I think maybe Jon needs to start a blog. He has a lot of opinions about how often I should post, and what I should post about. He’s really very bossy.

Today he would like to see a picture of the onions and garlic I harvested the other day.

He can walk into the craft room and look at them himself. He can pick them up, smell them, peel them, cut them, and eat them. But I guess it’s not real until there’s been a picture on my blog.

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The garlic I planted last fall is growing beautifully.

Not too long now til we’ll be snipping snapes for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

Also growing beautifully are the ajuga. These grew in my parents’ back yard, and when they moved a few were transplanted here. For me, a yard is not a yard without their springtime splash of purple.

Speaking of splashes – oceans, really – of purple, the violets continue to expand their territory.

This bee seemed to be taking as much enjoyment from them as I was. With each landing, her weight pulled the flower head down to the ground. Then she’d catapult off to the next blossom. I imagined her calling, “Wheeee!”

Today I got a pot of beans started on the stove and reached into the drawer for a head of garlic. What did I find? Four heads. Just four heads of garlic left from my first garlic harvest. I knew the supply was dwindling, but I had on some level allowed myself to imagine a little magic going on in my kitchen – a drawer that never emptied, home-grown garlic always at hand.

Luckily there’s another kind of magic happening out in my yard. Ordered in September, planted in October:

8 oz German Red Garlic
1 lb Music Garlic
8 oz Premium Northern White Garlic
8 oz Purple Glazer Garlic

Although it’s double what I planted last year, and enough to keep the vampires away for sure, I’m making a mental note on this snowy January day that there’d be no harm in planting a little extra this fall.

Just for Anna, here’s some of what’s going on at our house:

The beehive got taller.

There are lots of bees in there, and the smell of beeswax is amazing.

The hydrangea are putting on quite a show.

I’m growing summer squash and zucchini for the first time.

The craft room smells like garlic.

Critters are eating all our strawberries.

And if this is what your ‘weeds’ look like, don’t pull them – they’re tall phlox.