We're having a glorious summer-like Saturday here at Poppy Corners.

To all you Mid-westerners and East-coasters, I'm so sorry - but it's in the high 70's here today. I'm actually a little bit sunburnt after working in the garden today.

I decided to pot up the tomatoes one more time. They've been growing in the cowpots very nicely, and while I like the fact that the cowpots are made out of manure, they tend to let the seedlings dry out quite a bit, which I don't like. Also, I'm not planning to plant these seedlings in the ground until very late April or very early May, to avoid the problem I had last year - an unexpected cold wet week in April.

I bought some black plastic half gallon pots and more potting soil and moved all the tomatoes into them. I also gave them a diluted liquid fish feeding.

You can see how dry the peppers look in those cowpots.

I have one raised bed standing fallow because my Cauliflower and Brussels Sprouts crops failed (possibly due to Joe the dog, digging). So I put the pots there, and put a row cover in place. I'll leave the pots outside overnight, but cover the bed with row cover, which should protect the seedlings and keep the space underneath a few degrees warmer than outside. Now I just have to remember to cover it at night and uncover during the day.

I've left the peppers in their cowpots for now, they are still very small, but I will also leave them out under the row cover.

Tom's been working on getting drip access into the new raised beds, and I've been sowing more wildflower seeds and doing a a lot of weeding in the pollinator beds.

Today was also my annual egg-dying experiment. The last few years, I've been trying out natural dyes. This year, I wanted to try out a new way of coloring the eggs using commercial dye. I saw this in some magazine months ago.

I filled some old recycled containers with different grains - rice, quinoa, popcorn, and grits. Then I added some dye.

I shook the boiled eggs (just white ones from the store, I didn't want to waste eggs from our own chickens) in the dyed grains, and this is how they turned out.

I like them but I don't love them. Next year I'll try something different!

Tom and I had a fun cooking class this past Wednesday with Epicurean Exchange, it was a gift from my mom. This class was all about French Desserts; we made Creme Anglaise, Chocolate Mousse, Chocolate Souffle, Crepes Suzette, a lemon tart with a short crust, and some ice cream. We enjoyed it very much and I came home with three dozen eggshells for my tomato planting in May - that's how many eggs we went through in the class!

I hope you're all having a wonderful Easter weekend. Maybe some of you are even on Spring Break, in which case, enjoy!