Our spring garden vegetables have been planted about 1 month now and we are starting to see some flowering and fruiting.  We planted tomatoes, zucchini, crookneck squash, straight neck squash,   pattypan squash, cucumbers, okra, habanero peppers,  and watermelons.  Almost everything we planted in the garden has done well, and the plants that didn't make it have something else planted in their plots.  Our plan to control weeds by adding a 6-8 inch thick layer of mulch is paying off.  We have not had to pull many weeds and the ground stays very moist underneath the mulch longer, which has reduced the amount of watering the garden has needed.  We have been pretty lucky getting some rain just about every week since we planted.  I have only watered the garden about once a week.  The tomatoes, zucchini and cucumbers are all starting to flower.  The flowers turn into fruits and we can already see small tomatoes and zucchinis forming. 
     It looks like the zucchini is going to be the first veggies harvested.  We already have a couple that are about 3 inches long and growing fast.  We usually harvest ......

     Our new baby chicks have arrived!  We ordered 100 baby chicks from Privett Hatchery in New Mexico.  They were shipped on a Monday and arrived the following Wednesday.  Our order arrived in two days and all 100 were alive and chirping when I opened the box.  We are not keeping all 100, we split the order with a couple friends in order to meet the minimum order requirements. 
     The minimum order for chickens from Privett is 25 which fills one corner of the shipping box seen here.  With 25 baby chicks packed into the corner they generate enough heat to keep each other warm during shipping.  When we checked around for someone to split the order with, three other families wanted to order, so we ended up with a full box of 100 baby chicks.  I could hear the chicks chirping in the background when the post office called to tell me.....