Working for long days

When it’s spring we need to plant.

It’s fall. Harvest time!

Haiku by Sylvia Nelson age 9

Another week has passed already? My daughter’s poem could not be more succinct. Every year it seems as if we go from spring to fall with a snap of the fingers. This week has been a blur of laundry and childcare as the stomach flu spread through the family. We cancelled the extended family Easter celebration due to general exhaustion and germs and had a quiet dinner. Last fall we froze the pork meat after butchering our pigs. I thawed the cut marked “easter” last week, cured it for 4 days in a maple syrup brine, smoked it with willow chips we harvested locally, and then finished cooking the ham in our oven with an orange and brown sugar glaze. It was most delicious; what a shame we had to eat it all ourselves!

While preparing for an Easter dinner in our small cabin (before it was cancelled), I had moved all the plant trays out to the greenhouse. And though the nighttime temps are still falling into the teens, I decided they would stay out there even if it meant using up a bit more firewood. The plastic tray lids, used to keep Eve from digging up the soil, were causing too much condensation and most of the plants were pushing against the tops anyway. The sun is arcing higher in the sky everyday and the light that streamed through the windows in March is now hitting our roof instead. Cold temperatures aside, the starts needed more light and more space.

Almost every tray of starts needs to be transplanted into 3 inch pots. Since I grow all my plants with natural light through windows, the starts get a little leggy. Replanting them at this stage solves that problem even if it does make transplanting outside a little more time consuming. I like that the starts have lots of room in the reusable pots to grow a hearty root base.

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It has been windy, calm, sunny and cloudy multiple times each day. And we have had more snow showers than rain.

And with all the wind, our lake has gone out much earlier than anticipated. By Tuesday a wide path of water was open in front of our place. I took our new kayak out to check it out. Pond lilies are growing from the muddy bottom, up a foot high already, in the frigid water.

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And when the ice broke free of the opposite shore yesterday afternoon, the wind crashed it onto our shore breaking our dock and irrigation pipe loose from their moorings. We’ll fix it once the ice is all done moving around. It should be all open water in a day or two.

Despite persisting tummy aches, the girls and I clamored up the embankment at 5 mile to search for any remaining pasque flowers on the way home from school yesterday. Most had turned gray with age or morphed into fuzzy seed pods. But we found a few late beauties.

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As the crocus fade away, a new variety of plants are starting up. The cottonwoods, Populus balsamifera, along the roadways have swelling buds and so too do the berry perennials.

And even the straw mulch that insulated the fall planted garlic is trying to grow. I found these barley sprouts when I pulled back the majority of the straw from the allium bed.

Though each morning I step outside to the sweet notes of the American Robin, I have not heard the wood frogs again since the 15th of April. I have been turning in early and when stoking the greenhouse fire at 2AM it is too chilly for them to be up. But we have been looking and listening for them. Sylvia has been studying poetry at school and she wrote this limerick for me.

We hear the wood frogs in the night

They make noises, when it’s not light.

It sounds good to hear,

I think that is clear.

And they like to eat bugs in flight.

Sylvia Nelson

We are starting melon seeds this week.

Until next week, time to get your hands in the soil!

A nation that destroys its soils destroys itself. Forests are the lungs of our land, purifying the air and giving fresh strength to our people.

Franklin D. Roosevelt