Reading Blackberry Leaves

Some people say they can see the future in tea leaves.  I can see the future in the blackberry bushes. The blackberries are in full bloom, and some even have tiny green berries showing the promise of big juicy berries in a few weeks.  The berry patch is full of butterflies greedily sucking the blackberry nectar.  Later the birds will try to beat me to the succulent berries.  They don't know that they will have to compete with a grandson who will inhabit the patch when he is here stuffing the big black berries into his mouth.  This time of year, he begins to make his way to the patch on every visit to see if they berries are ready.  There will be enough for the grandson to eat while they are warm and juicy and for the birds and for a sugary cobbler.  Right now the berries are just a promise, but I can see the future in the blossoms.

Honeysuckle

I become intoxicated every time I go outside these days.  The honeysuckle is blooming, and the heady, intoxicating  scent is almost overpowering.  If you have never smelled drifts of wild honeysuckle, you are missing one of the loveliest scents in the world.  How can I describe the smell?  It is not as citrus as magnolia, but more so than lilac.  Perhaps it is more like a lemony rose.  The scent blocks out every other smell.  It takes you to another realm.  And this wonderful scent keeps me from pulling out all of the invasive honeysuckle vines. The vines are as bothersome and mischievous as the scent is romantic.  The vines  entwine themselves around anything- fences, trees, shrubs, buildings.  They suffocate whatever they grow on.  The sheer mass of the vines can take down a fence or a building.  The vines overpower their surroundings.  The scent is just as overpowering, but it is so sweet and so pleasant, I am willing to submit to the fragrance every spring when the honeysuckle blooms. 

Worms, Asphalt and Hay

Spring.  Nothing is predictable this year.  Several farmers in the area are cutting and baling hay already.  I've never seen them put up hay this early.  That sweet smell took me by surprise last week as I drove the back road home, and sure enough there were the tractors out in the field rolling the long rows of cut grass into large, round bales.

Another sweet smell greeted me in the last few days too. Asphalt.  Yes, the acrid bite of hot tar and the crunch of the fine pieces slapping the side of the car were beautiful.  It means that the pot holes that have plagued us all winter on the country roads are gone.  No more swerving to keep from being swallowed up by the big holes.  No more driving on the wrong side to find a bit of pavement still intact and not totally eaten away.  I had become so used to avoiding the pot holes that I find it difficult to just drive our roads normally! 

What is becoming a perennial sign of spring here is the defoliation of the pine trees.  We have an annual infestation of small worms that eat every bit of green from the pines except the new shoots at the end of the branches.  Right now the trees look ruined and dead.  They just hold out their tender green candles and hope to survive the worms.  With any luck, they will be back in full needle in a few weeks.  Right now, they are a pitiful sight.  The foresters say there is nothing we can do outside of an aerial spraying, and who would want to be coated in insecticide?

So spring continues, and I wait for the next surprises it will bring.

Vegetable Coats

Here it is the end of April and we are still bouncing back and forth between summer and winter.  The temperature at night, which has been balmy, is now flirting with freezing.  I've scraped frost off of the car windshield and had to dig out my heavier coat again.  The coats for the vegetables are less than flattering.  I keep a box of rags, and so on these near freezing nights you can find the tomato towers wrapped in old, frayed towels.  The squash plants are covered in bits of old sheets while the peppers sport an assortment of wash cloths and hand towels.  The garden looks like someone dumped the rag box on it, which I guess I did!  Although it is not beautiful, the old rags have kept the plants safe from the frost. The tomato blossoms seem to have survived, and those bundled up vegetables look beautiful to me on a frosty morning.

Morel Mushrooms

They say April is the "cruelest" month.  It might be because the weather is so fickle.  One day it is 80 degrees and the next day it is 50 degrees.  Maybe April is cruel because the showers that are promised in the rhyme to bring the May flowers sometimes inundate the fields or bring hail.  But I think the real reason that April is cruel is that just when I am dreaming of their sweet buttery goodness, there are no morel mushrooms to be found.

The environment here is not right for morels.  I've tramped my woods and looked next to every dead log and under all the May apples, and there is not a morel in sight.  For one thing, we don't have good deep black dirt here.  We have red, chert rock filled soil.  Not a good morel seedbed.  Even though it has been years since I lived in good morel country, in April my mouth still waters for the unique flavor of the little sponge looking caps.  

If you are lucky enough to find morels, you have to soak them first in salt water before you cook them.  Ants tend to like to live in the sponge like folds, but a good soaking removes anything lingering there.  Dip the sweet morsels in flour and fry in butter.  It only takes a few minutes to have a crispy sweet bite that rivals anything else on earth.  My mouth waters just thinking about them. We used to find them by the sack full, and every night the main course was fried morels.  In about a week the season was over, but the joy of those delicate fungi lingers.  Alas, but another cruel April will pass, and I can only dream of morels.

Apple Blossoms

It was a beautiful morning this morning.  There have been many beautiful mornings during March.  The temperatures have been in the 80's, which is more like those we normally see in late spring!  Terrapins, normally out in late May and early June, have been awaken by the warm days and are already making their walk-abouts across the country highways and through the fields. The plum tree has already bloomed and there are tiny green globed fruits hanging among the leaves.  Now the apple trees are in full bloom.  The ground is covered with the spent white blossoms - a soft, scented spring snow.  Sitting under the tree this morning taking a respite from weeding the garden,  I sat and studied the apple tree.  It's pink and white blossoms were alive with all types of bees and moths and butterflies.  The light breeze and the movement of the bees made the trees tremble with the expectation of fruit to come.  The bees moved from flower to flower with saddle bags of yellow pollen on their legs.  I don't see how they can continue to fly with such loads!   The martens were busy overhead examining the bird house like a couple selecting their first apartment.  They went into every hole and chirped and sang as they tried to decide where to nest.  The cat simply sat and watched it all flicking her long tail and simple enjoying the moment.  It was a good day in the orchard.                                                                 

The Waxing Spring Moon

The moon is in its waxing stage.  That means it is moving past the dark, new moon stage and getting brighter as it moves toward the full moon.  Many gardeners plant by the moon and the signs.  I don't use the signs too much, and you can consult an almanac for what are the correct dates for your area.  Generally, my grandma said, "Waxing moon, plant things that fruit above ground; waning moon, plant things that fruit below ground."  So since the moon is waxing, I was in the garden first thing this morning checking to see if I might be able to plant some more lettuce this weekend.  I think I can as soon as the soil dries a bit from all of the heavy rains we have had.  My raised beds drain very well, so I should be able to poke a few seeds into the lovely black soil.  I'm using pelleted lettuce seed this year.  I've not tried that before, so I'm anxious to see how it germinates and grows.  It does make planting lettuce easy and the spacing of it a breeze.  Hopefully, it will mean much less thinning, which I always think of as a waste of perfectly good plants.

This week I was at a national education conference, and I had the opportunity to visit with some women from Wisconsin.  Although they had only 7 inches of snow this year, they had not even started their tender plants inside yet.  I could see the anticipation in their eyes as they talked about being able to put those first tomato seeds in flats in a few days! As I walked to the garden this morning looking for signs of my potatoes sprouting and marveling at the peas and early lettuce coming along, I thought of my Wisconsin friends just waiting to get their hands in the dirt and begin that cycle of planting and harvest.  I didn't have the heart to tell them that my pepper plants, still under the grow lights are 6 inches tall.  The tomatoes and eggplants are about 4 inches tall.  I know the anxious anticipation of planting.  I just crumbled the dirt in my hands, said a prayer of thanks for sun and rain and came in and sorted the seed packets for about the tenth time.