[i'm a winner]

Well, in the event that you didn't hear, I won the instructables.com april fools contest as a runner up. It's pretty cool that I won when I just entered on a whim. The prize package isn't spectacular, but I get another t-shirt and a pro membership into instructables.com. Stickers too!

Aside from celebrating my win, I also spent part of the day getting the garden ready to plant some seedlings that Casey has planted on our porch. The garlic that I planted in the fall is doing well, although a few of my plants were getting smothered by the leaf mulch that I put down last fall. Now that I have all of the leaves cleaned up in that part of the garden, that garlic should start to stand a little taller and green up. Leaves all around on bushes and trees alike have finally started to unfold. The two blueberry bushes that I planted last year seem to be doing very well, and I hope to have a couple pints of berries from them.

Last fall I tried a little experiment and put down as much leaf mulch onto the garden as I could. The idea was that it would prevent weeds and grass from invading my garden in the spring, as well as prevent nature from undoing all the hard work I put in last year improving the soil. It seemed to work pretty well, although in the back of the garden there were a couple areas that I didn't cover very well and the leaves ended up blowing off the ground. In that area, I have some grass growing that I'll need to take care of.