Spring forward!

This morning at 2 a.m., our clocks "sprung forward" an hour. As much as we all resent the loss of an hour of our lives (to be recovered in autumn when the clocks switch back), the extra hour of light in the evenings, with all the spring-forward-springiness it represents, is very, very welcome.

This year, daylight savings was accompanied by a nice warmish weekend after several weeks of heavy rain that broke our long drought and turned our golden hills green and our back lawn tall and muddy, so it was that much more special.

We did what any rational family of green-thumbs would do on the first warm weekend after several rainy ones ... we got out in the garden and soaked up some sunshine!

Joe just so happened to be wearing his new orange corduroy Jacob pants, which I finished up this morning. As you may recall, he recently requested that I make him "orange and yellow pants." Later, he amended that to "orange, yellow, and blue pants." In my adult wisdom, I decided that orange and yellow was plenty enough for the outside of the pants, but I used some blue Mickey Mouse fabrics to line the pockets. A little secret blue for Joe.

He seems pretty happy with the result. He insisted on wearing them with his "favorite t-shirt," a Woody shirt (from Toy Story). Good choice, son. Way to rock the cowboy 1970s vibe.

This is my second pair of Jacob pants, and I love this pattern. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know I had a ton of complaints the first time I made it. But if you just ignore the instructions, these sew up fast, and the fit of these pants is just the best. I mean, seriously, those little butt darts! So cute! Check it out.



Best rear end fit ever.

I don't have any pictures of the inside of the pants, but there is buttonhole elastic, and a couple buttons inside the waistband, so the fit can be adjusted just so. Joe loves that - he says these pants are "soft and comfy," which is his highest compliment for an article of clothing.

They are also DISCO-FABULOUS, but Joe hasn't learned that particular vocabulary yet. Which doesn't mean he doesn't know what it feels like, right? Joe knows just what he likes, make no mistake. And when he requested orange and yellow and blue pants, he clearly wanted DISCO-FABULOUS.

Oh. My. Goodness. That right there is the face of a boy who knows he is the apple of his mother's eye. Seriously.

So anyway, back to the garden! Not sure why Joe looks so forlorn here. We all did a little work in the garden this weekend. We pulled up and separated the strawberries, amending the soil and putting down burlap to keep the berries dry.

This is going to be an EPIC year for our strawberry patch!!

You can see how happy we all were to be out on a sunny and green day. Sunshine does a body good.

Joe was happily watching bugs in the dirt until Steve stepped on a termite he was inspecting closely. This was a mistake on Steve's part, and he is very sorry. Joe eventually recovered from his grief when we started a nerf gun battle.

In between getting shot with Nerf darts in the rear end, I harvested a big pile of collard greens from our winter garden.

Very few of the things I planted last fall actually survived this winter, due to the severe drought, but collard is sturdy stuff. It seems to thrive in our climate - winter and summer!

Tonight: Twice baked potatoes with a side of collard greens cooked with a little bit of pancetta ... and hopefully no Nerf darts ...