I win at spring (again)

Our house faces south, and the layout of the entryway means that the ground near our front porch is always the first to warm up in the spring.  The previous owners either knew that or got really lucky, because they planted approximately 1.5 trillion crocus in that flower bed.

Because I am needlessly competitive about stupid stuff, every year when they first bloom I go for a walk in our neighborhood to make sure we won the Crocus Arms Race again.  We won again this year, but not by much.  The guy down the street with the yellow crocuses had about half as many blooming as we did ... guess that means I'm going to have to plant more bulbs this fall.

While I was out with the camera anyway, I checked to see how some of my other early risers are doing.  Hellebores?  Check.

Witch hazel?  Slightly out of focus, but checked anyway. 

Blueberries? Extremely happy in their new home ... which reminds me, I need to get out there and add some acid to their soil before the ground warms up too much.

Hyacinths, daffodils, allium, chives, rosemary, anemones ... all are either hanging on from last season, or have sprouts visible already.  The only thing we're missing for it to officially be spring-like is the appearance of the hosta buds, and the first sprouts on the peony out front.  Every time the snow melts I go move the leaves aside to see if they're up yet, then carefully replace them to help insulate the plant.  Plan on me throwing a big party with the peonies finally sprout - they're not only my favorite, but a pretty reliable predictor that spring is finally sprung.

Unlike the crocus, which have been rather boneheaded this year and have been blooming on and off since January, despite the chilling cold and snow and sleet and freezing rain.

But now it's warm enough that I can stop thinking "Dumbasses" at them every time I leave the house and see them shivering in the 15F cold.  Sure, it's at least two weeks before we normally see the first blooms, but you have my permission to go for it, guys - as long as you do it faster than the yellow crocuses down the street.

Garfield would be so proud!

Last fall we (meaning me - Jason and Liza could have cared less) decided that instead of throwing out our leaves, we would instead use them as the foundation for a bunch of new lasagna gardens (http://organicgardening.about.com/od/startinganorganicgarden/a/lasagnagarden.htm). What began as a billion cubic feet of shredded leaves and grass (plus a bag of compost starter, a bunch of half-finished kitchen compost, and a bunch of earthworms we dug up in the spring) turned into more than 100 square feet of new gardens in the back yard. We planted some this spring, and left the rest to ripen a bit (some piles were heavy on the not-so-shredded leaves). Here it is after a year - 3" of perfect crumbly humus, ready to go.

I bring this up now because it's leaf season again, so I can show you the before and after shots all at once. Here's this year's lasagna bed, about 18" deep in shredded leaves and waiting for the last go-round with the rakes and law mower.

And here's last year's bed for comparison. It's a bit shorter, huh?

The only downside? The pile doesn't get very hot while it works, so we had to deal with (ie ignore) tons of weeds, including this cute little guy:

What, don't you recognize this volunteer? It's the rare "native to Ohio, no really it's not a tropical plant" avocado tree. I've been growing one in a pot inside for months, and this one looks healthier. See, I told you I was doing something right with the compost!

I love violets

That is all.

Meercat Manor? More like Chipmunk Chalet

"Doh dee doh dee doh, just sittin' here, nommin' on some fusty old acorns." 

"Hey, bro! Whatchoo got up der?"

"I got enough seeds to pave the driveway - this feeder's been full for months!"

"Not anymore!  Scootch over, chick - I'm movin' in!"

I plan to be proud to partake of your patio room**

Yesterday morning, before the work began:

Yesterday afternoon, as the work was winding down:

Yesterday evening, after the storm that dumped several inches of rain and hail on us:

Luckily, the track that will hold the third wall up wasn't installed yet, so I used a shop broom to sweep the water out of my new, 2" deep swimming pool that's located conveniently right above the sump pump in the foundation.  Then I spent an hour this morning blowing all the leaves out, and setting up fans to try to get the concrete dry enough for them to glue down the third track today.  The volume of leaves knocked down by the hail was impressive - maybe 25% of what was on the trees in our neighbors yard ended up plastered all over the side of our house and every other vertical surface in our yard ... like the panels that will make up parts of the walls of the room:

I keep telling myself that at least I won't have to rake those leaves up this fall, but the suckers will probably regenerate by then.

The hail wasn't record-sized, but it was kind of cool to see that it was obviously formed in two steps instead of one continuous process:

Not huge, but we got quite a bit of it.  This was taken more than an hour after the storm:

My plants were not exactly in favor of the giant julienne-slicers falling from the sky: 

What's funny is that I always take pictures of my new gardens right after I've mulched them, and I always joke that I have to do it then, because it's never going to look that nice again.  Good thing I did, too, since this was what it looked like on Sunday:

Notice the non-shredded hostas right above this?

Oh, well, at least we didn't lose any trees, have the power go out, or end up with a flooded basement.  Things could have been much worse than having to do a bit of sweeping and ending up with a lot of new "green" material for my compost pile.

** When Harry Met Sally reference.

Frustration

There are few things more galling that having the time, energy, and willpower to work on a project with a deadline, only to be stymied by the weather.  Because in case you didn't notice, it's rained every day for more than a week here in Cleveland, and my yard isn't exactly well-drained.  It's miles beyond moist, past wet, and straight into "I'd need hipboots to go in and transplant those hostas today" territory.  Seriously, I have to put on my knee-high rubber boots to take stuff back to the compost pile, since otherwise the water slops over the tops of my shoes and gets my socks all muddy.  And that's in the drier section of the backyard ...

I spent the first couple days of the rain shopping for stuff for our new patio room - buying the light fixtures and ceiling fan we need to install, scoping out furniture and accessories we might want to get, things of that nature.  Tee-hee, look at me, I get a break from having to do stuff in the yard!  Construction is now two weeks behind schedule, and I've run out of places to put stuff while I'm waiting for the room, so I can't shop anymore.

Putting in the new fire pit patio thingee was accomplished during a 2-day break in the weather, and was only possible because I didn't mind that the ground underneath it was getting squished into hard-packed oblivion.  Planting our front beds got done mostly before the rain started, but I've been able to throw in a plant here and there when the rain abates, since the soil up front is much better drained than the soil in the back, but even then I sort of expected there to be a welling up of water in the bottom of the holes I dug.  I should have planted St. John's wort ... then I could just go out and graze for a while and feel better, right?  Nah, it wouldn't be worth the wacko dreams.

Earlier this week I spent part of the day cleaning the craft room, doing some filing and sorting that's been waiting all winter for me to feel like doing it.  Yay.

Yesterday I decided that sometimes you just have to give in and say, "Fuck it, you win, I'm going back to bed and maybe this will all be over when I wake up."  And when I woke up 3 hours later, lo and behold, the sun was shining!  True, there were big gray storm clouds on the horizon, but I had at least an hour-long window of opportunity, and I wasn't going to let it go to waste.  I high-tailed it over to the nursery and finally got the witch hazel I've wanted to add to the back yard, and I found a dwarf (actual fruiting) cherry tree that will look great in the front yard, and then - score! - I found a six-way espaliered apple tree.  Just the day before I had been telling Jason that I sort of wanted one of those to put in the edible garden up front, but nobody around here had them.  Never been so glad to be wrong in my life!

Of course, now I've got a 5' tall apple tree sitting in the middle of my front yard, waiting to be planted (or fall over in the wind and break off one of the grafts) ... which I can't do until I move the bush that's already there.  Which I can't do until the ground dries out some.  Which won't happen until tomorrow, at the earliest.  Which is when the rain is supposed to start again.

Gah.  Guess I'll put on the rubber boots and try to prune back the crocus foliage, or do something else that can be accomplished without actually stepping into any of my beds.

Or maybe I'll just say, "Screw it," and go see a movie.

Not sure where she had more fun ...

... at Longwood Gardens, playing under the ginkgo trees, 

... or playing in the river that runs through the empty lots down the street from my parents' house.

 Both were free today, so I guess it doesn't really matter, now does it?

Because you can't have too many pictures of vegetables (especially cute ones)

When Mr. "Amish Vegetable Guy Whose Stand Is Next To The Meat Guy's Stand" told me I was welcome to pick through the containers to make sure I got the tiniest Brussels sprouts, I could have reached across the cauliflower and kissed his frighteningly bearded face.  Because my God, how cute are these guys?

And my God, do you have any idea how long it takes to clean and prep 3 quarts of these little beauties?  I'll let you know in a few weeks when I finally finish the job ...

You know you put off the gardening until too late when ...

... you have traded your sun visor for a wool knit hat.
... you have to wait for the frost to melt before you begin work for the day.
... you have to wear warm gloves under your gardening gloves.
... you can see your breath as you curse at the clods of clay that you laughingly call "soil."
... you start thinking that you could just leave the spade sticking out of the bed, put twinkle lights on it, and call it a seasonal decoration.
... you're more concerned about frostbite and chapped lips than you are about sunburn and heatstroke.
... you have to drag the bags of mulch inside Home Depot to check out because the outside register isn't open anymore.
... you know from first-hand experience that if you wear really loose jeans, it is possible to fit one of those microwavable rice heating pad things inside the waistband to keep you toasty while you work.

Geez, nobody guessed my new project is "mushroom farmer?"

Ha!  Just kidding!  I leave all fungus propagation to the professionals.

In reality, I'm working on a new blog, (Sort Of) Sustainable Summer.  It's me rambling about my attempts to feed my family this summer using mostly locally- and/or organically-grown foods.  I'll be collecting and sharing my resources, both national and local, and talking about how I'm weaning my kid off string cheese and V-Fusion and onto real food.  When I find good recipes - ones that even my non-locavore friends will eat - I'll pass them along, and hopefully all our lives will be tastier as a result.

The project is just starting right now - I'm about done with the research, and I'm almost ready to pack away all of my processed "food" items and start eating better ... just as soon as I get back from vacation in early June.  Because if you look at our handy made-just-this-morning harvest calendar, you'll notice that May is pretty darn sparse on local produce when you live in the snow belt.

And since I don't have a pantry full of local produce I "put up" last summer - and I do have a pantry full of crap we bought and probably should eat up - we'll take baby steps until June.

So pop on over to the new blog and check it out.  You won't find much in the way of ranting or proselytizing, but hopefully you'll find it interesting.  And if it makes you think about your food in new ways, well, then that's a good thing.

Also - cute pictures on farms and stuff!  Just wait until we go visit the lady who raises chickens down at the end of our street ...

Sometimes she comes up with good ideas

Yesterday at lunch Liza practically begged me to go to the Botanical Garden. Never mind that we were just there two days before, or that it was already halfway through the day, or that we'd have to drive home through rush hour traffic downtown in order to make an appointment at our house ... she wanted to go. Now.

And then she went outside and played on the swings for an hour, despite my repeated reminders that we needed to leave soon if she actually wanted to go to the garden.

Finally at 1:15 I managed to convince her to leave, and by dint of hitting all the lights right, we managed to make it to the garden just in time for the butterfly release. It was worth the trip:
Yes, she has four butterflies on that hand, and eventually got another on her left hand, for a total of five butterflies at once. That big dude there is a Blue Morpho, not that you can tell because he's all camouflaged when he closes his wings. He was apparently all tired and shagged out, because he stayed on Liza's hand for half an hour. Do you have any idea how boring it is to stand around quietly so the butterfly doesn't get startled ... for half an hour? Luckily, I had my camera with me, and no other kids to keep an eye on this time around.

Mr. Morpho was even kind enough to let me get some macro shots of his wings, which was fun. Wish I could have gotten some with his wings open, but in some ways, the camo side is even cooler:

After all that standing around with insects on her arms, it was hard to convince her to take a swing through the "adult" gardens on the way to the children's garden, but somehow I managed it. And I got one of my favorite shots of her, ever:

Wish you could hear us both humming the theme to Jurassic Park while we took the picture - because head-high ferns just scream "dinosaur country" to both of us, even if only one of us has actually seen the entire movie :)

Thank goodness the rain held off

Welcome to my birthday party at the Cleveland Botanical Garden!

First, we will run around like maniacs on the lawn.

I will be very lucky, and find FIVE four-leaf clovers.

Then we will have cupcakes, both chocolate and vanilla.

And we will open presents and show off our butterfly t-shirts.

We'll hunt for butterflies to identify ...

... and flowers to sniff.

We might have a few close encounters ...

... of the really cute kind.

There should be time to do some construction work.

We might even get to do some riding.

So here's looking forward to some good, clean fun!

And oh, yeah - the flowers will be almost as pretty as me!

Simple pleasures

There's something so cheerful about the sudden influx of summer toys into the yard, their gaudy plastic colors such a contrast against the greening grass. You can follow the progress of our days by the trail of gardening gloves, picnic blankets, rakes, balance beams, and bubble wands in our wake.

You can also follow the progress of our garden cleanup, now that a radio program and a bit of pointed conversation has turned Liza into a Composting Fanatic (thanks, Dee!). A myriad of crunchy-leaved trails snake from the gardens to our newly begun compost pile, and a half-dozen slightly traumatized worms are trying to recover from their overly enthusiastic transport and settle into their spacious new home.

There's a trail inside the house, as well, in the dusty footprints near the back door, the pile of rocks that have been brought inside to be "studied on," and the mountain of unwashed laundry that teeters inside our closet.

She bolts outside each morning as soon as I stumble downstairs - usually she remembers to change out of her pajamas first. She swings and swings and swings, coming inside only when the realization finally hits that it's 40F outside and she's wearing leggings and a t-shirt.

At the end of the day, we both smell of sunshine and Coppertone, dirt and roly-poly bugs, grass stains and band-aids. And that is good.

Training walk at the Botanical Garden, part 1

The Wisteria-fu, it is strong in this one:


Aww, shucks!

The Big Dig

The drainage in the back half of our yard is bad.  Like, "standing water for months around the raised gardens" bad.  Since it is literally the middle of May before it usually dries out enough that we can mow back there for the first time, it gets a little, um, deep.  And anytime it rains, we have to skip mowing one corner lest we get the mower stuck in the ankle-deep mud that the grass is growing in.

Last fall I decided to start a new campaign to eradicate all of the difficult-to-mow sections of our yard, and I started in the back corner.  I originally just planned a narrow bed along the property line, but after I hit it with the herbicide and started to turn it over, it looked pretty puny.  So this spring I went medieval on that corner, using half a gallon of Round-Up to kill off the grass so I didn't have to strip off the sod.  It's swampy enough back there without lowering the ground level by another 6".

Here is a photo of The Swampy Hellhole Back Corner of Our Yard, after herbicide but before amending the soil:

As we've gotten deeper into spring, the high-tide mark in the back yard has gradually receded, so I've been able to work the bed gradually over the last few weeks.  After more than a few evenings and weekends of work, more bags of sand than I care to admit, and about a dozen bags of mulch (plus a trunkload of free hostas from my parents - thanks, guys!), it's finally done for the year:
That's not a great picture of the garden - the hostas are still a little shell-shocked from their trip last week, so they're a bit on the floppy side.  I'm hoping they'll perk up a bit and fill in a little this year, eventually forming a solid swathe of hosta goodness in a few years.

The good news is that the added sand and plants and air that's been worked into the soil have raised the ground level in the area of the garden, so I didn't have to put bog plants back there.  Well, okay, I did plant two papyrus plants in the lowest section, but that was just for fun.  The addition of my usual weed-preventing trench around the outside of the bed also helps channel some of the water away from the lawn, so it's slightly less squishy back there.  But, as you can see in the photo, we still can't mow as often as I'd like.

This will probably be Liza's last year with the castle - she's already in danger of getting stuck when using the "secret" entrance - and once that's gone, we'll have to decide whether to replace it with another playhouse there, or just turn that into a garden, too.  I'm kind of thinking I might loose-lay some bricks out there and make a tiny little patio, with wrought-iron chairs or a chaise or something.  It's pretty shady there all the time, and it would be nice to take a break from the soil amendment parade I've been marching in this year.  Plus, I've got my eye on some other areas of the yard that need some work ...