it's productive city over here

This morning I finished off the square-foot garden by adding a bit of peat moss, sectioned it, and surrounded it with chicken wire in the hopes of keeping marauding bunnies out. Then I planted snap peas and shallots. Then, because I was feeling like it, I planted spinach, Boston lettuce, and radishes in the bed that will eventually go over to squash and pumpkins. It was a pretty half-assed planting, but we'll see. None of those seeds were purchased this year, so I'm not even sure what their viability is.

Inside I planted my ground cherries (weeks late, but better than never) and artichokes. The tomatoes are starting to get their first true leaves, as are the asters. The tomatillos are just sort of puttering along, but they look healthy, as do the rudbeckias. Grandma gave me a pineapple sage plant again and this time I'm going to keep it alive. The one she gave me looks pretty good -- I'm going to have to re-pot it eventually because it's going to outgrow the pot before the summer is over.

Next, I have to decide whether to sharpen my secateurs before I do a bunch of the spring cleanup, or after. I will definitely have to sharpen them before I do any spring pruning, but for cutting away dead perennial stalks they should be fine. I also want to get those hostas moved. I've identified a good spot for one section of them, but I'm not sure where to put the rest. And we've got Easter dinner coming up, so I'm not sure what else I'm going to get done this afternoon, if anything. I feel good about what I've accomplished today, though.

Friday Photo

I think I maybe don't post enough of photos of my garden on here. So today, I thought I'd show off my little rhubarb:

Cute, huh?

April snow is on the way

Mother Nature has just kicked me in the solar plexus, with the news that our area is expecting 15 cm of snow tomorrow. I didn't plant any seeds today because I knew it was supposed to get unseasonably cold. But damn. Blizzard. In April. Not impressed.

I have, once again, moved all the baby plants out of the sunroom and downstairs, where they'll at least get some bright indirect light, if there's any light to be had. They will at least stay warm. I wasn't going to move the mint or the rosemary, figuring they could tough it out, but now I don't know. The mint can handle it but I might shift the rosemary. The thing is, it's not really supposed to be that cold, and the sunroom shouldn't freeze. But still. Psychologically I will probably fret a lot less if the rosemary is in out of the cold.

The weather is supposed to clear up by Thursday and warm up and be sunny again. It makes me want a grow light, but I'm not even sure where I would set that up right now.

Thurston, Harry. A place between the tides. Greystone: 2004.

I love my backyard, but there's no getting around the fact that it's not a salt marsh. However, I think Harry Thurston's fascinating and well-thought-out memoir and observational journal on the salt marsh in his backyard is a relatively reasonable substitute. Recommended, despite the very occasional ambush with depressing environmental fact.

reaching for the sun

It has been raining all day today, and too cold to put the plants in the sunroom. At this time of year, if the sun isn't shining, the temperature in the sunroom is only a degree or two above the outside temperature. So in the interests of giving my plants some light but not freezing them, I took them downstairs this afternoon out of the dark hall.

It's maybe been an hour and a half, two hours since I did that, and all of the seedlings are bent at nearly 90 degree angles trying to climb out the windows. Even without the sun actually shining. It's quite impressive. I'll leave them down there until next week, because unfortunately it looks to be both cloudy and cold for the foreseeable meteorological future.