One of the many good things about spring is that without it, and without the absence imposed by fall and winter, we flawed mortals might fail to appreciate the beauties around us. So much of the wonder of spring is found in the return of what was absent. Would the appearance of new leaves and fresh grass be so wonderful to our small minds if they hadn’t been absent?

The first greening of the grass is like the first sight, the heralding, of spring with that glimpse of brilliant green that soon grows to carpet the earth everywhere. Then the trees, warmed by the fresh sunlight and rain, begin to unfold their leaves until even the last late trees have unfurled their finery and it is as if the last of spring has completed its work and summer has arrived. It is as the greenery of new life comes that I feel a long dormant pleasure and realize how much I have missed it all.

With spring many flowers bloom. Memorable for me in this part of the country are the snowdrops, crocuses, daffodils, forsythia, irises, juneberry, apples, and lilacs. Each is beautiful in its own right, each marks another splash of color and life in the canvas of nature. Perhaps closest to my heart are apple blossoms. There is something exquisitely lovely about walking through an apple orchard in full bloom. It defies description. You must be there to fully understand and appreciate. There is the brilliant white beauty and gentle fragrance when the apples are in full bloom, and there is an almost sad and meditative beauty as the flowers fade and the white petals fall like some other-worldly snow to carpet the green ground.

If apple blossoms are my favorite flower of spring, lilacs (to me) are the closing flower of spring. It feels as if spring has ended and summer has come when the lilacs are gone.

Yet unmentioned is the flower I find iconic for spring: the dandelion. Driving through the country during springtime, I can see entire fields of them. They are far from the most beautiful flower, they are not dainty or exquisite . . . but there is some simple cheery vigor about dandelions which speaks to me about the heart of spring. And there is some wild and unvarnished beauty to a field turned bright yellow by the endless profusion of dandelions.

Sounds

Sounds affect me in a different way than sights. In a sense this may seem like an obvious statement because you hear sounds while you see sights. But I mean sounds touch my emotions differently. It is a subtle distinction of impression which I’m not sure I fully grasp or can adequately articulate. In general I would say sight and sound touch emotions from different avenues. Speaking in particular about spring, while I find the sights of spring invigorating I often find the sounds of spring to induce reflection and a quiet pleasantness.

The morning time symphony of spring is carried out by the birds. They start very early, before dawn, and continue until the morning wanes toward midday. Their calls, twittering and chattering, interweaves with the sunlight to brighten the day and spur one on to action. It is as if all together they say, “Busy, busy, busy,” and “Happy, happy, happy.”

One of the most pleasing sounds in spring, for me, are the peepers. Peepers are small frogs which emit a distinctive peeping mating call. If birds are the musical orchestra of the morning then these little frogs are the maestros of the evening. As evening falls with its coolness and darkness begins to creep in the peepers take up their call. It is . . . an unearthly ambiance. It is strangely pleasant, like the melody of night itself. Perhaps as such some people would find it slightly creepy, (and it does have a certain resemblance to the “scary music” sound that is played in dark spooky scenes in some movies), but for me it is the type of sound which sets my mind free to wander the paths of ethereal lands. Not only is it a sound to have wafting through a slightly opened window as one goes to sleep, but it is a sound for sitting on the porch after dark and thinking quiet thoughts as the night wanes late.

Then there are the geese. A pond sits directly across the street from my grandparents house, which a number of geese frequent. In the cooler hours of evening the geese seem most active in flying about. I will be accused of using bad English in saying this, but I find something painterly in hearing geese flying low overhead, their, “Honk, honk, honk,” echoing slightly in the cooling evening air, followed by several splashes as they come in to land on the water. Painterly, because the sounds evoke the images of wildlife paintings in my mind, especially paintings of marshes in the evening, with geese. If the birds and peepers are almost frenetic in their energy, there is something more stately and steady about the sounds of geese, as if they are the sentinels and watchmen over this domain, watchmen who give their final benediction to the dimming world as they head to seal the day with a final baptismal splash.

Smells

Smell is the most subtle of senses touched by spring. In spring there is the sweet fragrance of flowers, which is perhaps the first thing many think of. But my thoughts are drawn to subtler scents. In winter the sun is low and weak, giving little light and even less warmth. Because of that I would say the first smell of spring comes when the sun rises high enough, and shines strong enough, to create the particular aroma of bedsheets warmed by sunlight pouring through the window. Is there any smell more homely and inviting than that?

Then there is the smell of fresh air, so undefinable and yet something we all recognize on that first day after a long winter when we open a window and that smell, so deliciously fresh, wafts into the house for the first time after so many months. It is an aroma which reinvigorates a person and truly freshens a house. If sickness hangs on the stale air of winter, then the air of spring brings health and life on its wings.

And we can’t forget the smell of rain. It comes on the wind, a harbinger of the storm, and strikes the senses with a particular almost tang. That is a unique smell that I always wonder how it is created, and so strongly, to come even before the storm has reached. No flower has an aroma with such reach.

After the rain has fallen there is the rich pungent smell of wetness, the earthy odor of damp dirt and things growing.

As a fitting conclusion, we can’t forget the smell of fresh cut grass. Like so many things, it is best enjoyed in the early morning or in the closing of evening. To step outside and see the glisten of fresh dew on the cut grass and smell the sweet fragrance speaks of a day full of possibilities and work that can be done. To sit on the porch and smell that same fragrance in the dying light speaks of work done, a good day spent and the last hours of a day to be enjoyed in relaxation.

Spring is here, and it is a thing to be enjoyed with all the senses.

Originally published on Silverware Thief. Photos added by Kathy Purdy.

Since I’m no longer living at home, I don’t have seven days out of every week in which I can choose when and how long to prune. I’m only home on Sundays, and Sunday afternoon is really the only time I have of that day free to prune. That means instead of having thirty days in a month when I can choose to prune, I have four or five. And that is assuming every Sunday afternoon is actually free and the weather is of acceptable quality.

I could, of course, have not pruned the apple trees at all. The world would not have ground to a halt, the universe would not have come crashing down. Or, I could have tried to get someone else to do the pruning. But, while pruning is sometimes uncomfortable work, I enjoy it. I enjoy molding the trees to my vision, and shaping them as I see best. So I didn’t want to give up my spring ritual, and besides, nobody else in the household has been trained, and Dad is now too old. The options were either leave the trees unpruned, let someone else attempt to butcher them, or do it myself.

I chose the last option.

I realized early on that I couldn’t take my normal lax approach. There would be no last minute rush to get the trees pruned before they bloomed (a painfully far too late approach). No, I would have to get started early–very early.

I figured three afternoons per tree, which made for a total of nine weekends. Further, I conceded that such an estimate was optimistic–presuming weather each weekend was acceptable and I had free time every weekend. So perhaps a more reasonable estimate would be a total of twelve weeks.

Three months.

Oh, dear. That meant I had to start as early as possible. As in, the first weekend where I wouldn’t freeze to death if I climbed up into a tree and sat there for several hours. And so February found me trudging out in the snow to begin my labor.

While straining from the uppermost branch of a tree to reach the farthest out twig for pruning, stressing joints and limbs and putting oneself on the verge of falling out of the tree is never fun, on the whole sitting up on an apple tree on a sunny and fresh spring day is a wonderful activity in my book. Sitting bundled up in an apple tree in the middle of February slowly freezing solid while you strain to reach that furthest out twig comes in much further down in my book of fun activities. It may be sunny, but numbing hands and freezing knees detracts from the enjoyment, and in the back of your mind you’re thinking, “I wonder when I can go inside. Work faster, faster, and maybe we’ll get done sooner. Boy, I’m getting cold. I wonder when I can go inside . . .”

I keep saying I’ll do a little bit more, I need to get more done. I’ll do just a few more branches . . . and then I finally go inside and realize that I’m a little more chilled to the bone than I realized.

There are other difficulties, too. The ground under our apple trees isn’t level or even, so working from a ladder is somewhat hazardous to begin with. Now I simply cannot do some of the pruning until the snow cover leaves the ground. I have had to limit myself to perching in the higher branches and doing that pruning which cares not how much snow is on the ground . . . and content myself with the thought that if I do fall out of the tree there are six inches of snow to cushion my fall.

It is now the middle of March and I’m probably between a third and halfway done. It hasn’t gone as fast as I had hoped, but is probably on track for the three month completion date. Right now I work with snow on the ground, but at my speed I’ll be racing to complete the finishing touches before the trees break out in bloom. It’s a little hard to believe when you’re sitting up in the tree out in the cold–you’re tempted to think that you can put this off to the next weekend when it won’t be so miserable . . . but then you do the math and realize that far from being able to take a break you must work faster.

However, the unpleasant chill fails to dim my satisfaction in the work. I am still learning how to prune better, still bringing my trees a little closer to that apple tree ideal. Some time before last year’s pruning the whole idea of not having a tree competing against itself finally clicked in a way it hadn’t before. Before I was always making sure that limbs didn’t cross, didn’t rub, and were growing in the proper direction (none straight up or straight down, for example). All of that was well and good, but it failed to take into account how the different branches and different limbs related to each other. A limb which is shaded out by another limb will be inefficient, unproductive, and inclined to grow in a poor manner. If one branch is completely shading another branch, one of them must go. If one branch is mostly shading another branch, it must go.

In a way I was pruning the apple trees like any other tree–making sure there was no physical weakness or deformity. But an apple tree has a very particular shape–or, I should say, it should if properly shaped by the orchardist–and this shape is very much an expression of the needs of the apples which the tree will produce. In simply making sure no branches were crossing or growing in a weak manner, I was still letting too many branches flourish. Working under this generous standard I was cultivating thick bunches of branches. Perhaps they didn’t rub against each other, or cross, or grow out at odd angles, but these compacted bunches of branches were shading each other out. I had twice as many limbs working half as efficiently as they should.

Yes, I’m a slow learner. Last year it finally clicked–instead of each limb forming a bunch of branches in something like a closed fist each limb need to spread out like a spreading hand. And each limb needed to spread out in its own space catching its own bit of sunlight as best it could. Where one limb interfered with the sunlight of another limb, that interference had to be done away with as much as possible.

I came to that realization last year and began implementation. It required serious branch thinning, and while I didn’t go as far as needed last year I saw a big improvement by what I did. This year I am following up and I expect by the time I finish pruning this spring my trees will pretty much find themselves hewed to the proper line. There is a satisfaction to setting trees right and proper that perhaps only someone who works with trees can fully appreciate.

Originally posted at Letters to a Silverware Thief.

The futility of weeding is what gets to me. You spend a lot of time weeding a garden and a week later you need to do it all over again. And again. And again. It’s like running in place and never getting anywhere, or building castles in the sand only to have the tide destroy them. My reaction is, “I have only so many hours in the day and if a garden is not going to stay weeded for a good long time, I’m not going to weed it.” This is why I work better with vines and trees. The repetitive maintenance activity is seasonal, not every week.

But I’m not some high-minded person who thinks he abstains from such ridiculous things as futile activity. I know I simply prefer other forms of futility. Read more here.

My great point of irritation is my unplanted corn. It should have been planted two weeks ago, but one event led to another and it still isn’t planted now. My laziness, or incompetent time management, is to blame somewhere. This case symbolizes all of my self-criticism where sources of grumbling and complaining are ever before me. It is easy to let this kind of attitude grow and consume oneself. Summer becomes one long litany of “I didn’t get this done, and I didn’t get that done,” all misery and complaining until it comes that one looks back on summer with deep dissatisfaction instead of happiness. Summer becomes one long whine of “I didn’t get that done” and all enjoyment is lost.

This calls for a right perspective, something I have difficulty with. I have a schedule, and I want life to follow my schedule, and my nose gets bent out of shape when it doesn’t. I didn’t get my corn planted when I want to. I think I’ll throw a snit.

Sometimes we need to tell ourselves, “So what?” Is that truly important? Should that really be consuming your thoughts and your emotions? What difference does it make if the corn is planted two weeks late? What difference does it make if the corn is not planted at all? Who said you must plant corn? Will the world end if you don’t plant corn? And why should you even be in a bad mood and grumble and complain because the corn isn’t planted? What is this saying about you?

Thus I am offically telling myself to shut up and shape up. All these things are fleeting and without importance. They do not deserve to have me dwell on them in displeasure. I am a fool to ruin all the good things I could be enjoying now by grumbling about the unimportant things that aren’t going as I wish.

So, for some good things:

• Late in May we were hit with a hot dry spell. This worried me as I had visions of us scorching our way through summer. Any idea of a garden would be finished before it even began. But with June the hot weather broke and we recieved a good dousing of rain. The ground is now well saturated and the weather cool. The gardeners among us are happy.
• I am amazed by how green everything looks when the trees leaf out. After all winter it feels like I am a stranger seeing it for the first time again. My wonder is fresh again as I look at the picture of hills covered with green trees. We become deadened to it so quickly and forget the beauty of it like some common thing.
• The wild strawberries are in season. I knew in some distant way that it was time, but I first saw them when I went up the hill to do some chain-sawing on Monday. For me wild strawberries are like a memory of childhood. When I was a boy I could sit up in the field eating wild strawberries crawling from one place to another, always finding more. There could be a bunch of us up in the field, picking berries and hollering out to each other that there were lots at our spot and they were really good, everyone trying to find the best and the most berries. Sometimes we would try to band together and pick enough wild strawberries to actually make something with them. I think we might have managed, once or twice.

  Sitting out under the wide blue sky and bright sun with the wild strawberries was like a picture of summer itself.

  Wild strawberries are also a memory of childhood because they call back a time when there weren’t the responsibilites and obligations of an adult. That was the time when one could spend an afternoon crawling about in the field picking tiny berries and eating them without a greater concern in the world. Now I hardly get a chance to taste more than a few before they are here and gone while I hustle about. But the call of childhood memories is still strong. As I walked up along the tree line I had to fight the urge to stop, put down the chain saw, take off my gloves, and start crawling about eating berries. Everywhere I went it seemed I saw more and more, making it hard to concentrate on the work.

Sometimes I think more people need to experience hunting wild strawberries. Sure, it’s not great excitement. It isn’t the rush and clamor of life that so many people are accustomed to. But it is good to stop on occasion and enjoy the quiet and the small hidden treasures in life.

This entry was originally published on June 14, 2006 at Rundy’s blog, Letters From a Silverware Thief. Only his entries related to gardening are republished here.

I mowed the field over the course of mid- and late May. I discovered that mowing in spring when everything is coming alive is much more psychologically difficult than mowing in fall when everything is dead. You see, it would be so much easier if I were just some blase suburbanite who thought everything “out back” was just so much to be casually mowed down. But no. I have at least a bit of a discerning eye and so I discover myself in the uncomfortable position of only wanting to mow some things down.

The problem with wanting to save “some” things in the field is that the gardener half of me turns “some” into a few more, then into more, then a lot . . . while the logical and laboring side of me is screaming “Will you just shut up! We’re trying to mow this stupid field. If you want to mow around every third cotton-pickin’ plant we’ll wear ourselves out and never get done.” Driving the DR Brush Mower in a straight line is pretty easy. Carefully mowing around things you want to save isn’t.

Every time I mow the field I end up engaged in some type of bi-polar war where half of me is trying to look at everything I might mow so that I can stop and avoid anything that might be “good” or “interesting,” while the other half of me is fuming that I am being stupid and I should just mow the field, not turn it into a wild/cultivated garden of 5 acres! In the end I reach some type of middle ground where I save some things and so assuage my conscience somewhat, while at the same time feeling stupid for being so impractical that I saved even so much.

During the fall this was easier. When things are died back it’s a little harder to see different plants, and what might be interesting or unusual. When I first mowed the field there were a lot of wild apple trees. I mowed down many of them, but to appease my conscience I engaged in a very labor intensive exercise of moving many of them into a neat orchard up on one hill. This was a very stupid activity because they were wild apple trees and thus it was probable their apples wouldn’t taste good and further the trees were large enough that it was unlikely they could be successfully moved. This latter point has proven true, and most of them have died so I wasted a lot of time and effort moving trees so I wouldn’t feel guilty mowing down other trees.

After the apple tree episode there was the issue of wild blueberries. Our field is dotted with clusters of wild low bush blueberries. The berries taste good. The brush mower, which cuts at 4 inches, would brutally scalp these plants. So . . . mow them all down, save them all, or save only some? The practical part of my mind said mow the field and forget the blueberry plants. They serve no necessary function. The other part of me said wild blueberry bushes are heirlooms and produce a wonderful tasting fruit and I should save every last one. I eventually bargained myself to the position where I saved the larger patches but the very small patches I mowed over and reasoned it away to myself.

That was when I mowed in the fall and nothing actually had any fruit on it. This May I mowed when the blueberries and the strawberries were in full bloom. Now every blueberry bush could hold up its promise of fruit and say, “See? Do you really want to mow over me?” And what about the strawberries? And what about the blackberries? And what about currants? What about honeysuckle? And what about those other flowering things?

Stop. Stop. If I give everyone a free pass from being mowed I might as well take the mower home and forget about having a field. I had to draw the line somewhere. What about blackberries? I stood behind the running DR Brush Mower and looked at the patch of blackberry canes that had sprouted up in the field. I love blackberries. I could see in front of me the beginnings of a very large blackberry patch. But a brambly blackberry thicket was the very antithesis of a field. Was I going to have a blackberry patch or a field? One or the other.

Hard choice. I finally decided my mandate was keeping the field, not cultivating wild blackberries, and thus duly plunged forward. With every mowed down cane it was, “There goes blackberry pies! There goes blackberry jam!” Drive fast and don’t think about it.

Then what about strawberries? The field was covered with strawberry flowers. Some of the flowers were cut off when I mowed, while others were low enough that they escaped. Since approximately half the flowers survived when I mowed over them, I convinced myself mowing them was an acceptable “thinning.”

Finally, the blueberries. I found my previous decision to mow some and save others impossible. It seemed every blueberry bush I saw was laden with flowers promising a great blueberry harvest. Would I dare to mow any of them down? No, I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Wild low bush blueberries are not the thorny brambly thicket of wild blackberries. The blueberry bushes were like a low ground cover and I was willing to have a whole field of them, especially when they promised a harvest.

Unfortunately, there were a lot of blueberry patches. They popped up everywhere, sprawling across the field and making me take large detours. Round one patch I would go, and then round another. Pulling the DR Brush Mower around in a turn is many times harder than letting it continue forward and by the time I reached the top of the field it felt like I was doing nothing but driving around in circles, simply mowing the little bits of grass and weeds in between the large blueberry patches. And I was exhausted. Instead of field mower I should just call myself blueberry cultivator.

The idea of tending wild blueberries brought up interesting questions. The most pressing (as I continued to carefully mow around every darn patch) was whether mowing over the wild bushes every few years was like pruning and would actually encourage better fruit production. I sure wished I knew because if true I would have mowed over a third of the patches right then and saved myself a lot of shoulder strain.

I also wondered what the different colored blueberry bushes meant. As I was carefully watching the field for every possible blueberry patch I noticed the plants had distinctly different characteristics. Some bushes had almost reddish leaves, others had dark green leaves, and still others had light green leaves. Then some of the bushes were very close to the ground while others were closer to knee height. Were all those differences merely indicative of plant health (if so, which could I guiltlessly mow down under the verdict of “unhealthy plant”?) or were all these variations a sign that I have a vast collection of different plant types? In that case I was obligated to save all of this disparate botanical treasure. In the end I peered at them all, wondered, and saved them all whilst fuming at my stupidity. (Why am I spending so much effort saving all these plants? They’re just plants!)

And what of the honeysuckle and currants you ask? Don’t ask. Sacrifices must be made for the greater good. The white and purple flower went beneath the churning blades of the mower and only pulp came out. I winced. I felt guilty. But I did it.

The field is mowed. I told everyone they had better really love the blueberries this year after all the work I went through to save them. And I told myself I have to come up with a better way of dealing with the blueberries. Driving my giant mowing machine around every little patch is fanatical and something I can’t keep up long term. The problem with compulsive behavior is that it’s so hard to escape.

This entry was originally published at Rundy’s blog, Letters From a Silverware Thief. After you read his blog, you will never think of chickens in the same way.

The grass has greened, but the trees have not yet burst into full leaf. It is fascinating to look at the hillside and see how different varieties progress. In some places bare wooden branches stick up, rimmed with the red of buds. I think these are red maples, so called because of their red buds at spring. Other trees on the hillside provide a sprinkle of pale green, not yet leafed out, but prepared and ready, almost there. The poplars seem especially eager to leaf out, as well as some other varieties of maples. The ragged emptiness of winter branches is almost gone and the vigor of new spring life sits just on edge, ready to burst forth. It is life barely contained.

The early spring flowers have bloomed, snow drops and crocuses long gone, forsythia gone, the daffodils going. The hillside for this brief moment in spring is marked with the brilliant white highlights of juneberry trees. The profusion of their whiteness is almost startling set against the barrenness of the rest of the hillside. It is as if snow has returned to settle on a few trees. This, too, passes quickly. The accents of color that seem most striking in evening have already begun to fade, most of the flowers gone, the rest going. I’m sorry I never got up to the woods to appreciate them more in person.

Spring goes faster than I do. Spring is always rushing from one fleeting show to another, the petals of one bunch of flowers having scarcely come to rest on the ground before the next are bursting out.

There is more to come. In a few weeks the lilacs and apple trees will be in blossom, their fragrance matching their color. The trees will be in leaf, the hillside becoming a carpet of green. But not yet. We savor the coming, while spring has still not run all of its rushing course.

As is the nature of every year, spring will run its course quickly, summer going no slower in the parade of things growing and flowering. It is all like sitting down for a show where time seems to speed up (or vanish all together) so that it seems like you’ve no sooner sat down to enjoy then it is over and you are rising to your feet saying, “What? It’s done? I thought we just got started.” And then winter has arrived.

But for today it is middle spring, and I favor all of April and May for their many blossoming flowers, greening grass, leafing trees, and singing birds. I love the time of year when the weather is fair, the breeze cool, and the mosquitoes not yet here. It is a time when rains fall pleasantly, the ground is not baked hard, nor the days muggy and oppressive (not to mention the nights). We are in middle spring. Enjoy it while you can.

Then I look out the window and think, “Boy, the lawn needs mowing.”

Originally posted on Letters from a Silverware Thief.

However it shall leave, March has come in this year like a lion. Snow and more snow. Wind and cold. And more snow. Had enough? March is still not half over yet. March is fickle, but perhaps the second thing this month is known for is the number of people who finally crack and go insane from the length and madness of winter. By March a person is inclined to believe that they deserve spring and are inclined to grow increasingly irrational and unreasonable when this supposed right is thwarted.

It is true. By March just about any reasonable person is ready for spring. Warm weather. Green things. But the fickleness of March does not bother me as much as some people. Mentally, I feel worse heading into winter. Then the days are growing shorter, it’s getting dark earlier and light later and we have months and months of cold miserable weather ahead. And besides, everything I intended to finish before winter wasn’t done. With March, it is the opposite. The days are growing longer, it’s getting warmer, and the wonderful spring and summer are just over the horizon. I can make all sorts of wonderful idyllic plans about what I will accomplish in the coming seasons. Optimism abounds.

From this perspective, March and April are good months. They are the months in which you can dream and appreciate that which is not yet here. By the time May and June come, reality is colliding with all of those daydreams.

So, when the snow comes pouring down in March and the temperature is still hovering around zero (Fahrenheit) I am inclined to simply laugh. Why not go out in bare feet and shout up at the sky, “Snow! Snow all you want! It won’t keep spring from coming! It’s coming and when it does you’re all going to melt! Hear me!” I haven’t done that. But maybe I am slightly mad to think about things that way.

Our driveway is turning into a frozen river. Recalling events of last year, I remember that at times of extreme wetness a spring would appear above our driveway, bubbling up fresh cold water. (We have a high water table and very heavy clay soil which makes surface water a big problem.) This little spring disappears in dry weather, but is causing our current trouble. Surface snow melt can create a small ice problem on the driveway, but we are having water problems when the temperature is below freezing. This can only be caused by subsurface water coming up–and then freezing.

The extent of the problem is amazing. The flow of water is such that even when the temperature is down near zero (Fahrenheit) there will still be pockets of soft ice and water on the driveway. The water keeps coming, spreading and freezing. As ice dams the water up it spreads further and piles higher. In a day it can reach an inch in thickness.

The smooth surface is impassable for a vehicle so the ice is broken up and removed. Next morning–there it is again! Another sheet of ice covering the driveway and this time the frozen water has piled up so high it is covering the bottom step!

Salting is a joke, and even removing the ice is an exercise in futility. The water freezes again, on the driveway, on the road. At this point we are just trying to create an uneven ice surface (break up the ice and let it refreeze) so that vehicles can climb the surface of ice that seems determined to remain until spring truly arrives.

[Cross-posted with Morning Ride In March]

It’s not like I sit around all winter doing nothing, so of course the sudden flush of things that clamor for my time must compete with everything that I did before. This clash of priorities catches me right in the middle. I end up doing some things that really don’t need to be done, not doing some things that ought to be done, and generally getting flustered and disgusted with myself.

Let it be noted, however, that I did manage (even with all of my panic and disorder) to get everything into the ground. Not that this should really be a big feat, but for me it feels like one. The corn is planted. The squash is planted. The cucumbers are planted. I can compare this success to my past, or to my ideal of how things ought to be done. Compared to my ideal, I dug the garden and planted things in an atrocious manner. But compared to last year I’m doing good so far, so I’m feeling pretty pleased. Last year I planted my squash in extreme haste and I got my corn in even later than I did this year, and I didn’t dig the ground as well.

Work still needs to be done, most importantly mulching. You see, I have an uncommon method for gardening. There are probably as many methods of gardening as there are people who do it, but my particular technique centers around limited available time, and the fact that there are two aspects of gardening that I do not care for. The first is beating out sod, the second is weeding.

If you are not one of those people who beats the dirt out of the sod when you garden, you probably don’t know what I’m talking about, so I’ll explain. When removing sod to dig a garden a person can either turn the grass under, or slice the sod layer away and remove it to some other location to compost. Removing the sod entirely severely reduces the ability of the grass to grow back but it also removes the most fertile layer of earth. One solution is to beat all the good dirt out of the chunks of grass sod until only the bare roots are left, which is then discarded to compost. In abstract this is a brilliant idea, but in reality the amount of labor required for anything more than the teeniest garden is astronomical.

My father is not known for moderation, so throughout my childhood I was drafted (okay, sometimes I volunteered) for various gardening projects which (Dad being the frugal sort) almost always involved beating sod. Since our gardens were never small, this meant what seemed like an endless field of sod that needed to be beaten out. A job that looked like it would never be completed and, if memory serves me, might never have been.

All these long hours of beating sod in my childhood have left a permanent scar on my psyche and I have sworn off sod beating for the rest of my life. Beating the dirt out of a piece of sod is some of the most boring and futile labor invented. I would rather leave the sod in the garden than spend a minute of my time trying to make it give up the dirt that is clinging to its roots.

The second part of gardening I don’t like to do is weeding. I don’t loathe this so much as beating sod, but it is work that needs to be done over and over again, and I invariably don’t have the time to do it. I can either let some other task suffer while I chop up weeds that will grow back next week, or else I can not weed and instead feel extremely guilty as I watch weeds grow up and choke out my garden.

My gardening experience (and choices) would probably be much easier if I owned all sorts of mechanical equipment that would subtract most of the physical labor from digging and maintaining a garden. If I were rich and famous (or at least had a respectable income) I would have a rototiller and which would simply chop up the sod into oblivion. As it is, I dig my garden with a mattock.

A mattock is similar to a pick, except with a much wider blade. You might have seen a picture of some poor African farmer digging his garden with a mattock. Yes, I live in the United States of America, but I dig my garden like a poor third world African . . . there is some equality in the world. A mattock is a good tool, a useful tool, the best you can have for digging up a lot of earth without something mechanical . . . but compared to a hefty rototiller or a plow it is slow going. Hard, too, if you’re out of shape.

The current strategy I used to garden is this: I first take out the DR. Brush Mower and knock it down to the lowest setting on the mowing deck and scalp away the grass and weeds where I am going to dig. Then, if I am planting corn, I take a mattock and dig up the entire area. I don’t remove the roots of the grass and weeds, I simply break everything up. Then I plant. And afterward I mulch everything heavily. This last step accomplishes three things. It fertilizes the garden, it keeps down the weeds (no weeding), and it helps the soil water retention a lot (no watering). Mulching in the short run is extra work, but in the long run it saves a lot of work. It is a secert of gardening. If there was only one thing I could tell someone they should do in their garden it is this–mulch.

The type of mulch can vary. My preference is some kind of manure mixture. In years past when we still had goats I would take the manure and hay mixture and fork it down between the rows. This worked great to hold in the water and keep down weeds. This year I’m going to use horse manure mixed with sawdust because someone a few streets over has a huge mountain of it they’re trying to get rid of. This is a little risky as sawdust can make the soil too acidic, but nothing ventured nothing gained. I don’t have many other options this year, anyhow.

Corn is very demanding of the soil and the ground around here is mostly clay. I have learned a trick that helps corn grow around here . . . it is technically dangerous for the wellbeing of the plant but I have managed to pull it off without harm. The trick is to spread raw chicken manure in the dirt of the corn rows, or else spread it on top of the corn rows before the corn sprouts. Chicken manure has a very high nitrogen content and it can burn plants. That warning given, I’ve found that spreading it judiciously over the rows or mixing it in the soil gives the corn a much appreciated spike of nitrogen and I consider it better than using some chemical mix.

This year I planted more corn than I did any other year, and I planted it all at once. Last year I planted more corn than the year before that, but tried two staggered plantings. It didn’t work out. I got the first planting in okay, but time got away from me and . . . well, the second planting never produced any harvestable corn. This year I decided that being clever would have to come some other time, and I dug and planted everything all at once.

The amount of digging was more than I wanted to do in one day. Technically, I could do it in six or eight hours, but by drafting Lachlan to help me I managed to get the initial digging completed in something like three hours. Good for me, but he will probably end up having psychological scars about using mattocks. After that I had to hoe out all the rows, plant the corn by hand, and cover the seeds back up. Every step in this process, exercises the lower back. Mattocking exercises a lot more than the lower back, but even after three hours of that I wasn’t feeling too bad. But then I had to spend more time hunched over hoeing out the rows, and even more time after that hunched over dropping the seeds into the rows. I am young, but I’m not invincible. By evening it was difficult to stand erect.

The corn is planted, but I still need to spread the chicken manure and then mulch. This will probably be a full Saturday of work, but with that the corn should be effectively taken care of until harvest time.

***

For the curious, we did get a frost the last day in May. So many warm days in May and then at the very end a cold snap. Both the apple trees and the lilacs were done blossoming so they weren’t hurt. Alas, but my grape vines were coming on with full vigor. The frost was, thankfully, light, so rather than being completely annihilated the grape vines were more like . . . seared.

I’m still not sure of the complete extent of the damage. Some vine portions wilted and leaves died but the real question is what is going to happen to all of the wonderful little grape clusters that were starting to come out. Everything had the appearance of being the first great harvest since I planted my vines and now . . . I might have lost it all. Time will tell.

I should count my blessings.

(1) The apple blossoming didn’t appear as heavy as other years.

(2) I didn’t see very many bees around the apple trees when they were in flower.

(3) Now the the blossoms have died away it doesn’t look like very many of the flowers set fruit.

The why for these facts could have several (even a multitude) of causes. Two which occur to me is, first, it might have been a hard winter for the honey bees and so there weren’t many around to pollinate the flowers. Second, the unusually hot and humid weather might have adversely affected the apple flowering. How, I can’t say because I’m not an expert on apple trees but May around here is rarely so hot and humid as the month has turned out this year. Who knows, the blossoms could have contracted some kind of fungus or rot. That is what the paranoid part of me thinks. The paranoid part of me also wonders if I didn’t prune the trees enough and so the shade of the branches contributed to the shade and retained water which in turn would help spur the grow of fungus . . . ah, but I don’t want my thoughts to go there.

But all is not lost. Exactly how skimpy the harvest will be remains to be seen. It is hard to do an estimate of the crop harvest when the new fruit is still smaller than my little finger nail. By my current observations the flower failure varies between trees so where one tree appears to have significant loss another might not be so bad. Also, a bit of flower failure is not problem because an apple tree will often try to overproduce and to get decent size fruit you need to thin the apples anyhow. This is what I tell myself for reassurance, but I am nervous. A bit of fruit loss is no problem, but a glance seems to put the loss for one tree at 10 failed flower to 1 success. That strikes me as alarmingly steep.

Angst over apples aside, I think the latter portion of May is my favorite time of year. The apple trees and the lilac bushes bloom at about the same time and the appearance and fragrance of these flowers is the essence of this season. In the cool of the evening the aroma of the lilac bushes is particularly strong. I like to sit out on the porch in the fading light and savor the mixing evening smells, or else walk down the street with the lilac bushes blooming along the side.

All too quickly the flowers, both apple and lilac, are gone, and their fragrance, too. In a way it seems like the rest of the year is downhill from here.

In other words, my apple harvest hangs in the balance.

Actually, there is a lot more than apple blossoms at risk from a frost, but that is the thing nearest and dearest to my heart. Other years we have had a hard frost that killed off all the lilac blossoms. That was sad. Another year we had a frost all the way in June which ravaged our garden. That was depressing.

Around here the month of May is fair game for frost. Unfortunately, around here my apple trees blossom in May and a frost when the apple blossoms are open will destroy any chance at fruit. This makes for some nail biting nights. It feels like some form of gambling. Depending on exactly how warm May is, the apple trees will blossom sometime during the month. Optimally, the first half of May will stay cold and then, miraculously, the second half of the month will be exceptionally warm. In this way the apple trees will blossom late, and be safe from frost. In practice it seems like there is always a warm spell in early May, followed by a cold snap. Sufficient to say, of late we have had more years without an apple harvest than with.

Currently the apple blossoms are on the cusp of opening and I am feeling rather pessimistic. This seems like an early blooming year and if they open sometime around the 12th-13th like I think, it is highly unlikely that they will escape being frosted. All I can do it wait and watch, and wonder why whoever planted the trees didn’t choose a more northern hardy variety

***

The forest is on the verge of leafing out. The early trees have already begun putting out their small leaves, but the maple trees (which constitute the majority on the hillside opposite the house) are still waiting. Soon, very soon, the leaves will explode from their buds, and everything will be green again.

The lawn and fields have already greened up. The grass is growing, and soon we’ll be at the time of year when the grass is growing fastest. I can never keep up with mowing like I ought.

Before any mowing can be done the equipment must be taken out of storage. This isn’t a really big chore, but it can be hard to find the time. For our DR brush mower the spark plug and air filters are supposed to be changed at the beginning of every year. Of course I don’t already have this equipment on hand, so it must be bought . . . which I don’t usually think of until the last minute. Then, this year, I had the blades off for sharpening and I had to put them back on before Lachlan or I could use the mower. Combine this with the lawns needing to be cleaned up from all of the accumulated junk since last fall and I invariably get around to the first mowing long after it should have been done.

This year I made one of those stupid little mistakes that are very embarrassing. When I put the blades back on the mowing deck I put them on wrong side up. This meant that the mower was trying to cut grass using the dull backside of the blade.

Putting a lawn mower blade on backward is like flunking the most basic test of mechanical awareness. It isn’t hard or complicated. I was actually the cause of my own mistake because last year I thought I would be smart and I put a piece of masking tape on each blade, stating which side of the mowing deck it went on, and which side went up. Brilliant, except which direction is up? Is up when the deck is right side up, or is up when the deck is turned over and you are working on it? I meant one thing when I wrote last fall, and I thought I meant the opposite when I put them back on this spring. I didn’t even bother to stop and seriously check, I just blithely “followed” my own directions.

I don’t know how long my incompetence would have gone unnoticed if not for my subconscious. Lachlan mowed before I did and as I was walking around I noticed that his mowing job was very rough. The grass was not cut neatly. This struck me as very odd considering the blades were supposed to have been just sharpened. But I couldn’t make anything of it, so I went back to cleaning up the lawn I was about to mow. My subconcious must have kept working over the problem because some minutes later I stopped what I was doing and thought, “I bet I put the blades on backward. I bet I misunderstood what ‘up’ meant.”

As soon as I thought this I was almost certain it was true. It would be typical of me to leave directions for myself and then misunderstand my own directions. If I think I would be really dumb enough to actually do something, chances are, I did it. So I went and checked, and indeed I had.

It is amazing how much better the mower cuts when the blades are on right.

***

The tree swallows have come back for the summer. It is nice to see them flying around, chittering and scolding. I haven’t seen any barn swallows around yet. I wonder if some will use the same nest as last year.

About the turkey vultures I mentioned a while back; several of them do seem to have moved into the area. I have spotted them several times. Once one of them passed directly over head, my first warning being the huge shadow that swooped across the ground.

Apparently turkey vultures are common down in Pennsylvania. Now that I have become familiar with their appearance I’ve begun to notice them. At first glance, at a distance, it is hard to distinguish between a turkey vulture and a crow because up in the sky distance can be hard to judge. A far away turkey vulture can look about the same size as a nearer crow. However, the turkey vulture does fly slightly differently, and once they are close enough that I can see the underside of their wings, the turkey vulture has a different coloring than crows.

Turkey vulture counting can get a little dangerous. I was driving up from Pennsylvania last month and I thought I saw several turkey vultures circling directly over the highway. I leaned forward, trying to peer up out the windshield to see if there were really so many flying directly overhead. Straining to look up at the sky, I wasn’t paying attention to my driving and I started to drift on the road. So I decided I had to stop my bird watching.

But I think they were turkey vultures.