Wednesday, May 6, 2009

long awaited post

I have such a huge following clamoring for a new entry, I thought I better satiate the ravenous public hunger for my writings and bestow a new entry on the world. It has been a while.

Looks like winter is over, but spring is coming late here. My God it is beautiful here in the spring. Spring has always been my favorite time. Let's see what there is to say....

It is still pretty cold at night, around mid 30's to low 40's. No wonder tomatoes don't do well! I'm trying to do tomatoes anyway, but it is definitely not a marginal garden sort of thing. So I am looking into DIY greenhouses and little on the ground growing shelters. I did build one.

Also, for the past few days it has been raining. The rain here is delicious; everyone complains. I love it. It gently drizzles and has occasions of medium rain, and it just goes on and on and on, all night, most of the day. Everything gets completely and thoroughly soaked. What no one seems to admit is that prior to that, we had like 4 weeks in the heart of early spring with NO RAIN. Here we are in the glorious wet pacific northwest and NO RAIN. I did put in some drip irrigation for such times, and it really helps.

My blueberry plants, young though they are, did well through the winter. They were totally buried in snow, but only one got even a branch broken off. They look green and full of sap right now, and are starting to bud, but as of yet no real leaves. I drip irrigate them about 1 gallon an hour for 90 minutes. Of course when it rains like this, I turn that off.

My apple trees, all 8 of them, are behind the trees down the hill by about 2 weeks. They are doing fine, and not only have budded, but have formed small leaves. Now a few have flowers starting to form, and it is very exciting to me. I have a vegetable garden going with onions, peas, lettuce, and some other stuff. The peas love it here. The soil is actually great but I added a load of compost anyway. I am having a terrible battle with weeds because everything loves to grow, and the pasture has never been used to grow anything but weeds before. Add the beautiful soil and the compost and the abundant rain, and the weeds love it.

A friend is really into planting beans, and he gave me about 30 different varieties of bean seeds to try. I am very excited about that, there is something about vine vegetable plants that really excite me as they grow.

I am also growing strawberries, and it is amazing how well they are doing in this climate; green lush, flowering, I can't wait to see the fruits. I put some on the hillside near our house and they are spreading out and taking over.

I also succumbed to ... whatever and planted some tulips and daffodils. I just like to see them sprout up and grow. They are wonderful and garish and colorful. We planted some Dahlias someone gave us as well but no sign of them yet. I don't know what we did wrong.

Both of my riding lawn mowers are broken right now, and I have a LOT of grass on the one side. I need to do something with that, it is too much lawn really. I had to fill in a spot where our friend that plowed the snow kind of missed the road and we drove over the lawn and gouged it out real bad. With all the rain and the mowers broken it is really getting out of hand.

The deciduous trees are turning green again, and the new ferns are sprouting up and uncurling themselves. The young sword ferns are amazing to watch. My glorious Grand Fir has some dead needles on it in various places, I'm wondering if it is OK or if it is natural and healthy. I will have to find out.

We have natural wild bleeding heart flowers growing everywhere right now. I can't believe these grow wild and so abundantly. There is no sign of the Oxeye daisies as of yet.

I am learning that I have to depend on advice and help from many people around here, if I try to be self-sufficient I can't really do it.

I am enjoying being outside, working in it, getting dirt under my nails, digging and inventing solutions to trellises and potholes in the driveway and watering everything the best way and enjoying spring as it unfolds.

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