Spring in winter

Today was the beginning of a nice stretch of weather for us, so I took advantage of it – and promptly overdid it, in my quest to get things on the right track for the upcoming season.

Today I dug out twelve holes: two for the new dogwoods, ten for the new blackberry canes. When you have a hole, of course you then have to refill it, preferably with a mix of good topsoil and compost, and in the case of the trees, a handful of greensand in each as well. Out back, a twelve foot, eight inch deep trench so I can lay in the barrier for the first of the bamboo that will go in. The next step there is to get the barrier buried and then dig yet another hole to plop the bamboo down in the center of the line, to allow it to spread left and right (or north and south, if we’re talking directionally) without allowing it to spread into the neighbor’s property. I don’t really care about the neighbor one way or the other, but I’d prefer not to have to deal with them at all about runaway bamboo encroaching on their side of the fenceline. Toward the end of the day, after setting the timer to water the main front garden and the garlic, I couldn’t resist pulling weeds and stray alfalfa from the frames out front. Even though my knees and my right side where the surgeon filleted me protested, the front is entirely weed and alfalfa-free, ready for whatever I ultimately decide to plop down there.

Sunday: a trip to the NOC, a short stop by the pharmacy for a prescription, and then back outside for more work: planting the aforementioned bamboo, more deep watering of the two new trees and blackberries, some touchup work on a few exposed roots of the peach and kumquat trees, and polishing off the weeding of the back garden, which has gone rather well and which is almost complete. I suppose it’s time to pull the remaining leeks from that area as well and do something with them, like cook them and eat them, since we love leeks around here.

Yesterday, I finished hanging the lights in the barn and seeded a couple of flats to throw under them. Photos of that to come tomorrow….

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