'Tis almost Spring, we had a few beautiful sunny days and the buds of the red maples on the edge of the orchard are starting to open.

The male flowers (catkins) of the hazelnuts that have been slowly developing for weeks are starting to release their yellow pollen as, just in time, the female flowers have appeared as well.

 

Isn't it funny how their fertile parts rather compare to ours in size, the female flowers are those tiny red ones whereas the male parts of course are those long, dangly things ..

The first little daisies have appeared in the grass, although the poor things weren't around for very long since James decided to do the first mow of the season:

The grass never went dormant this winter, it kept looking very green and even grew some. It's what happens in a state with moderate temperatures and lots of rain ..

I've cleaned up some more around my raised vegetable beds and rearranged the bamboo stakes in teepees instead of the trellis' I made last year.
I think it will work better this way when adding the netting in the coming month.

I removed the top slats of the pallets as well, the ones that I had left initially to divide each bed into 9 squares, as you can see in this old picture from last year ..

It turns out that slugs love to hide under these during the day, where it's nice and cool(er) and wet, and than appear at night to help themselves to a vegetable Smörgåsbord!
I just used some string instead to make the squares. We'll see ..

On closer inspection of the beds I discovered that the mint, chives and parsley survived the winter. Cool!

I did a little project in the house this week, I replaced the old and somewhat sagging foam of the couch and our two Ikea POÄNG-chair pillows with new foam I'd ordered online.

Cutting the foam with a bread-knife was surprisingly easy, but wrestling the foam back into the covers was a whole 'nother story!

                                                          

By the time it was done my arms were sore and I had the sweat on my back!

           

Of course I forgot to take before and afters but you might see here in a zoomed-in old picture of last week (left) that I went with an inch thicker foam (right) for the chairs.
My hope is that it will be more comfortable for that 'pain in my butt' (piriformis syndrome), that I can't seem to get rid of. The old foam had compacted so much that it was like sitting on a plank, which doesn't help of course. We'll see ..

With St. Patrick's day coming up I already baked some Irish Soda Bread, probably the most easy bread to make:

Like last year I divided the dough in two and added raisins in one of the loaves. Of course 'somebody' already had to try some .. the verdict: delicious!



By searching for something unrelated in the freezer I also found a roll of leftover pumpkin-chocolate chip cookie-dough way down at the bottom.
I made them last November, froze half, and apparently forgot about it ..

                                   

So, since we conveniently happened to be out of cookies, into the oven they went as well!

OK, that's it for another week.
Like I said, Spring is almost here and we're having a few beautiful days right now with sunshine, blue skies and temperatures in the low 60'!

Time to move our happy hour outside again! Cheers!