Stop -See - Smell the Blossoms

  I have been working in the gardens around our house for several weeks, not every single day, but depending on the weather and what else we have going on here at Windmill Farm.  These gardens have to be clipped, weeded, raked and pruned now because once I start planting seriously in my vegetable gardens I rarely have time.  I pruned back all the roses, trimmed my hydrangeas, fertilized the roses with the systemic feed, but most of my time and energy was spent hacking back IVY!!!  I totally hate ivy, but my wonderful husband Frank loves it so it is a marriage/garden compromise.  When I hack away at it, he always comes over to see how much I have cut, worried that I will kill it.  As most of the world knows, you just can't kill ivy and most people hate it like I do.  But it had really taken over the front of our house, in fact one of my ladies who came to our coupon class said she always refers to our house as the ivy house!!!  Not what I would want people to remember when they see our gardens.  Well, at least for a week or so, the front entrance is free of wondering ivy, as I sleep it will be creeping in again.

   Gridley and most of Butte County is ablaze with beautiful pink and white blossoms everyplace.  If you happen to live up in the foothills or outside of our area, it is worth a drive on Hwy 70 and Hwy 99 to see the magic of nature happening.  Our orchard has a wide variety of fruit trees, so each is blooming at different times.  I have pink blossoms from the peach trees; white blossoms from our apricot trees; and the plum and pluot trees are both pink and white.  The cherry trees are getting close, you just see hints of pink on the stems.  Yesterday I just stood in the middle of the orchard and looked up to view nature at its' finest. 

The tulip trees are blooming also.  There are many old farms in our area and some yards have the biggest and most spectacular Magnolia trees that are full of "tulip" flowers, some are as big as a hand.  I have a few that we planted when we moved here that are getting pretty big and I can't help myself to cut a few to bring into the house.

  On a sad note, our Resident Pheasant is gone.  I last saw him February 25th.  It was a terrible windy day, so I thought he wasn't around because it was such a horrible day.  But since then, he is not here.  We so miss him, he was always outside waiting for us to come out and let his lady chickens out or was calling to us from around the farm.  I guess we have been just lucky to have him here as our "pet" for almost 4 years.  I keep telling myself maybe he is out visiting an old girlfriend, one from his own species!!!  He has been gone a few times before, but he has never been gone this long.  He brought us and all the visitors to our farm, great joy to be able to see one up so close, he was so beautiful and was a pretty proud pheasant cruising around the place with his favorite blonds-the Buff Orphington chickens.