Gallery 10 - My (New) Indiana Home in Spring

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Our seventh spring ... spring came so early this year! Mid-March, temps in the 80's, and everything bloomed and leafed out and looked like the beginning of May by the 5th of April!

Indoor blooms - cyclamen, african violet, and jonquils

Magnolia bush in bloom

Annie and Kate and Ben

Annie and Kate harnessed up for the first time this spring

Annie and Kate get spruced up harnesses - pieces gleaned from our day at an auction in Greencastle in early March

Annie and Kate's first buggy ride this spring

One of our white roosters sunbathing in my flowerbed

Forsythia, pussy willows, and magnollia tree in bloom.

View of the flower gardens and windmill from the bedroom window

Our baby chicks from Tractor Supply

Baby chicks - rhode island reds and barred rocks

Baby chicks in their box in our kitchen - we hope they are all pullets!

Rudy Wooster under our kitchen window

Chickens enjoying the sunshine and grass outside our kitchen window

Flower bed behind summer kitchen

Flower bed behind summer kitchen - the vinca in bloom

Front yard daffodils

The daffodils were so pretty this year

Gordon and Cody with their new horse and buggy visit Kate and Annie and Ben

Cody in buggy

Gordon and Cody's new horse and buggy

Horse and buggy

Cody in his new buggy

Cody driving his horse and buggy

Horseshoe drink-holders

Cody looking out back of buggy

Gordon demonstrating buggy features

Cody with his new horse and buggy

horse and buggy

horse and buggy, side view

Kate and Annie join the fun

Ben hitches Kate and Annie and takes them on a ride with Gordon and Cody in their new buggy

And they're off!

There they go down 700!

Spring phlox blooming outside kitchen window - I started it from the phlox in the front yard flower bed a couple of years ago.

Our redbud in bloom - second year

Hazel on her lead

Chiclet on Ben's boards outside the pole barn

Rudy Wooster's Magnificent tail

Our lilac bush in bloom - I pruned it for the first time last year and for the first time it's really prolific!

Our lilac bush in bloom

Rudy and Chiclet moseying

Who's that under that bench?

Plants coming up in summer kitchen flower bed - lilies, vinca, hollyhocks ...

Bluebells from last year's master gardener's show unfolding and tall phlox

Rarer light lilac violet in our bedroom flower bed

Aw, a baby Mayapple coming up along with the ones I purchased from the Master Gardener's Show last year

Our new dogwood tree

Our new dogwood tree from Rural King

Front yard weeping willow

Front porch - we finally set out the lawn furniture

Inside back porch shot

Indian-style blanket - one of my Good Will finds from shopping with Sister-in-law Jenny when she came to visit

Finally got rid of the old curtain rods this winter. These are much easier for an unsophisticated curtain-person like me to deal with. :)

Look how my Jack-in-the-Pulpit has grown! I bought it at the annual Master Gardeners Show a few years back.

Our snowball bush - also purchased at the Master Gardners Show a few years ago (the first one I ever went to) is really growing. It's loaded down with blooms, but because everything bloomed out so early this year, it's gotten frost-bitten a few times.

Kate and Annie at sunset

Spring woods in the distance

Kate and Annie in the pasture

Butterball on the round area rug I found at Trader Buck's Flea Market a couple of week's ago - and decided I could live with - long story - but it involves our very elderly dog), but decided to give our other one (which I still love) a rest for a while. I like the smaller round shape - much easier to clean the wood floor.

Butterball on the round area rug I found at Trader Buck's Flea Market a couple of week's ago

Sister-in-law Jenny gave us a pie safe that belonged to her and Ben's grandmother - so Gustafson's walnut washstand moved into the living room next to the couch to make room. DIdn't think I'd like that - but I really do!

Grandma Couch's pie safe

Ben's kitchen cabinet and Grandma Couch's pie safe

Last summer Dan Altepeter gave us eleven young chickens - 5 of which turned out to be roosters! As they got older, they made people nervous because they run up to them and sort of challenge them. The secret I've found, is to really like them, handle them at night when they roost, and to not respond aggressively when they run up to you, but to greet them and just calmly proceed with whatever you are doing. But most people, including Ben and Bon (who got bit by a chicken when she was a little girl), some of our neighbors, small children, and the mail lady don't know that - so this spring Ben built them this wonderful chicken lot.

Our new chicken lot

Hazel checking out the new chicken lot: " What's this? This didn't used to be here ...."

A Good Will Find from a few years back - I love blue birds!

Just the odd shot - my grandmother's pot holder baby, a chalkware cardinal and a vintage paper towel dispenser

All three cats camped out in the living room - a rare peaceful moment

Our metal chickens from Patty and Warren - and painted/restored by Bon and Ben. Now that our real chickens have their own lot, Bon put these in the flower beds to fool everyone ;)

New chicken lot

Our metal chickens from Patty and Warren - and painted/restored by Bon and Ben. Now that our real chickens have their own lot, Bon put these out to fool everyone ;)

Another shot of the snowball bush on a rare sunny day

Front porch - we finally set out the lawn furniture - Ben taking a break

Planted these orange and violet pansies last October before our Halloween cookout. They never completely died through the winter and are now back in full bloom.

I was laid off in mid-March for a while - just at the beginning of the warm spell, I think, so ...

What I did with my spring vacation

Cleaned out the chicken coops, tore out the old nest boxes which weren't working, and put up a new roosts (actually Ben did that part), I cleaned out the dog house, washed all the bedding, and treated for fleas and ticks which are really early this year. I found out what was wrong with Shorty's legs from my Chicken Keeping Secrets newsletter (I think), and treated her.. Bought and raised 8 baby chicks - two barred rocks, three Rhode Island Reds, and three unidentified - the guy at Tractor Supply said Orlops(?), probably. They're pretty.. Benny built a fenced chicken yard with a little exit from the chicken coop. Gave Hazel a bath. Finished receipts backlog, did income taxes and sales taxes, got refund, found a circular rug for dining room, finished filing, worked on spring clothing/winter clothing, entertained sister Jenny for a visit, and finally started working outside - did plant flower bed around light post, worked on horse hitch flower bed and peony flower bed and added top soil. Planted dogwood tree ... Took my cousin Luke to meetings. Cleaned house, but it needs it again. And now I have to do May business property taxes. Oh, yeah and worked through Chapters three and four on CSS and redid the top pages of my photography and second looks business websites with css and proper html coding. Watched the hyacinths, forsythia, pussy willows, tulips, and daffodils wax and wane - and the magnolia, redbud, crabapple, and dogwood bloom and leaf. Now the snowballs, spirea, mustard and the locust trees are in bloom - and it's only April 24th. And a week later I was called back to work - and driving home one evening I noticed the corn is up in the fields - and it's only April 27th!

Clematis in bloom- I put in a new flower bed around the utility pole with the climbing roses and black-eyed susans and clematis

Finally getting some good gardening days in now that I'm done with taxes - got the dahlias planted and all the bricks back in place in the horse hitch flower bed.