February 2011
Ray Builds a Limestone Path
Once again "the stone whisperer" gets the job done, creating a lovely stone path to the tool shed.
Let It Snow!
The best thing about gardening in the Far North is that by this time of year (late February) you have no memory of what your garden looks like. You aren't even sure that it exists. This winter has been especially challenging to a gardener's belief that when the drifts melt something will take their place. Something colorful and fragrant. There will be flowers. There will be weeds. And plant-eating bugs. All of which will be welcome after so much snow. I'm not complaining, mind you. Snow keeps plants safe and warm. Plus, as a kid, only Christmas rivaled the first snowfall for the ecstasy it induced in my young and romantic heart, and old habits die hard. While I don't grab a sled or start digging a snow fort as I once did when the flakes reached critical mass, a good healthy blizzard takes me back in time to those glorious winters of my youth. Packing up and heading to Florida for the winter is unthinkable to me. And as I said, so is the notion that underneath all those drifts there is a garden. I will believe it when I see it. Rationally, of course, I know that I will see it. There is much empirical evidence pointing to the existence of a garden. There are photographs, some right here on this website, and there are videos. Speaking of which, I hope you'll check out the new ones I've added. As I get better at this, I can't resist tweaking. New to the site are a how-to featuring Ray Brush making a limestone path to my tool shed, a new version of a how-to about Japanese beetles that adds some other ghastly pests to the hit list, and an improved rendition of a video about how I deal with ugly power poles. Hey, it keeps me busy—and lends credibility to that popular theory that spring will come!
Planting a Birch
How to manage a 1,000-pound rootball.
More Snow in the Forecast
Can it be? I've never seen so much snow and it's only February 2. I tell my gardening friends who want the snow to melt right now, that they should stop complaining. Not only is snow cover a fabulous insulator for plants, but a sudden thaw is disastrous. That's only part of why I can't get enough of winter. Having grown up in the far north, I'm hard-wired to experience a shot of adrenaline at the first whiff of a snowstorm. I can literally smell it coming. My emotional brain goes right to childhood experiences that it equates with euphoria: strapping on skies and hitting the slopes, carving perfect angels in soft powder, and most of all building forts. I was a zealous fort-builder as a kid. The only building material better than the branches and sumac leaves I used during the summer months was snow. I never cared if the edifice lasted. It was the building process that I enjoyed. I was the same way about sand castles. I guess all kids are. We know going in that we're only in it for the short haul. Sometimes it bothers me that I tend to be impulsive and careless about the planning that makes things hold up over time. I'll built trellises out of cheap scrap lumber instead of expensive redwood if the pine is out in the garage and available and I have a new clematis looking for a home. For me gardening is the magic carpet that carries me right back to those forts, sandboxes and other creative venues entirely detached from time and money and being a grownup. The only thing better (well, maybe not better but just as good) is a giant blizzard. When I hear the school closings on the radio, I'm right back in fourth grade and busting at the seams with excitement.
