• Tag Archives woods
  • On Our Land

    Spring                                                             Bee Hiving Moon

    Well.  Those bees I saw earlier.  That got me excited about a successful overwintering.  They were scavengers.  Robbing the honey left over.  So, now I will have two hives, as I imagined I would.  Moving them them to the orchard. The bees will be closer to the house.

    Also, a rite of spring today.  I walked the fence line, about 2000 feet, looking for trees fallen on the fence (2, but not bad), holes dug under the fence (none) and anything else that compromises our dog security barrier.  Nothing that can’t be fixed with a chain saw.

    A cedar split a live, large branch.  It hangs now, a fresh wound in the tree about 8 feet up.  I can’t figure it.  Healthy.  Not really in the path of the winds.  Yet there it is, a finish to half the tree.

    Bright green grass, translucent in the near noon sun.  Tiny shoots also bright green carry leaves still bound toward their date with the light.  All round the forest has begun to wake up.

    One of our apple trees will blossom this week, two cherries seem ready to burst into bloom, too.  All over our property the land has shaken off the winter, mild though it was, and changed out its somber browns for productive green.


  • A Healthy Garden

    79  bar steady 29.84  2mph E dew-point 57  Summer, sunny and warm

    Waxing Gibbous Thunder Moon

    The garden.  When I refer to the garden in these posts, it is a term of compression.  It would be more accurate to refer to the landscaping, the woods, the perennial gardens in back and those in front and, finally, the vegetable garden in raised beds.  I give a lot of thought and care each year to the plants in all of these places.

    While I try to do things in an aesthetically pleasing manner, my various efforts never achieve the shine of the  gardens in the newspapers.  I’m not a perfectionist, so the weeds here and there, the plants that have overgrown their neighbors do not bother me.  There is time to get to them and I if I don’t get it this year, then next year.

    I do care, a lot, about the health of the individual plants.  In my gardening world a diseased or dwindling plant gets a lot more concern than the niceties of the border.  As a result, our garden tends toward the lush, the verdant, but not always the well-conceived, artful display of blooming varieties carefully placed for height, leaf texture and color.  I’m impressed with folks who can achieve that and on some days I wish I were one of them.  But I’m not.

    Gardens and landscapes and woods work on many different levels.  In my case the chance to think about the plants, to place them and nourish them, to reconfigure the whole when shade has outstripped light or the soil needs amendment satisfies me.

    When Kate’s 60th birthday was on the horizon and she warmed to the idea of a purple garden, I had a great time assembling various purple flowering plants, amending the soil in each one of our beds and replanting everything, established plants and the new ones.  It tickles me now that the purple garden is in its fourth year and that it comes into its own in August, the month of her birthday.

    Not sure what I’m trying to say here.  I’ve just been outside pruning, spreading some mulch on areas I missed the last time around and I feel a little sheepish about the unplanned, somewhat haphazard look of things.  On the other hand, by my own standards, the garden looks fine.  One of those endless loop deals where the stuff you do is fine with you as long as you don’t compare it to anybody else’s.  Yes, I know.  Comparing is foolish and mentally harmful.  Yet it creeps in from time to time anyhow.