Signs of spring

Harvest of overwintered brassicas 

I've been working on the garden for the past week.  I'm starting dye plants from seed, so there's indigo yet to be started, and madder and dyer's chamomile well on their way to being large enough to be planted out.  Potatoes have gone in, although I just bought more.  There's a crabapple tree and a dwarf apple coming home tomorrow, and I planted a new grape vine in a 5-gallon bucket to let it grow more before I submit it to the rambunctious trampling of Theo, the dog.

The two main raised beds are too full with overwintered broccoli, kales, green onions, and garlic to be added to at all, so I've taken up a two-pronged strategy of eating as much as I can and planting in big buckets along the fence line.  I managed to tuck in a few chioggia beet seedlings among the lettuces, and all the peas and some herb plants are in the containers.  Potatoes are in big bins, as are strawberries.

FYI, If you want an amazing overwintered broccoli, plant Purple Peacock Sprouting Broccoli.  The leaves are just as tender and delicious as the florets!

SO much broccoli - this is not the purple peacock - I can't remember which variety this is

A new hen found us.  She's lost and misses her flock, and she's the friendliest chicken I've met.  Also perhaps the most beautiful.  I hope that her owner finds her (we posted on craigslist) since she's feeling lonely.  I'm happy to keep her if she integrates with the flock, though.

 And, of course, I've been spinning and preparing wool.  I have a wool processing class coming up at the co-op, and we'll be working with a local Romney fleece.  I also have been combing a 4-year-old longwool fleece I had put away dirty and recently unearthed and washed.  It's the most gorgeous thing, and I can't believe that it sat on a shelf for so long.  In fact, it was one of the first two fleeces I ever bought.