stereoman's Blog

Spring has sprung!

Today was the first gardening day of the season. It felt so good in the bright warm sunshine, getting grit under my fingernails, spraying water in my face, the warm, dark clumps of mulch breaking apart between my fingers. The deep, musty smell of decomposing leaves.

Last week I borrowed a friend's truck, and my brother Rob and I went down to the Riverside Stump Dump and got a couple loads of leaf mulch - one for his garden and one for mine. Big hot moist vaporous mountains of leaf mulch! The giant earth mover shoveled a whole pickup load in one mouthful.

Yesterday I planted twenty radishes in the top bed in the back garden. First planting of the season! In a garden as small as mine, I count every seed.

Exception: carrots. Today I poured a teaspoon of carrot seeds into a small bucket with an inch of topsoil in the bottom, and stirred them together. Then I added an equal amount of leaf mulch and stirred some more. Then I added a pint of water and stirred some more. In a few days I will spread the contents of that bucket over a five foot by two foot section of the upper bed.

I used to have a lot of trouble getting carrots seeds to germinate. Not any more!

Today I cleaned the muck out of the ponds. Nasty anaerobic yuck EEUW! Poor fishies were terribly disturbed by all the commotion. Once I was finished with that, I cleaned out the pump filter and ran the pump for the first time this year. Yay! Waterfall!

Today I cleared away the unwanted plants in the perennial bed. There are no weeds in my garden, only a few unwanted plants here and there. Look at all those Peruvian Lilies peeking up!

The Quince has been in full bloom for more than three weeks now. Last March we had a severe cold snap that killed most of the tender young buds, but this March has been so moderate. Not all lambs, but no lions.

The Holly tree has begun to shed. Good thing I had my shoes on!

There's the whole back garden. Expansive, eh? The two back beds are half covered with Creeping Charlie and Wild Mint, but there's no harm in that. The honeybees love it.

Welcome, nectar sucker, pollinator, traveler!