To The Surbiton Manor Born

New landscaping has triggered a pivot from garden to prairie here at Steepmeadow. It is amazing what a few weeks will do. Three weeks ago, we had a pile of mud, clay, and rocks, and no steps down from our patio door to the yard, just a precipitous bone-breaking fall. The removal of the collapsing, not up to code deck and the carpentry to repair the damage to the house from the not-up-to-code attachment left us $6,000 poorer, and looking at an eyesore. Probably the most unsatisfying $6,000 we've ever spent. Flash forward. Steps are built.  We filled in the clay/mud/rock zone where the deck used to be with topsoil, and we got a mix of the poor man's bee lawn (Dutch white clover, red creeping fescue & sheep fescue) and quick grass to grow. Aug. 9 Aug. 16     Aug. 26 The ultimate plan for the space came with a realization and a pivot.  While I do believe you could make yourself self-sufficient on 1/4 acre of land, the intensity of the cultivation is prohibitive. We h...

Scene of the Destruction We seem to have come through our late July heat wave, and Steepmeadow's garden is doing pretty well in spite of record high temperatures for a record length of time and the smoke that descended on us from the burning Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. The tomatoes are starting to produce.  We have a bed full of healthy lettuce, which is a good thing, given this year's as yet uncontained cyclospora explosive diarrhea outbreak . It turns out that, unsurprisingly, the root of the problem is a massive factory agribusiness that uses slave labor, Taylor Farms .  We have peppers and eggplant that are just waiting to pop. We have winter squash and pumpkins that are starting to pop up. The yard is producing a bumper crop of creeping Charlie.  In mixed news, we had our old, sagging, rotting, not-up-to-code deck removed, and significant expense. It ranks as one of the most miserable, least satisfying expenditures of all time in our money pit home.  ...

All is not especially well here at Steepmeadow.  The Japanese beetles have been out in force, trying their best to destroy our fruit trees and raspberries, and generally being hideous to look upon.  We have had a near record run of 90 degree days (32 degrees Celsius, if you live in a civilized part of the world). 77,000 acres have burned (so far) in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, and we have been choking on the fumes. I'm painfully aware of this because that was where I was supposed to be with my kid for our annual vacation this past weekend.  Instead of the BWCA, we went to Myre-Big Island State Park near Albert Lea near the Iowa border. It was lovely in many ways. Very, very hot (90's & humid). But the prairie is a gorgeous place, too. Many flowers. Many, many birds (including pelicans!). But there was Eurasian milfoil, coating the murky Albert Lea Lake.  Back on the home front, we lost our zucchini to irregular watering. Containers are apparently t...

It is raspberry season. We have a lot of raspberries. Indeed, raspberries are currently coming out of our ears.  We also have invasive Japanese beetles swarming the plants. Those beetles also really like our apple trees, which we just had to cover with large white bags, which catch the ever-loving constant howling wind like a sail. Hopefully, we will not break the trees, and save them from the depredations. Hate these things  This year, we did get Rainbow Tree Care to come out and spray for the horrible grubs that these things spawn from. Whether that works remains to be seen, as they just did it last week. You step away from the garden for a minute this time of year - or maybe more like a week - and bam! Things are overgrown and full of weeds. Destination for out of town time - not the garden. There is a project underway which will reshape the Steepmeadow we have known. The rotting deck is scheduled for demolition tomorrow. This will have the effect of opening up a bunch of s...

So it is the end of the three day Memorial Day weekend, and I have barely sat down since Friday. In fact, the frenzy began last week when the long awaited (ordered in January) pollinator garden from Prairie Moon Nurseries arrived. Long have we wanted to put in a garden of native flowers and plants. Finally pulled the trigger last winter. The thing is, I had not prepared the bed where we wanted to put these between the apple trees. The wind was howling. It was cold. It was threatening rain. I spent a LOT of time ripping up creeping Charlie and dandelions. Wednesday, the plants went in. In the same cold wind.  The good news is that the weather changed Saturday. I was able to deal with a project that has sat there taunting me for a long time.  The situation was this: the patio outside my office window was covered with piles of wood chips from splitting wood all winter long. While this stuff makes excellent mulch (see above - no weird colors or dyes, just plain, natural wood) the...

I hate the spring. Not all of it, of course. But the bit I really hate is the wind and the cold happening when the sun is shining so brightly and things are greening up.  For instance, last Saturday I ran a half marathon in Eau Claire (a lovely time, and a nice town, decent performance - for me - of 2:09:33). I used sunscreen. I saw a lot of people who didn't turning pink. It was 50's at the start, and it warmed into the '60's. Perfect event weather, in my opinion.  After the race and after a nap, we went for a walk around town and in a park. The wind had picked up to gale force, so it was impossible to read a book outside.  We endured mornings in the '30's this past week. Jackets. And the never ending firewood. It's necessary to have a fire every night. Still. In theory, this changes next week. I will believe it when I see it. I do love it every year when the crab apple tree outside of our bedroom window blossoms. But something is off this year. Usually, it...