They Lied

The day's high temperature was ten degrees short of the estimate. That high occurred shortly after I woke up this morning. It wasn't a very big high to begin with. It was a pretty low high and we didn't go anywhere near it.

The wind kept picking up speed as the day wore on while I waited for the high that never showed up. Stepping outside got more and more miserable. My earlier thoughts on some chores that might get done when it warmed up a tad were frozen in their tracks.

The cats refused to go out.

It was one of those days where the big adventure was going up to the mailbox. I looked at the roadside vegetable garden knowing it can have more dung, I have plenty, and needs a fresh layer of wood chip mulch. Wood chips are so much better and longer lasting than bagged mulch. My supply has been cut off though. I need to find a new source.

Freeze dried grasses swayed in a wind that was beginning to howl. Without proper layers I had no business being outside.

I went back in and did a little paper work for the upcoming Winter Blooms art show. All the photos in the show will be for sale as reprinted framed pictures. I needed a sign up sheet for that. Garden owners who find a picture from their garden in the show get the picture for free.

The wind was growing fiercer by the hour. Then the sky began to spit white specks. The temperature kept falling further away from the suggested high. The chance of snow had been cancelled yesterday. There was no mention of it now and no fine print saying "except for the higher elevations along the Tennessee border."

I could look at the radar myself and see someone was just making stuff up. It is true my forecast is for Clyde proper fifteen miles away as the crow flies and down in the hole of the Pigeon River valley. I have to extrapolate from that. Ten degrees and snow is just more extrapolation than I expect.

My Beautiful Dung

I had to wait half the morning for the snow to melt before I could spread big dollops of dung in the roadside vegetable garden. It has to be screened first to remove the gravel that has been coming with it. That takes some time and a 50 plus degree day got things melting.

I like to let it set out over the winter as a top dressing for additional weed seed killing. It had far fewer seeds in it than I feared in the first application last year. Still, it is best to be cautious. Horse poop can be loaded with seeds. They have fewer stomach parts than cows.

There are still a whole bunch of parsnips to dig. I imagine I'll be making a big batch for Christmas dinner.

It is going to take a lot more of my composted crap to finish. I have two big piles ready to go. I plan to be generous. All that manure made a noticeable difference in this year's garden.

Can fine dung make you happy? I think it can.

The whole garden needs a fresh layer of wood chip mulch too. The mulch will further suppress weeds and as it decomposes it feeds the soil. The soil in my roadside vegetable garden just keeps getting better and better.

The wood chips were doing a fine job on their own. The dung has kicked it up a notch.

I pooped out after eight half tubs of dung were screened and spread. The last part of the afternoon was spent contemplating additions to the winter interest of the under garden.

I need to sweep the winter interest plantings of the front half of the slope over to the left and the back part of the slope to give the garden more coherence. I actually looked all season for more of the variegated Yucca filamentosa at a decent price and never found any. Those alone would do wonders to make the under garden whole and make an even bolder statement.

I have five big variegated Feather Reed Grass heeled into a dung pile for dividing and planting on this slope early next spring. That new color and texture spread over the slope will help.

I need bold to highlight the ancient ruins the cozy cabin sits above. The color difference between wet and dry rocks is pretty stark. I like the dry rocks better. I'll have to live with the contrast though.

There really is a garden under there. In the winter it is completely visible from the scenic byway. My evergreen screening has a lot of growing to do before I begin to get hidden. I can give the rubberneckers something to contemplate in the mean time.

Can tidy make you happy? I think it can. Particularly when tidying things up doesn't leave you with an empty plate, when a garden is still there to look at.

In this case, it reveals that I am indeed making progress.

Ready For Dung

The days are few and short. Between work and the weathers, I can't afford to procrastinate. When a day off appears with the new warm of 45, it almost made it to 50, it is time to get moving.

The roadside vegetable garden needed to be cleaned and readied for a fresh layer of composted dung and then topped with new wood chip mulch so it will be ready to go come spring.

Another round of rinse, snow and mega cold is on the way. There wouldn't be another opportunity to tidy the vegetable garden for at least a week and there is no guarantee of that.

I suspect I will be saying goodbye til spring to a number of gardens in the next few weeks. That will give me more time for the list of winter chores I need to tend to. It's a long list and it covers three acres. That gives me about one month per acre to get everything done.

I went ahead and started on the chop down of the wildflower surround. I still want to completely redo the planting in the strip between the vegetable garden and the scenic byway. It has too much goldenrod and not a long enough bloom time.

The roadside vegetable garden is now open to view. A public lesson in a no-till, mulched with wood chips garden is about to commence.

By now the regular traffic knows what is hiding behind and among all those wild flowers. The scenic byway draws all kinds of rubberneckers from far and wide though. Some of them might drive by and think, this garden is different. What is that about?

After collecting and tossing some Ironweed and Joe Pye seeds, the remaining dead sticks were burned. A little dash of terra preta in the vegetable garden can't hurt.

Would you believe I still have food to harvest. One more cold snap, then I will start eating my parsnips. You are not supposed to harvest them until after they have been chilled. The root gets sweeter when it goes into dormancy. They are biennials. Any left will return in the spring and pretty quickly bloom and set seed.

One roadside vegetable garden is ready for dung. I also have a winter art project in mind. Stay tuned.

The dung pile is also freshly weeded and ready for screening. It has been coming with 3/4" gravel from the horse's paddock and I don't want that in the garden.

Miss Dinah has settled in with no objections to her winter accommodations. She and Miss Collar actually seemed to enjoy each others company.

They are already froze, but one more deep freeze and there will be no more excuses. Tuesday's high after the snow is showing 26. That's the high. In November. We are talking really frozen now. It will  be time to go and cut out the bent stalks in the grasses simply because they annoy me. If they aren't going to stand, they have to go.

I want my winter interest to be perky.

More Magic Beans

The roadside vegetable garden is looking good and staying on schedule for the last week of May. After years of using wood chips as a mulch there isn't much to do but plant when the time is right. I was also most pleased that all the hobby farm dung I added last fall has been essentially weed free. I did get a few free Anise Hyssop, Agastache foeniculum from the dung. They have been left for now.

There has been a most fine and plentiful crop of strawberries this year. We have been eating big bowls of them for desert. Someone or some varmint found the strawberries enticing too. We were picked clean of the ripe berries before Wednesday's harvest. Whoever or whatever it was left no traces and no evidence. It's a mystery. I'd almost prefer a one time human varmint as the culprit. There's plenty green berries left to ripen.

The rows are getting full. I have them marked with green stakes so I remember which rows have been used. I am very capable of seeding over potatoes that haven't come up or planting over seeds.

There is lettuce, rogue potatoes and self sown sunflowers.

Beets are growing and a second sowing of radishes is up. The first sowing never showed up.

The peppers are doing as peppers do, sitting there and waiting for what amounts to hot high on the low spot. Some years they sit and wait longer than others.

The first of the squashes were planted out. I have cucumbers and other squashes growing bigger in flats before I put them in the garden. I get better germination and less predation when I seed them in pots over direct sowing into the garden.

I planted potatoes and fine crop of dill came up. How did that happen? Well I planted dill once. I don't think I will ever need to sow it again. Like the sunflowers it is now a rambling weed in the roadside vegetable garden.

The missing potatoes are another story. I was bad and bought my seed potatoes at the grocery store and planted them right away without letting them sit out for a bit. Who knows if they had been coated with something to prevent sprouting or not. I went digging to make sure they hadn't rotted in the late freeze. They were fine and just starting to sprout, but still a long way from the surface.

The sack of red potatoes from the grocery store finally came up. So did a whole bunch of rogue potatoes. I try really hard when I harvest to get every last tiny tater. I never do. I always miss some and every year I have weed potatoes. I just dig em and eat em like the rest.

The tomatoes have settled in and started to grow. There are 22 tomatoes.  That should be plenty. I sure hope we don't get the late blight this year.

I had planned to put a fresh layer of wood chip mulch on this year, but they closed off the tree trimmer's dumping ground down by the river and my supply has been cut off. It pains me not to have a fresh layer of chips. It makes things look so neat and spiffy. I can expect to do more weeding this year too. My chips are getting thin.

Most of the pole beans were up. One pole was naked. Someone must have eaten the seed. I recall seeing a hole dug there shortly after planting them.

I need more magic beans.

These are saved Scarlet Emperor runner beans. I always let some of them grow way big to save and collect seed. The seeds themselves are this purple tie dyed looking thing. The vine has deep red flowers that has been known to be a scenic byway road stopper.

More magic beans were planted in a roadside vegetable garden that is bursting with tasty life. I think it's time to repaint my poles.

That's the vegetable garden in the last week of May, ready to grow.

And now for your enjoyment, a gratuitous shot of the sultry Black Iris.

A Stroll In The Wild Cultivated Gardens

I started my day with the first planting and sowing in the roadside vegetable garden. Two rows of potatoes were planted, yellow and red. My soil gets fluffier and fluffier every year. Seven years of wood chip mulch decomposing on top and now additions of great dollops of dung do wonders. The shallow rock filled soil with a hardpan below is nearly no more.

I sowed spinach, three kind lettuce, carrots, parsnips, beets and sugar snap peas. A bunch of Gloriosa Daisy and Black-Eyed Susan were transplanted out of the garden and into the wild flower strip along the rickety split rail fence. Rain is scheduled for tomorrow night and Monday.

The best news is there has been ample opportunity and conditions for any weed seed in the manure to germinate and I am seeing nothing so far. I hope it stays that way.

After a few more chores it was time to amble through the wild cultivated gardens to see what else was waking up and enjoy all the blooms.

Many of our weeds bloom and they bloom in abundant profusion. That characteristic moves them out of the weed category and into the wild flower category. We let them be.

Spring Beauty, Claytonia virginica is a petite little plant. It is not petite in numbers.

There are daffodils of course, new varieties opening daily.

Three of my botanical garden plant sale trilliums have awaken so far. I haven't seen the local wild trilliums yet.

The mass of Anemone blanda grows fuller by the day.

The wild Anemone acutiloba does not shrink in comparison. Down in the forest it covers up to half an acre.

The flower is a bit smaller, but in the dappled light of the forest, the pure white stands out.

I found the first Bloodroot, Sanguinaria canadensis. Hundreds more will follow in the coming weeks.

Species tulips from last fall's bulb purchase evaded the varmints to put on a nice display. There are a few poisonous to varmints daffodils planted among them.

There are other kind daffodils of course.

The catalog bought pink Trout Lily is having a good year. There is a yellow catalog bought one also. Both of them seem to multiply generously but they have been fighting off something that likes to chew on them. I think the yellow one moved two feet from the original planting site to try to get away.

There are a whole lot of daffodils of course. I expect they will be peaking in volume of bloom by next weekend.

Daffodils from stem to stern and top to bottom.

These are the store bought trilliums I really want, a bright yellow and a deep red with mottled leaves. Multiplication has been slow going for them. I'd be happy to buy some, but trilliums just are not something you see in nurseries very often.

The nine species of trillium I have gathered into the garden becoming will do for now, until I find a source for more.

That is a good sample of what is blooming in the wild cultivated gardens in early April. There is more of course. Much more.