I can tell spring is almost here...

I can tell spring is almost here... Sunday, February 27, 2011 @ 5:24 PM

I pretty much have a love-hate relationship with spring. Around this time of year, my skin gets really itchy. A little eczema here, a lot of eczema there. Even worse, my face gets strange itchy bumps that I've neglected to get checked for 2 years now. But I refuse to say a bit of itchiness dispels all my happiness from this season. Afterall, it is spring for goodness sake. Flowers here! Flowers there! Flowers everywhere! So lovely! And so I'll just have to be itchin' myself as I enjoy the pretty pop of colors.

Because Southern Californian weather is relatively warm all the time, growing tulips and poppies has been a tough venture. One of the workers at a nearby nursery suggested to freeze the tulip bulbs before poking them into the ground. Usually I'm a terrible instructions-follower...so when she told me that, it just went straight through my puny brain. But of course, my sister, who likes to do things the "right way" (whatever that means), made me store them in the cold like I was told to do. And so I reluctantly left them in the fridge (without any apples, because apparently apples emit some chemicals that will kill the bulbs) for about 10 weeks.

And I guess that was certainly the "right way" because once I stuck them in the ground, they exploded out of the pots after just a week! I was pretty shocked and I'm not sure if that's supposed to happen but they're looking healthy and green. Except for a few of them, because my chickens got to the planter box before me. (Those chickens are out to get me!)

In the pots below are a few of the tulip bulbs that grew just after a week and half. They're sitting in pots that I painted chalk-paint over. I keep forgetting to actually write something artsy on the pot with the chalk though. I figure it would be useless to do that anyway since it's been raining cats and dogs lately...(then I'd get a chalky puddle that I'd have to clean just because I wanted to draw)

My sister discovered that the chicken we thought was a rooster is actually a chicken. She had been laying her eggs in the corner of our garden this whole time! At first, my sister thought the eggs were snake eggs...

Here they are, all collected and in a basket. The eggs have a slightly blue-green tint that's so pretty to look at. We didn't know what to do with all these eggs so my sister just boiled them, Ina Garten's way, which results in perfectly boiled eggs all the time.

Ina Garten's Hard Boiled Eggs:

Ingredients:
-eggs

Directions:
1. Put the eggs in a saucepan filled with just enough cold water to cover them.
2. Bring the water to a boil and then turn off the heat. Let the eggs sit in the pan for 5 minutes.
3. Remove the eggs to a bowl and let rest for 2 minutes. When the eggs are cool enough to handle, crack the eggs on each side and roll them back and forth with your hand, breaking the shell. Discard the shell.

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