dirty nails!

Finally spring is really here! We have been spending a ton of time revamping the garden. We tripled the size now. Dug double deep, AND broke up all of the clay underneath with the mattock. We also lay the sod down underneath that all root size up. Later we built a wall to tier our incredibly sloped yard and papa built some little stairs in. We hauled in 10 buckets of compost and have dug holes for posts since we need to put up a deer fence. We found a large amount of netting to use for it.We still need to find posts for, and put up, the deer fencing. As well as finishing my old herb boxes, build our potato boxes.... then plant! It still looks a little rough, though it always does this time of year. ( it was -4 out the other morning!) I had to go take pics, because it looks a lot different from the top picture. It really isn't anything fancy, even though we are proud of the progress! We only used scrap materials for it because it is a rental after all ( it only took us almost 7 years of living here to actually take the plunge and do some more work on it!)

On top of that I have harvested and dried buckets of nettles, made violet medicine, dried violet flowers and made a batch of violet oil for papas tinnitus. I painted the inside floors with linseed oil, cleaned up the workshop... plus the other multitude of busy things that happen in a regular day around here! That is why I haven't written... if you need an excuse!

It looks like papa is layed off for a while. There were only two housing starts in the whole valley this month. 7 permits pulled for anything at all in the whole area. ( I think that the population is around 60 thousand in the entire Valley) Yikes! I hope things pick up. We are enjoying having papa home for the extra couple of days though. I need the break and the boys always have more fun when papa is home. We always get a ton done, plus a bunch o fun along with it!

The kids are incredibly whiny and needy right now. Hayfever is making them stimmy and chaotic. Picked up some fish oil and some enzyme mix that a natural pharmacist made up for us. Hopefully along with some herbs we can get the allergies under control. I feel so badly for the boys. It just looks exausting. I have to encourage them to try to take it easy in a hepa filtered room and just to chill and watch library videos.