Signs of Life...

We're having a brisk early morning here which prompted me to scour the garden beds for signs of life.  We have had a brutal winter (for our area)...and I'm not sure what our garden losses are.  My biggest suprise of the year are these mums...

Let me preface this by saying, I very rarely buy or grow flowers.  I appreciate the beauty of cucumber blossoms, the rarety of the rosemary flowers.....and would rather plant things we can eat and/or use since we have such a tiny piece of this earth.  One huge exception is the wisteria...but that does provide shade...  Anyway, we bought a dozen or so mums 2 years ago simply because they were on sale for a very good price AND my daughter was planning her wedding and these were perfect colors.  These are the survivors...there used to be 4 in this pot...but considering the amount of neglect they endure I think they're doing pretty good!

To my amazement, my window box of Chamomile has seeded itself and is sprouting up nicely!

The box of lemon balm is hanging in as well....although I'm not sure it's possible to actually kill this stuff!

We have 2 sage plants that made it through....for the most part.  A little TLC and they should be nice bushes once again....

My little herb garden was not so lucky.  It ended up being turned into a chick brooding pen so that we could get our meat chickens grown during the harsh winter months....

Speaking of meat chickens....the last 3 from our Fall and Winter hatchings should be in the freezer by the end of the week!