A significant rite of passage for me at this time of year is the beginning of my vegetable garden in the south pasture behind the house. Since I have the day off, I got out and began digging. This is an exciting time for the “boys” (goats Buxton and Coal), since I throw the weeds I cull from the garden over the fence for them. There are some early spring weeds they won’t touch, but others they love. After a while of that, I saw that they had stripped a Mimosa branch, which had broken and fallen during the ice storm last month, of its bark. There was another large one across the fence that had all its bark, so I threw it over to them, expecting them to rub their horns on it (and hoping they would, instead of rubbing their horns on the siding). Instead, they began eating the bark off. I had no idea my goats would eat bark.

To my delight, the first blossoms have come out on my fruit trees. I have four peach trees, two plum, two apricot, and two cherry. When I planted my orchard in 2008, the peach lady told me to pull the fruit off in the spring for the first three years, so this is the last year before I start harvesting. On the other end of the pasture, Dorothy has some older peach trees, and some apples and pears, so we can have a few of those.

I didn’t get a tremendous amount of work done in the garden, simply because the springtime is exciting for me, and I wanted to photograph and share it. I have the day off tomorrow, too, so I’ll dig some more then.