Busy Time of Year
Steepmeadow is changing. Spring has, I think we can say with some measure of certitude, sprung.
We were shocked this week to see the fritillaria that we thought had been devoured by squirrels last fall immediately after we panted them spring from the mulch around the lamppost in the front yard. Tiny little delicate and amazing things these are.
We had a nasty, nasty cold snap last week. We had to concentrate on hardscape.
One thing that's worried me is that our garbage cans were basically on display on a concrete slab at the side of our garage. The slab was pretty obviously poured there for the purpose. However, in perusing the city rules concerning front yard gardening restrictions (there aren't too many) and solar panel installation restrictions (there aren't any), I did discover that your garbage cans need to be hidden from sight. With the city inspectors likely to be nosing around soon to inspect the solar panel installation, I figured we'd want to be in compliance.
The thing is, it's expensive to put up a fence. They sell little plastic things you stake in the ground for ~ $180 a panel. And we'd have needed three. I didn't want to build a full fence, as lumber is at a bit of a premium just now. Had a brainstorm: Use some kind of cloth screen - the stuff they use at constructions sites draped over chain link fences. That's not too expensive.
So I spent last Saturday morning constructing this monstrosity in the garage:
Sadly, by the time I purchased the hardware to hold the corners in place, the treated 2x2's, the Quickcrete (tm) that I used to anchor the posts...well, we might as well have done a full on fence with wood. This one does have an advantage in that the side panel can be removed in the winter to make it easier to drag the garbage & recycling through the snow to the curb. It may not be super pretty, but it gets the job done.
We re-potted about 100 seedlings last weekend, as the weather was inclement, and they'd overgrown the starting trays.
This was not without a horrible realization. I bought peat pots. This is a terrible, terrible thing to do to the environment. I knew that Monty Don on Gardener's World has been active in the fight against peat use in gardens, but I didn't read the packaging on the low-cost pots I found, which I purchased because they weren't plastic. They looked like some kind of cardboard to me.
But they weren't. They are peat pots. Don't make the same mistake I did. It's pretty appalling that they are still allowed to manufacture these things.
Briefly, peat lands are a major carbon sink, storing 1/3 of the world's carbon. Mining it releases that carbon dioxide. Peatland fires account for 5% of human caused carbon emissions. A peat bog only grows about 1/16 of an inch a year. Mining it digs up centuries worth of accumulation.
Monday and Tuesday were super cold and rainy. They were also the days that first the two Honeycrisp apple trees and then the Honeoye bare root strawberries arrived.
So Kiki and I spent quite a lot of the evening on Monday digging square holes for the new trees and reenacting the Monty Python & the Holy Grail Dennis scene.
Eventually, we got these tiny twigs planted. In three years time or so, it is said that somehow they are going to start producing delicious apples. We should be able to get away with two. They need a third tree of a different variety. We've planted them near the neighbors' Macintosh apple trees.
Wednesday brought warmer weather, and with it, the last three days have seen the greenhouses lifted carefully outdoors to begin hardening off the seedlings. It is a great mercy that we will only need to move these flimsy structures in and out of the house for about ten more days before the seedlings are strong enough, and the weather warm enough, to get them into the soil.
The tulips look like they are about ready to pop out front. The grass is green. The trees are budding out. Things are looking promising.
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