Life, Times and Thoughts of Ev

I've been pretty sick since last Friday.  Just with a weird cold that won't leave my throat.  Speaking has been the most difficult thing, and singing is out of the question.  My voice breaks in the oddest places.   However, until yesterday I didn't really get to relax my voice because we've had to continue the semblance of normality, with the kids off of school one day, the excitement of having the chicks in the house, and all of the regular activities that we had committed to. 

Yesterday I slept until 1:00, waking to help with lunches and getting ready for school, taking some time to water and move plants outside, and cancelling my activities.  By evening I was ready to do something a bit more active again.    The girls and I went outside to tackle some of this:

I mulched prettily heavily in the fall with leaves so it doesn't look great.  The bottom level of leaves has composted down a bit, leaving a layer of fairly heavily packed leaves and then dry ones on top.  We're uncovering lots of good stuff.  

The old strawberry patch is looking healthy.  The new one looks a bit sad, but it'll perk up.  The onions and shallots are still a surprise to me.  After raking away a layer of leaves we found these:

A full onion, bigger than any I harvested last fall!

More onions - I'll leave them alone and see what they do.

A clump of what I assume are shallots

I think I'll have to add more onions to these areas so that I know where to find them this fall.  They look great though.  Will the full onion turn to mush or will it continue to grow?  It's not showing signs of green so I might just harvest that one.

So today, although my voice still isn't good and I'm starting to tire already at 10:45 am, I'm pretending I'm not sick and trying to function as I normally would.  I've done laundry, tended to plants and chicks, bread is rising and I might tackle this area of the garden next before that cottoneaster hedge fully leafs out.

This is an area where I continually fight quack grass and I'd like to see my brick path again.  It's under there somewhere!

And then by 2:00 I'm sure I'll crash.  With my terrible voice, I'm free to attend book club this week without the guilt of missing choir.  I haven't read the book though!   I've got two days to read at least enough to know what they are talking about.