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.

Destruction

Beware the ides of March is what Caesar was told.  It was a warning I should have heeded too.  Today the power company came to exercise it's privilege of right-of -way.  There are transmission lines running over the front corner of our property near the road.  For 20 years no one has said a thing.  But today the men in the trucks came to clear 100 feet under the lines.  We lost two beautiful, big white pine trees, two big bald cypress, a short leaf pine, and two trees from the orchard.  It was so sad.  I feel worse about these tree than I felt when the dog died! I think of the habitat for the birds, the carbon they were storing, the shade a beauty they gave us.  It makes me weep.  But at the same time, if a storm blew them into the power lines and the little man down the road couldn't use his respirator, or a sick child had no heat or air, I would feel terrible.  I have to consider the trees my sacrifice for the greater good of the community.  But still I am incredibly sad.

So time to replan the space.  Nothing can be planted there.  But wildflowers might work.  They won't bother the power lines, and they will still add some beauty.  I will have to think about this, but I think wildflowers or big sunflowers might work.  They are seasonal like grass.  Of maybe I can plant grasses for quail habitat.  There are possibilities.  When one thing is destroyed, we must mourn it for a while and then plan and create and grow something positive from the dust.

Daffodils

"Daffodils" 

I WANDER'D lonely as a cloud

That floats on high o'er vales and hills,

When all at once I saw a crowd,

A host, of golden daffodils;

Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine

And twinkle on the Milky Way,

They stretch'd in never-ending line

Along the margin of a bay:

Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they

Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:

A poet could not but be gay,

In such a jocund company:

I gazed -- and gazed -- but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie

In vacant or in pensive mood,

They flash upon that inward eye

Which is the bliss of solitude;

And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

By William Wordsworth