May Fourth

I just planted a few things...

1. Mokum carrots in between the rows of spinach. They will be ready to harvest in 48 days. 

2. On the edge of the spinach I eeked out room for a row of beets. Chioggia beets. (I still have a pile in the fridge and I ate some a week ago. Not bad.)

3. I stuck the little broccoli mix transplants in the ground.

4. I threw my stunted failure of a try at onions in the ground. (I'm seriously going to buy onion seedlings, but I might as well try to grow these.)

I also harvested another pound of spinach this morning. Two plants are bolting. I'm up to $25 worth of spinach. That's one fourth of my entire investment in this garden this year. WHAT!?!?! Yeah.

I harvested some surprise radishes that I seem to have planted last fall but don't remember. They're ready. They're kind of tasty. (I don't love radishes, but look how pretty they are!) (I also just read that you can cook and eat the greens. I'll try it.)

Spring Wind

I had a list of things to do today, but I went out to the garden instead because first, the chorus frogs lured me outside. Then, I thought I'd just go turn the compost. The next thing I knew I had my fleece off and I was pounding away at grass clumps and tossing cutworms over the fence to the chickens.

I've been reading this choose-your-own-adventure garden book before bed lately and I've learned a few things. Now I'm on the lookout for wireworms in my garden. They tend to be in gardens recently converted from yards. I happen to have a garden that is always being converted from lawn. They are reddish brown or orange and shiny little guys with jointed-looking bodies.

They're beetle larvae. Click-beetle larvae, in fact. I love click beetles! Unfortunately, wireworms chomp on root vegetables, especially potatoes, and make them susceptible to disease. I'll bet this is why my potatoes were so sad last year. They were in the yardiest part of the garden. Not this year! Actually, I haven't seen a whole lot of wireworms or cutworms as I've been out there cultivating so far. I'm mostly disturbing earthworms, many more than last year. I love healthy garden soil! I'm a dirt gardener.

I checked this book out from the library. It's now overdue. This is one I might buy. It's comprehensive. Every topic you can imagine is listed alphabetically... oh, so much to learn!

Spring Portrait

In the hot, bright afternoon, I rousted a mourning cloak butterfly from where it was sipping on a pothole in the driveway. I watched red tailed hawks soar circles around a blue sky above the dried-up, rustling fields. I stopped along the roadside to dip my fingers into the soil below the leaning skeletons of asparagus stalks, checking for new growth, taking the pulse of the earth. Bluebirds warbled their hoarse happy songs from road sign perches and telephone wires.
As I pushed little round peas into the cold wet soil of one raised bed, three sandhill cranes flew just over my head, their feet dangling and necks gangling. I heard one whistle in between its croaks. I didn't know they did that. As the chickens alternated between baths of sun and dust, I weeded the spinach, which is perky with new green leaves. I planted four kinds of lettuce, but just a few rows. Sunday's forecast calls for snow.
Tonight there's a single spring peeper peeping over by the ditch that serves as a duck pond in our little camp. Two nights ago the first woodcock was "peenting" out in the front yard, gearing up for a flight display. Spring's been blowing in from every direction lately.

Giddy on the Ides of March

I was under the eaves of the grocery store where I'd locked my bike last Friday when I heard one of those advertisements that interrupts the store's radio station. You know the canned radio stations that push and pull your emotions to make you forget that you're shopping. One minute you're drifting down the aisle in a cloud generated by pop-song sap, the next minute you're singing along to that 80's tune you forgot that you knew every word of. As I unlocked my bike and found a place for the wine among the library books and skeins of yarn in my backpack, a peppy pre-recorded voice informed me that March is "Frozen Food Month." I went home and defrosted a bag of frozen spinach.

But really, it reminded me that this truly is the lean time of the year for local food. I think I just had a beer and a bunch of chocolate chips for dinner. I certainly don't have to eat this way! But I've trained myself to ignore the produce section, with deleterious effects. There isn't all that much promising around the corner in my garden harvests either.

I *did* plant spinach, arugula and radishes last fall and they overwintered. I was pretty thrilled to pull up the plastic and find little baby plants ready to pull down rays from the sun already. I ate a handful of spinach and arugula leaves. Not enough to sustain my bike commuting habits of late.

I'm almost used to this little-raft-adrift-in-the-ocean feeling I've had for the past year. Not sure that I see any land yet. However, my bike routes are getting better and better as I find little shortcuts. I know where to listen for the first peepers and wood frogs this spring. My little garden plot is acting as an anchor. I took a look around recently and I'm *months* ahead of where I was last year. This growing season will be so much easier now that the soil and I are acquainted. And what a thrill to have garlic and spinach and peas doing their little plant things out there so early!

March can be a pretty rough month if spring fever gets ahead of the rising temps and sunshine. I know this was always the longest month in middle school - maybe for students, but especially teachers! This March is off to a wicked mild start.  I just watched a flock of seven chickens get the urge to run clucking in a random direction. They stopped just seconds later and went back to their obsessive scratching and pecking. I think I know how they feel, getting that wild rush of energy for no apparent reason. That's what happened to me yesterday in the garden and now I have 8 cultivated beds and a very well-built compost heap that WILL be hot this spring if it's the last thing I do!