Big catch-up blog!

So...I have been falling far behind on blogging here, because we've been so busy with getting the place ready for the wedding! But what I have been doing is assiduously taking lots of pictures of things we know we want to share with you, so here they are, finally. They are in more or less chronological order.

Here's our backyard in late December--you can see our winter garden flourishing--shortly after Adam laid out new roofing-paper paths, and shortly before Adam's mom Leslie came out for a lovely visit. Toby is always a ready model.




And some more pictures of the paths, which really transformed the backyard--we're very happy with them.





This particular path will be our wedding aisle!



Here's Adam sowing poppy seeds, also at the end of December, along our wedding aisle (and all over the backyard) in the hopes of having a field of poppies to walk through at the wedding.




Adam built us this bed in, impressively, one evening. I was really amazed at his workmanship, and the bed is super-comfortable and sturdy. It did turn out to be a bit higher than he anticipated, so even though my vaulting skills were improving, he eventually shortened the legs to a more "average" bed height.



Here is Adam replacing the greenhouse roof and walls, which were an older, scratched-up, more opaque polycarbonate, with totally clear polycarbonate. What a difference it made!






You can see here how clear the new polycarbonate panels are, especially when you compare them to no barrier at all.



Here's a neat caterpillar I found on a pruned branch while I was pruning our 300 rose bushes. We moved him off to the geraniums, and hope he will be happy there.




Lots of baby tomato plants!




Spring springing at our new old house:

The plum tree



The pear tree


The fig tree



The volunteer fava bean plant, that sprang up from the spot that was covered by a compost bin till we moved in


And here's West Coast Lenny, who is doing some spectacular flowering of his own:




Here, the tomato plants have gotten bigger and been transplanted to six inch pots.




On the same day, onions, peppers, and other delicious things:








Barbara came over last Saturday morning and told us that these brightly-colored caterpillars, which we've been seeing everywhere, are ladybug larvae--so that's great news!





I didn't understand, however, how these relatively large caterpillars turn into ladybugs, till we spotted some in various middle stages of their metamorphosis:










Jeff came over and pointed out a bunch of our beneficial bugs, and said that we have a really thriving little ecosystem here. I am sure we have Tom, the previous owner, to thank for that, since he hadn't used pesticides here for nearly 30 years. The ladybugs seem to love it here, and now that we've had these other good bugs pointed us to us, we are seeing them everywhere.

A couple of beneficial bugs:

These are called "soldier beetles." They are pest predators and, at least according to Wikipedia, also minor pollinators.


I forget what these beetles are called, but like ladybugs and soldier beetles, they are also aphid predators.

Very exciting: we spotted artichokes! Jeff said that based on how many we have right now (two or three visible on each plant) he thinks we'll have "bushels" this summer.

Closer-up:





Even more exciting: first poppies to bloom!





More soon!