The Handwork Chronicles: Make a little birdhouse in your soul

My thumb is starting to turn green just thinking about spring.

I'm starting to plan the layout of the garden and all our landscaping projects, but it's such a challenge to have a giant blank slate to deal with. I want to make the best use of every square inch of the area!

I need to have it figured out soon because I'm hoping to start some seeds in the next few weeks.

I can hear my mom's heart starting to beat faster. She's probably locking her door right now. Two years ago I was at her house over New Year's. We were snowed in, so I thought "What better time to start some seeds?" (In her neck of the woods, a better time would have been March or April, but I digress...). I went nuts. I planted tomatoes, zucchini, cantaloupe, a variety of herbs, and a few other things that I've blocked from memory. I set up trays with those little compressed peat moss disks in them. They were in every window sill in every room in her house. They started to grow. And then some of them just really took off. Pretty soon she was transplanting the tomato plants into pots. Then she moved them to bigger pots. Then she brought folding tables into her bedroom to hold all the pots. When they were so big that they could attack her in her sleep, I knew I had messed up.

By early May, she couldn't stand it anymore. Against her better judgment, she finally planted them outside. I think they lasted for about two days before most of them were killed by a late frost. I learned my lesson.

To prevent any premature seed sprouting, I'm distracting myself by looking for fun "yard art" for the garden. My father-in-law's property is covered in bird houses (by a previous owner with a great sense of humor), and it is so much fun to walk around and discover them. The other day when I was rummaging around on the Origin Crafts site, I found these fun little abodes for my feathered friends.

I love the covered porch on the one in the middle, below.