Yes, we need the moisture but gee, I want to go outside and play! Yesterday, I added more wood chip mulch to the front flower bed under the edge of the solar array after mowing the leftover stalks with the lawn mower. (I also mowed the small garden next to the chicken coop and the big daylily bed in the back yard.) I planned on mowing the asparagus patch in the main garden as I mowed the planting areas in the berry patch and the asparagus bed there. It looked so nice with all the dead stuff chopped up and neat looking.
Then, last night, the rain started. A cold, drizzly rain. Yuck! So instead of having fun, I’m in the house packing seeds and washing five tons of dirty dishes instead. Oh well, it sure needs doing. I’ve got family coming for Easter dinner, so I really need to shovel out. I hate even calling it “cleaning house.” I’ve been busy giving seed classes to local groups lately, one at Nett Lake, another at the Bear River School, and Saturday at the Embarrass Town Hall. It seems like lots of folks are very interested in growing more food for their families! That’s so very nice.
I’m still transplanting pepper seedlings and Will is taking them out to the greenhouse, where they seem to love the heat. I’ve sure got a lot of tomatoes yelling at me to get to them too!
I checked our fruit trees, and they came through the winter very nicely. And they have big, fat buds on them too! I sure hope we don’t get another late spring frost like last year. It caught all the trees, wild and domestic, so we didn’t get much fruit or berries at all. Here’s hoping.
When it dries up a bit, I need to mow the cornstalks down in the Main and Sand Gardens. Will is going to be spreading manure pretty soon, as soon as the ground dries up a bit. It’s much nicer to spread on top of chopped garden debris rather than standing stuff. Then we’ve got to hit the Wolf Garden and pull tomato stakes and cages from the 200 plus dead plants. We’ll burn the vines in a pile, to make sure we don’t have any pests or disease, then I’ll mow the corn stalks out there too. And, of course, we have to pull a gazillion bean trellises made of cattle panels and steel T posts too. Gee, the work never ends. But we sure do enjoy it a lot!
— Jackie
