We did manage to get some work done between rains. I’m keenly aware how much still needs doing within a month’s time. Again, higher temperatures than predicted, broke into the low 60s F. Looking ahead on the local forecasts, very few nights will hit below low 40s if they prove true.
I am still jarred by sunlight after 5pm. I suppose that makes me someone that would be in favor of not switching the clocks in a way.
- Watered the seedlings, but not much new activity there.
- We managed to get the rest of the doghouse broken down and stacked into individual wood pieces. There are still some nails to pull from main supports if we can, and we’re honestly not sure what to do with a lot of it given the overall deterioration from rot. We will likely use all the bits and some of the most rotted in another attempt at a hugleculture bed, though this time we might have wised up and will just do cover crops for the year. We may be able to transfer some lichen and moss from the shingles to the moss garden patches we hope to encourage out front along the north side of the porch.
- He started digging his hoped for new grape placement bed.
- I started clearing winter debris from the large milkweed patch that had taken over a former stone edged bed under the kitchen window. I meant to take a picture, but the clouds were rolling the darkness back in and so held off. We will be transplanting the milkweed from there to along the fence wall by the garage. A single oriental bittersweet had grown like the aggressive vine it can be among the milkweed patch, and I cut back the upper vines and marked the root with a brick to get rid of this week. There are still some extant plantings there that have somehow attempted to prevail despite the milkweed’s spread. There’s a hosta there that confuses me a bit because it’s a fairly sunny spot, so I’ll be keeping an eye on that. The choke cherry he had thought to discourage with a cutback last year instead decided we must have meant to be coppicing it, and the new growth is unexpectedly abundant. The trunk’s too close to the house, and we may try to move it out a bit and allow it to grow again since it will help give both a privacy screen to the bathroom window as before, and some needed shade on the south side of the house come summer. I saw two patches of blue violets leafing as well as two large dandelion leaf patches that no doubt will soon start showing stems. The Berry Army, Boysenberry Division, ran runners under the cellar door and made it all the way to the corner where the cherry is. I am not looking forward to wrangling that bed, but it simply must be done as soon as I can manage it so I can dig out the remaining soil that’s plagued by safety glass.
- We’re still discussing substitutes from what we have on hand for this fortnight of The 2 Hour Garden plan. Three seed envelopes are still missing, and one of them would have come in handy for this. No idea where they might turn up and still baffled by their disappearance.
