• Tag Archives planting
  • The Gardening Curve

    64  bar steep fall  29.75  2mph W dewpoint 37 Beltane Sunny

                   First Quarter of the Hare Moon

    Painted brush-b-gone on the stump of a honeysuckle.  I foolishly planted it where it blocked two beds from the sun.  It will not return now, as it has in the past, a Lazarus plant that would not stay dead.  Planted Guatemalan Blue and Table Queen squash along the fenceline. 

    Tomorrow onions go in and I’ll get started on moving daylilies yet again, though I believe this time their movement is final.  I’m taking them out of the garden environment and putting them along fences and at places where I need a friendly plant barrier to invasive wild species. I’ve discovered, at last, the proper place in our landscape for these hardy specimens.

    I’m a Celt and a Teuton.  I inherited the Teutonic love of scholarship and the Celtic imagination.  I also inherited a Celtic skin.  Being outside for very long leaves me a little woozy.  I also take a couple of medications that create photosensitivity.  Another reason to work in the garden in the early morning, a couple of hours at a whack. 

    We are ahead of the gardening curve for the most part.  A little late on some vegetables, a little early on others.  May is a busy month with clean up and  planting, bed preparation.  I’m lucky Kate’s got a week off now and can help.  She’s a sturdy, stay at it gal.

    The dogs love gardening.  They come out where we’re working, flop down on the grass and watch.  When that gets too tough, they go to sleep.


  • SuperMemo

    62  bar falls 29.71 0mph SW dewpoint 57 Beltane

                      New Moon (Hare)

    It rained and the temperature dropped 13 degrees.  Mother nature at work.  In the cool moist air after the rain I planted onions, beets, lettuce and carrots.  I also transplanted 3 daylily clumps out of the flower bed I’m converting to vegetables.  Cool cloudy, preferable moist days are perfect transplanting weather.

    The earth smells rich, a loamy scent that arises only after a rain.  My Dad’s Aunt Rella, an early cancer patient, took an atomic cocktail and said it tasted like “the air after a June rain.”  An image that has remained with me all these years.

    I just started using a new program called SuperMemo.  It showed up in an interesting article in Wired.  This Polish memory researcher has developed this program that times repetitions of material you want to learn.  This fits some neurological model of the brain.  He guarantees 95% retention if  you use the program faithfully.

    I plan to use it learn art history, Chinese characters, horticultural information, folk tale and world history.  And probably, over time, other stuff, too.  This kind of thing excites me.