Because I can’t sit still, I made Bookman help me prune Bossy the apple tree in our front yard this afternoon. It was so nice to be outdoors without a coat on. Glorious. Warm enough to be fine while moving around but not warm enough to sit out yet. But soon, soon. Maybe next weekend. The week ahead won’t be nice, rain/snow forecast almost every day. April showers starting early. The good thing about rain is that I don’t have to shovel it and it makes the snow melt faster.
The worms are not being so very cooperative in moving to the side of the bin with fresh bedding in it. Some of the worms have moved house but there are a lot that haven’t. So I pushed their old bedding into an even smaller pile and added more fresh bedding, food and some calcium (to promote wormy reproduction). When I was done I had dirt under my nails, almost like I had been outdoors, it made me a bit giddy. I told Bookman after he got home from work yesterday that I had gotten my hands dirty in the worm bin. He looked at me and said, “you know that’s worm poo, right?” Ah Bookman, thanks for that.
I’d like to report great success in the making of sauerkraut. And it was so incredibly easy. Therefore there will definitely be cabbage growing in the garden this summer. We are hoping the garden will yield a bumper crop of radishes and cucumbers this year so we may try fermenting those too. So exciting!
I can’t believe you STIll ahve snow on the groud. All of ours has washed away, we’ve had rain the last 2 days. Love how your Apple Tree has a name 🙂
Looking forward to hearing more garden adventures!!
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Helen, it takes a long time for several feet of snow to melt when days over freezing are not consistent. There have been years when we’ve had snow on the ground well into April. I don’t think this will be one of those years, but it’s hard to say anymore. We name all our trees, they are members of the family 🙂
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We received 10 cm of snow early this morning. We are all so depressed. It warmed up briefly to 6C on Friday, and rained! So we had hope…..I love reading that your snow is disappearing. Sooner or later spring has to arrive up north here. If I think about my garden though I get sad, since we can’t plant anything until after the last frost danger (around the May 19th weekend).
Trimming your tree in shirtsleeves!!!!!! 😀
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Susan, oh no! At least you can take comfort in knowing the new snow won’t be around for long. My last frost date is May 15th so I won’t be planting anything soon. Towards the end of April I’ll be able to plant seeds for cool weather things like lettuce and peas but that seems so very far away!
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I think your fever is catching! Our snow is gone and I’m ready
to get outside and clean up the yard. But rain, rain, rain, all
weekend. Tomorrow is supposed to be nice–spring. I will
sew in the morning and then work outside all afternoon. Thank
goodness I don’t have worms to babysit! You must be a
true gardener. Can’t wait to see how your garden progresses
—pictures, please!
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booksandbuttons, When we went out to prune the tree Bookman looked at me sternly and said, we are only out here to prune, you are not to start cleaning up. Seeing as how most of the beds still have snow in them and the winter mulch is frozen I wasn’t planning on doing anything else however much I wanted to. I hope you had a nice afternoon outdoors. The worms are great and take hardly any time except when changing bedding, and the compost they make! Wonderful!
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I ended up putting down clear plastic over some weedy areas of our country garden yesterday. Last year, I pulled weeds until I was worn out and then watched them return undefeated. Mike McGrath (I think) mentioned leaving clear plastic over areas for up to 6 weeks to burn weeds and buried seeds. We have warm weather and lots of sun, so I’m trying this on the path where weeds grew up through tar paper and and rocks.
Hope your long winter is giving way to spring!
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Jenclair, plastic works great! We used black plastic to kill a large area of lawn two years ago in order to make some new garden beds. Not only did it kill the grass but also the weeds and weed seeds and those beds remained relatively weed free for the whole season with a light mulch. Winter is finally giving way, it is such a relief!
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I’m not sure that I approve of you turning your worm bin into a brothel, but I suppose needs must!
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Alex, LOL well digging in the bin I found some young worms so clearly they have already been at it. Their bin is red so apparently they’ve taken it to heart 🙂
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Finally, right?! Hopefully your snow is almost all melted now. It was so warm here yesterday that I had windows open. It was actually warmer outside than inside. Now there’s something that hasn’t happened for a while! I’m looking forward to hearing all about your gardening adventures!
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Danielle, there are still a few small piles but most of it is now gone from the garden. Though it is snowing as I type this! But it won’t last which makes it bearable. Sunday it got up to 68 in the house with no help from the furnace which is set at 65. It was so hot! 😉
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It all sounds so glorious. Rain is much better than snow. Hope the catalog arrives very soon. I’ll be looking forward to your fermenting posts.
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Vanessa, rain is definitely better than snow. The catalog just became available online today! Woo! I should be getting the print version in the mail in a few days. 🙂
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Grumpy Gummie here! I wrote a comment on this days ago but it, like a few of my blog comments this week, didn’t take! We are in internet limbo as we change providers. We lost our ADSL connection on Monday and believe the new provider won’t have it back up for us until next Tuesday! Seriously! Using the same infrastructure. SO, we are using one of those hotspot wireless thingies but reception is flakey. Grump. Grump. Grump.
As for my comment, I think I said something about 11°C not sounding much like Spring to me. That’s more a mid winter maximum for us. We occasionally have a maximum below 10 but it’s rare. Brrr … enjoy your Spring, won’t you!
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whisperinggums, I hate when my comments get eaten. Sorry! A max below 10 is rare? That’s crazy! But then it was pretty much like that in SoCal where I grew up. Sometimes that seems so very long ago and far away!
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Oh yes, So Cal, where’ll I’ll be this time next week has warmer winters than we do. I never even needed a scarf there. Our maximums on our coldest days 11-12°C. We did have a record cold day last winter of an 8°C max. Brrr!!
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8C as a max? How did you survive that? 😉
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Oh it was a struggle Stefanie! But we’re tough down here 🙂
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