Hiding Out Inside

 

It’s hot out, so I’m hiding in. My body and brain can’t deal with 50-degree changes in temperature overnight. And ever since I’ve become a woman of a certain age….ok, that’s not correct. Ever since I became a New Englander, so basically ever since I was born, I don’t do well in heat and humidity – I get crabby, then I get crabbier, my mind doesn’t work well, I snap at people and drop things, and, have I mentioned this yet? I get wicked crabby.

My mother, and her mother, enjoyed this weather. I did not inherit that gene, which apparently comes from the French side of the family. I got the Irish genes instead – give me cool and maybe a little rainy and I’m fine. Mom called me today and her first words were, “So – are you crabby today?” then proceeded to describe how hot it is, sitting out in her porch on the sunny side of the house, and how happy she is to be overly warm and how much she’s enjoying today.

I don’t want to hear it.

I’m half-way through the planting the garden “vacation” and it’s going slowly. This weekend and last were too hot, and then really windy, and then very cold nights. In spite of that, I’ve gotten, finally, all the cool weather things planted – late, because it’s no longer cool, but, oh well: peas, fava beans, onions, leeks, shallots, potatoes (I plant them in potato bags because potatoes are difficult in raised beds), broccoli raab, lettuce, kohlrabi, beets, carrots, and a few flowers. Yesterday morning I got up wicked early for me and went out while it was still reasonably reasonable and planted scarlet runner beans, zucchini, and summer squash. During last weekend and the week I had to plant the now-3-foot-tall heritage tomatoes I ordered from a seed company, begging them not to ship them to me until the very end of April because I can’t plant them out here safely until June. They sent them in early April, of course, and I potted them up, they lived next to the woodstove, and I shuffled them from one sun patch to another for a month.

Have you ever planted tomatoes flat? I haven’t had to in years, but half of these went into the garden that way. You dig a deepish hole for the root ball, a trench for the stem (from which you’ve removed leaves), and then lay the thing in flat. All the hairs on the stem will develop into roots. I propped the very top of the plant upright with a stick then plopped a plastic cloche over the top. Fingers crossed! It will work, barring cats deciding to excavate the stem, me forgetting where the stem is located and planting over it, etc.

I’ve also put in a couple hills of pumpkins, under cloches, and a couple types of shell bean, and yellow beans, all assuming that by the time they germinate, it’ll be warm enough. I still have green beans, lima beans, more carrots, parsnips, basil, cucumbers, cosmos, Love Lies Bleeding, sunflowers, Bachelor’s Buttons, nasturtium, winter squashes, nigella, calendula, and morning glories to plant. And I need to find some replacements for the perennials the chipmunks destroyed last year, little buggers. The roots of several lovely plantings were in the way of their tunnels, so they just chewed them off. AND ate all the parsnips one night, and the carrots twice.

Winter Savory

 

I’m not seeing many chipmunks this summer, which is the way of the world; and Rasta is on the job. So far he’s caught mice and a bird that quickly got away from him, but that helps, too. 

 

Well, not the bird, but since he only has canine teeth, if Biscuit doesn’t get involved, not much

damage is done to things that can fly. Unlike to my text and photo placement, which has just gotten weird and won't fix.

The lilacs finally bloomed yesterday, and from a distance in my hidey-hole, it looks like the flax bloomed out by the compost bins today. A few things I planted a week or more ago have poked up above their earthy bed: one row of carrots, peas, potatoes, fava beans. The rhubarb is up and even blossoming, and the asparagus has been cut-able this year (year four; you have to give it time to feed the roots for three years before you cut much) and soon I’ll be letting it go to seed, too. Winter and summer savory are up, one remaining parsley plant, catnip, dill, Egyptian onions, chives, mint, irises, the one bunch of tulips the chipmunks didn’t eat, Lady’s Mantle, thyme; daisys are about to blossom, the apple is in blossom and he cherry is past blossoming and the pear is about to blossom, but not the peaches yet. Wild strawberries are everywhere in bloom, and white violets, and the Johnny Jump Ups are wildly prolific this year. One of the bird houses on the garden fence has a resident, but I haven’t gotten close enough to discover what type, yet. 

The Manly Men Post-work Snacking

 

The Boys – here I’m referring to the manly men, the Husband, the Tall Guy, and the Scholar – have been taking out old trees and brush around the edges of the front and back 40, for several weeks now. The Tall Guy has himself a bright orange tractor that chips stuff and does other interesting things, and the result has been a couple of wicked big piles of wood chips, good for my three wild garden paths and mulching the blueberries; a pretty unrestricted view out the north windows to the road; and an opening up of the woods that surround the field that have slowly crept closer to the house over the years. In the process they uncovered the spot near the old barn foundation where I planted currants and gooseberries decades ago; it’ll be interesting to see what further developments arise.

I may be crabby, but my immediate world ignores me. Probably just as well!

 

For the blog, 22 May 22: herondragonwrites.blogspot.com

All photos Deb Marshall

The Orange Tractor, the Tall Guy, the Scholar (in black-fly hood)

 

Plantin' The Garden - Or That's The Plan!

Johnny Jump Ups have taken over several beds

 

Middle of May.  I’m on “vacation” – basically, two weeks off to get the garden planted, catch up on stuff, and with any luck also get some much needed mental  and physical rest.

So far: Buzzy Boy the excellent hummingbird is back from his winter travels – I found out when he dive-bombed me late one afternoon. Dive-bombing, buzzing pass-bys, and hovering are his ways of interacting with his humans, about whom and their doings he has some strong opinions. Buzzing pass-bys are his hello, dive-bombing means I’m not refilling his feeder soon enough or going back to the house from the garden in the evening when he thinks I should, and hovering takes place either when he’s peering in a window to see what I’m doing (he’s very curious about human doings), or when he’s saying goodbye for the season – always the day before he migrates, he’ll hover for a few moments right in front of my face.

I’ve planted out four of the eight heritage variety tomato plants, at least two weeks too early, but they’re all 2 feet tall at this point. I ordered them from a nursery  when I was ordering seeds, and included a note to them begging them to send them only in their last shipping date at the very end of April because I can’t plant them out safely ‘til June. Aaaannnd, of course, they arrived early April. As my Chinese medicine teacher used to say: Bastards!

Tomatoes hardening off

 I potted them up into quart yogurt and cottage cheese containers, because they were already too big for their 6-packs.They lived near the wood stove, and I’ve been shuffling them from sun patch to sun patch indoors ever since. Now they’re two feet tall, pot-bound, too tall to plant deep enough in my raised beds to make any difference, and too tall even for a large plastic cloche for protection. So out they go, fingers crossed, after a couple of days of hardening off on the back wart.

When it was the right time to plant peas and fava beans and lettuce and other cold-weather seeds, and onion sets and leeks and shallots and seed potatoes,  it was too rainy, too windy (it’s amazing how far an onion plant can fly), and below freezing at night. So those things didn’t get put in the ground at the right time, though I managed to get some of it done early in May. Now it’s too hot and too dry, and I just wish I knew why the weather gods are messing with us.

Clematis setting buds

I missed the lunar eclipse last night, it was too overcast to see, so missed that entertainment. I did, however, find a tick sitting in wait near the cat food bowl, and when I took it outside to crush (I keep a small, sharp stone on the deck railing for the purpose), I found another crawling up the inside of the door, which led to an evening of being certain I was feeling ticks crawling up legs and arms and torso and repeated tick-checks: the New Englander’s obsessive activity this time of year. Often with results – usually middle of the night. BTW, they don’t flush well, it’s better to crush them.  A patient told me she uses a lint roller on herself and her dogs before they go indoors after a romp outside. Doesn’t kill the ticks, you have to pull them off the roller and kill them, but it does pick up any on the surface. Brilliant.

It did rain last night and today’s humid. I’m having a hard time getting my butt in gear, and I keep reminding myself that this is, actually, vacation and only day 3 of 16, so it’s ok to take a day and, maybe , just sit under the wart tent (no blackflies where it’s covered) where it’s shady and there’s a small, nice breeze, and Biscuit’s been lounging for the past 3 hours,  and itch my blackfly bites and do tick searches, ponder poison ivy, and read something, maybe doze. This is hard – the remaining four heritage tomatoes are growing taller by the moment and shouting at me - not to mention the last batch of seed potatoes that I didn’t get to yesterday, the last package of fava beans, and all the other vegetable seeds that need to be planted now now NOW NOW NOW.

Today, the lilac blossoms are starting to show purple. The birds are singing, the hummers are busy, and I need to refill Buzzy’s feeder. There’s a load of dandelions in bloom in the back forty, and the grass has finally turned green, and the leaves finally came out. I’m told there’s a blue heron nest with a sitting Mom on it up the road in the moose pond. The bleeding heart plant’s in bloom, as is the Blue-eyed Sue. Asparagus are up and edible – I made an asparagus, fiddlehead, ramp, sorrel, mushroom, leek, and spring herbs (tarragon, winter savory, chives) soup this weekend. The peas and favas I managed to get in the ground earlier are arisen.

Lynx hiding in his ripped-paper pile

 The world’s going to hell in a hand-basket, but my garden remains about the same, minus (I hope) the roving gangs of chipmunks that decimated it last year.  I’m still finding and filling in their tunnels. And if I can find the coyote pee scent bottle, I may use some of that for good measure, though I don’t want to freak out the cats.

And now, a Covid update, because you need to hear this:

It’s on the rise again in NH and parts of VT – dozens of folks hospitalized, a big handful or two on ventilators, some dying. There are many dozens more people sick with Covid who haven’t been counted, even locally – no one reports the results of their rapid tests, so these folks aren’t included in the official state or CDC counts. There are currently dozens of those people locally with active cases of Covid – I know, because I hear about them, because of what I do for a living.

If you don’t want to catch it – and trust me, you don’t, for many reasons, including the risk of developing long Covid, the risk of passing it on to unsuspecting bystanders, the loss of income and community service, the risk of getting a really nasty and painful case of it, and the risk of the symptoms dragging on for weeks and weeks– no matter whether it’s required or not, don’t go into public buildings unmasked, and bring your hand sanitizer along and use it. Outdoors – depends. Wear a mask, try to stay away from the unmasked, and if it’s crowded, don’t go.  And let’s not make the mistake of assuming those allergy-like and mild-cold-like symptoms are either allergies or colds. If you have the symptoms, take a test.

No whining. Put on your Hero face, fight the good fight, and don’t doubt yourself if you’re the only one in the crowd wearing a mask – that just means you’re the only one in the crowd not causing medical issues that can be life-shattering or life-ending, and brave enough and smart enough  to do the right thing..

You always knew you were Special, right?

 

For the blog, May 16, 2022: herondragonwrites.blogspot.com

All photos Deb Marshall

Cinquefoil in bloom, yarrow leaves in background.