The yard and gardens

 I have a small raised bed garden. Only two of the three beds are planted now. The middle one is empty till about mid-June.

 My husband and I found this mailbox in his old family dump in the woods, over 20 years ago. I brought it home and painted 'Sparrowgrass' on it. That was the name of my first blog, back in 2008. The flag is always up because there are messages to the birds, bees and other wildings always waiting to be delivered by the postman that I never see. He's out there, though.

 When I dig in this dirt, I find all kinds of artifacts. The house is circa 1880 or so-I find stuff from the different families who lived here. I made some tufa cement pots and with the leftover I made a slab and embedded some artifacts in the cement.

 I found an army man so he's guarding part of the garden.

 The birds leave feathers for me to gather.

 The rhubarb is getting bigger.

 Potatoes are in this bed. I put fencing around the garden beds to keep critters out.

 This flower bed is full of salvia, fennel, Russian sage and forget-me-nots.

 This is our home. That is a view of our kitchen porch, and that looks out onto the gardens.

 That part of the house, just out of sight from the kitchen porch, is my studio. The window to the right is the one I look out from when I'm painting.

 I made some rock beds, and hurt my back doing it-about 10 years ago. Thankfully, if I'm careful I can avoid back pain now-but I've had to learn what I can and can't do.

 Peonies coming up.

 And this is the queen of the place, my goose, Sam Houston. She is a girl, but when we got 4 baby geese 19 years ago, they were so tiny we didn't know if they were boys or girls. We named them all boy's names. Sam is the only one left. I lost Titus last September. The other geese were Corneilius and Atticus.

 Sam loves me. She is spoiled like crazy. I hold her on my lap and she falls asleep. She has laid 4 eggs this year. She'll be 19 years old in June.

 This is our view from the back of our house-there are farm fields beyond the trees. It's very quiet here. We live in the beautiful Finger Lakes area of New York. 

 And this is how far along our lilacs are this year-way behind normal. It will be mid-May before they are blooming. We had a hard frost just this morning.

 This is our front porch. My studio goes out onto this porch.

 The garden right by the front porch.

 Skunk cabbage that I transplanted ages ago.

And my little seedlings-tomato, marigold, bushel gourd and green amaranth. So anxious for warm weather and to be out in my garden.

Thank you for touring my yard with me today!