Signs of Life in the Garden

I think it might be possible that we have crested the mountain of winter and are now heading downhill to spring- our garden thinks so, anyway, and I really hope it's right! . On a rare sunny day yesterday, I took a wander through the garden, and found that little growing things are popping up all over the place!

(Click on Photos to Enlarge)

Garlic sprouts! All that rabbit manure and straw kept them nice and warm until they were brave enough to show their heads. 

I had given up on the miner's lettuce I planted three weeks ago, after its tent was collapsed by wind, rain, and three inches of snow. We took the reemay off last week, and then yesterday I found these lovely little sprouts amid a thick layer of frost!

The rhubarb is putting up new little crumpled leaves. They look amazing up close in the sunlight.

Upstairs under the lights, my little micro greens are coming along very nicely. The potting mix I made using our homemade compost appears to be working wonders!

 

And finally, with the days getting longer, Mimi has started to lay! She's not very regular about it yet, but we get five eggs at least three days a week. Vivian still hasn't given us any green eggs, and Matt began to lobby again for turning her into soup. I struck a deal with him that we can't butcher her until we butcher our first rabbit (a fairly safe bet, it turns out, as mama rabbit offed her first litter of kits, but that's another story entirely), but now I am wondering if I might go back on that- yesterday Vivian not only broke into the garden twice, but sat on another hen's egg and broke it. She won't be around much longer if she keeps that up. 

Mimi in the sun. 

We've enjoyed two sunny (but cold) days after a week of endless heavy rain and lots of flooding south of here, but tomorrow it's back to the rain. We're going to escape it, though, if only for a day- we're headed up to Mt. Hood tomorrow with a group of friends for a snowshoeing/cross-country ski expedition!