden..now I have to get all that dirt out from my fingernails before church in the morning. Still waiting for my banty hen to hatch our first bunch of chicks..no peeps from the coop yet today! I watched Godzilla, our rooster, chase away a huge crow who had come down with the intent of sharing the chicken feed in front of the coop when the rain stopped. Godzilla lived up to his name and I don't thik the crow will return anytime soon! I managed to cook supper myself tonight..pasta with a simple meat sauce and salad..now I'm truly pooped and looking forward to bedtime!

-- lesley (martchas@bellsouth.net), April 13, 2002.

I got spring fever and blew my budget on more flowers. We had 2 inches of rain today with gusting wind. (grump, grump, grump) The forecast doesn't look any better.

-- Laura (Ladybugwrangler@hotmail.com), April 14, 2002.