Well, it’s been hard work today. I was in the garden and that’s just something wearisome in late-January (I started to type “mid-January, and realize we are at the end already! Where’d it go?!!!). Un-accustomed to that bent position, since I hadn’t “really” done it since June 2003, I dare say, I grew tired fast. But I enjoyed every second of it.
The earth has not frozen at all this year, so the cold nights of icey temps just have the ground nice and soothingly cool. Ant that had invaded my herb section last Summer left the earth fine and airy around the chives, basil, thyme, and parsley I was dealing with. I fairly easily pulled out dead weeds, and some live ones too. Some live ones were dastardly tough, but I won. The basil, dead as a doornail, was ensconced in the earth’s depths, and several battles ensued before I finally conquered, but conquer I did! 🙂
I can see that corner of my garden from the bedroom window I sit next to right now, warm, rich brown soil blazenly showing itself to me, beckoning, oh so seductively.
It feels so good to have rich soil in ones bare hands. It’s just too early to really think about it so much. We just had an ice storm the other day, and now here I am doing some gardening, one example of how odd this winter is.
I’m holding back the urge to fire up the Mantis. I suppose I should look into growing some garden plants from seed, if we can manage the $ for flats and the right growing medium. I’ve not ever done that before, it’s hard for me to plant seeds and thin the young plants, so it’s generally easier on me to go the route of buying started plants for the garden.
This past summer I planted some things in a natural way … I throw remants of veggy cuttings over the deck on the side to decompose naturally, well it was a nice moist summer and I had some lovely tomatoes growing come Fall, they flowered and started fruit, but didn’t mature before the first Frost on Nov 13th. A melon of unknown variety was growing as well. Seems an interesting method for growing … I may just figure a good way to do that on purpose this year 🙂 Growing tomatoes there is interesting, I could tie them up to the deck posts well, or perhaps grow string beans, tying leads easily for them to snake their way up, just go onto the deck to harvest for dinner … that’s something I’m truly considering doing.
Well then, it was nice being with my plants over in the garden. I have two German Thyme plants. One is rather nearly all woody with very little growth, kind of weird. The other one is lush and gorgeous right now. Part of it died off, but it took off in the other direction. Smells so good! The dead basil wood smelled wonderful as well. The chives are low to the ground. I pulled the dead stuff out of them, I have three spots with chives. They were one plant, I divided it from the pot last Spring into three sections. They are establishing nicely. New little green shoots under all that dead stuff. They should do nicely this Spring.
We still have some winter to go through, but mostly the forecast is calling for these cold nights and moderate nights, and warm days for the most part. mid-March, last frost time, is less than two months away. It’s not too long before some trees will really start to rev up to blooming. Maples and Apple trees in our yard are getting buds growing to nearly looking Spring-ready-to-swell-and-burst! Just hold off until it’s safe dear trees!
I have some maples I grew from seed, from the October Glory, and a few of them are naturally sprouted that I harvested underneath the tree. I have them in a small planter on the front porch. They are about a foot or more tall and looking nice. I need to get a pot for each of them soon, and re-plant them. We want to keep them potted so that we can easily take them with us if/when we move, with heritage from the big tree we bought and installed and can’t move with us 🙁 but really 🙂
So I got my hands all dirty today. I had to dig the dirt out from under my nails and soap them up really good. I hate garden gloves 😉 Earth on bare hands is supremely satisfying. Particularly in January.