My little one is 2 months old now and starting to form a schedule. The last few week I have spent most of my time feeding the Riley it seems. Turns out he was comfort nursing and not sleeping for more than an hour through the night because he had Acid Reflux and keeping him propped up didn’t help. Reluctantly, he went on meds and is now sleeping 5 hours at night and much happier. So, time to get back to blogging. Sorry for my long absence, but my free time was spent out in the garden. Now I am back.

To kick off my return, and to celebrate my blog’s 1st birthday, I have decided to  do daily posts for the next month. I picked the theme of Garden ABC’s in honor of Riley. Each day I will write a post on a topic starting with a letter of the alphabet until I get to z. Look for my first post in the next few days.

April brought an abundance of rain to my garden. It was nice to forgo the watering, but it was a challenge to get all the planting finished. I planted out the cabbage, broccoli, and lettuce a lot later than I had wanted so this means the rest of my crops may have to wait longer to go into the ground as well.

The April rains also brought a bounty of weeds. I was able to keep the weeds out of the beds pretty easily, but the dandelions and bind weed are threatening to take over the rest of my garden. I try to make it out every day to pull the bind weed. This is my only strategy to get rid of it from my beds. If I keep the leaves from producing energy for the roots, they will eventually peter out and die. That is the theory anyway.

Despite the rains, my April garden was full of onions, leeks, carrots (or at least the seeds), spinach, cabbage, broccoli,  peas and lettuce. Inside my peppers, tomatoes, and eggplants where growing fat under grow lights.  The weather was cold with several frosts and I longed for the hot days of May.

I didn’t make it outside much in the month of march. My little bundle of joy kept me pretty busy inside. This year, march was very different than last year. Last year march brought temperatures soaring into the 80′s and my garden was full of peas, cabbage, broccoli, kohlrabi, potatoes, onions, and spinach. This year, march seemed to barely make it into the 40′s  and everything was still inside under grow lights, except the onions.

Despite the cold weather, I did get out to do some light yard work. I turned the compost pile, pulled early sprouting weeds, planted onions, and tidied up the herb garden.

Need I say more? God blessed Handy Hubby and I with a beautiful, healthy baby boy three weeks sooner than we were expecting. Riley was born on March 3rd, a birthday he shares with a Grandmother, at 3:44am. Six pounds, 11 ounces and 19.5 inches long, he quickly stole the hearts of everyone who saw him.

He i now 3 weeks old. Time has really flown! He is such a good baby, but takes up a lot of my time right now. More on him and updates on my garden coming soon!

I have had a couple of books on my Amazon wish list that I have been putting off getting because they are more or less novel-type books instead of reference books. I love reading, but I don’t very often have time to curl up on the couch and read a book from cover to cover. I would much rather listen to an audiobook while completing chores around the house.

As luck would have it, another library in Ohio happened to have an audiobook of one of the books I was most anxious to read. Food, Animal, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver. I placed a hold on it and picked it up at my local library a few days later. I started listening to it Friday afternoon and finished it before the end of the weekend.

The book follows a family of four as they attempt to eat only locally grown food for an entire year. They grow a lot of produce in there garden, raise some chickens, and get nearly everything else they need from farmers markets, local meat producers, and a local mill.

Throughout the book, the author offers valuable insight regarding the current food culture. Before reading this book, I had never really thought about the process of how “fresh” produce ends up in the grocery store. I knew how to grow vegetables and when they would be in season, but I had never stopped to think about how much gas and energy was wasted so I could eat asparagus in the fall. The typical grocery store produce section is full of lies in the winter. Fresh strawberries, green beans, and stacks of tomatoes all giving the impression that seasons are a thing of the past. Who cares if my grocery store tomato has to travel from the other side of the country and has absolutely no flavor as long as I can have them in January….. right?

Reading this book has made me appreciate even more that our small rural town has a farmers market every Saturday from May to October and a local organic, free range meat and dairy producer. I am going to make the effort this growing season to buy more of what my garden can not provide locally. I urge all of you to read this book. It will open your eyes even more to the importance of keeping food dollars inside the community and eating truly good quality produce grown within miles of your home.