Sun. Warmth. Blossoms. Bees. Spring has sprung!
Wait. Wait. Not so fast. … First let’s have a round or two of frost…. Follow that up with some heat and then wind and a mini-drought…. After that, a few days of rain and cold chased by some heavy, wet snow.
With May just days away, this season’s volatile weather has already whip-lashed my garden psyche. My husband and I have barely embarked on the third year of this grand experiment to transform our once expansive front lawn into an edible landscape, and I’m already fretting.
Can you believe it? The peaches are blossoming! (Oh, no — they’re calling for frost….)
Should I plant seeds? Swiss chard and lettuces should be OK. But it’s so dry… (Oh, I better wait until rain is forecast.)
Why aren’t the grapes showing any greenery? Everything else is budding, but they’re just sitting there. (Oh, thank goodness the grapes haven’t grown. This frost would kill them!)
This is crazy — we’re planting fruit trees when it’s 90 degrees in April. We better mulch them well. It’s been so dry for weeks! (Oh, wow. The baby trees will love this rain!)
Have you seen the lilacs? The branches are lying on the ground from the weight of this snow! (Oh, well. At least the new trees and berries — replacement apples and a sweet cherry as well as a plum, plus juneberries, huckleberries, honeyberries, aronia and gooseberries — are so young, it’s not really affecting them.)
All of this, of course, on the heels of a winter so mild we had clumps of cilantro make it through. And in the raised beds in back of the house, the garlic and shallots have stems already as thick as my thumb!
Inside, where I control the heat and water and light, we have marigolds blooming and basil begging to be set free.
The tomatoes are doing the salsa, and one of the tomatillos is bent on starring in a reboot of “Jack and the Beanstalk.”
The peppers are in recovery. A few are having a hard time bouncing back from a bout of aquatic neglect. On those days when it was nice enough to weed and move stones and plant nursery acquisitions outside, I failed my indoor charges. But, they have months to snap out of it.
The weather, on the other hand, had better right itself sooner than that — if only so my blood pressure can level out.
Spring may have sprung, but I’m still feeling wound pretty tight!
Wait. Wait. Not so fast. … First let’s have a round or two of frost…. Follow that up with some heat and then wind and a mini-drought…. After that, a few days of rain and cold chased by some heavy, wet snow.
With May just days away, this season’s volatile weather has already whip-lashed my garden psyche. My husband and I have barely embarked on the third year of this grand experiment to transform our once expansive front lawn into an edible landscape, and I’m already fretting.
Can you believe it? The peaches are blossoming! (Oh, no — they’re calling for frost….)
Should I plant seeds? Swiss chard and lettuces should be OK. But it’s so dry… (Oh, I better wait until rain is forecast.)
Why aren’t the grapes showing any greenery? Everything else is budding, but they’re just sitting there. (Oh, thank goodness the grapes haven’t grown. This frost would kill them!)
This is crazy — we’re planting fruit trees when it’s 90 degrees in April. We better mulch them well. It’s been so dry for weeks! (Oh, wow. The baby trees will love this rain!)
Have you seen the lilacs? The branches are lying on the ground from the weight of this snow! (Oh, well. At least the new trees and berries — replacement apples and a sweet cherry as well as a plum, plus juneberries, huckleberries, honeyberries, aronia and gooseberries — are so young, it’s not really affecting them.)
All of this, of course, on the heels of a winter so mild we had clumps of cilantro make it through. And in the raised beds in back of the house, the garlic and shallots have stems already as thick as my thumb!
Inside, where I control the heat and water and light, we have marigolds blooming and basil begging to be set free.
The tomatoes are doing the salsa, and one of the tomatillos is bent on starring in a reboot of “Jack and the Beanstalk.”
The peppers are in recovery. A few are having a hard time bouncing back from a bout of aquatic neglect. On those days when it was nice enough to weed and move stones and plant nursery acquisitions outside, I failed my indoor charges. But, they have months to snap out of it.
The weather, on the other hand, had better right itself sooner than that — if only so my blood pressure can level out.
Spring may have sprung, but I’m still feeling wound pretty tight!
RSS Feed
