Planting My Herbs Today

I am so excited for Spring! It's practically here!

I started my day with my coffee and a book and the usual house chores while the kids ate their breakfast and played with their toys. We aren't radical with schooling just yet, and when we do more curricular type things it's always later. Right now they are just too young to go all day every day.

Once awake and finished with chores, I went straight outside to gather as much snow into my bucket as possible. Some melted already so I didn't get as much as I had hoped, fortunately I left pails outside last night which caught a good amount of snow in it along with the buckets and containers that have rain water up to the brim in them. I took my water bottles and filled all of them up as much as I could. I am conserving the remaining rain water/snow for later.

I try to do this each year. It's a blessing for my thirsty plants and I would rather nourish them with rain water than anything from our city tap. I know, I am just finicky that way. It's a personal preference. It isn't that tap water won't help plants, but I feel rain water is best whenever possible. It's why I will collect water from a well known lake if I am all out of rain water at home. Last year we were very dry so I wasn't able to have such an abundance of water as I already have this year. Not even snow, as we barely had any snow to speak of all winter two eyars ago.

I hope this year is different. The large snow banks which turned to pools of puddles outside are instantly soaked up into the earth. Mother Earth is parched.

The rainy days make things a bit more challenging, and stressful, kids hate being cooped up just as much as I do. But at the same time I am so, so grateful for this rain!

I put new potting soil into my pots, sowing and digging as much as I am supposed to for my herbal plants. I'm not planting too much ahead of time, because I don't know when the weather will warm enough for me to replant them outdoors. But I did plant my lavender because germinating will take some time and by that point the weather should be much better and less hostile for it.

I also planted my cilantro, but only one because I prefer to use it fresh when I do and I don't plan to dry it.

I went outside and collected snow to put into the pots that will melt into the soil so as not to overwater them. So far that has been my day, and I feel really accomplished. The kids have managed to keep their toys off the floors so far (which is more than I can say for the bathroom and the tub, but whatever). I see flurries drifting around outside right now. I wonder if it will snow some more? I plan to get the kids outside today, we may even skip over to the park for a bit if the weather permits. :)