culture clash

Finally got most everything planted today. It rained all week, but today was cool and cloudy, a good climate for working outdoors. I had tilled horse manure into the entire garden a few weeks ago, but by now of course weeds had come in to the area where I planted the sweet corn so I turned it over again by hand -- coming up with seven or eight boulders in the process. Also set out my tomatoes, planted basil, cauliflower and squash, did some weeding. A good day's work.

But . . . most of the afternoon some clown was up in the woods shooting. He must have gotten off at least a couple of hundred rounds. Pow, pow, pow for an entire hour. It's illegal of course -- state land. But the rangers never come here. The locals ride around in ATVs and shoot at shadows all the time. Once a week the state police fly the pot chopper over but they always do it at the same time on Saturday so everybody knows to put their toys down. Ridiculous.

My question, obviously, is why this is supposed to be fun. I'll never figure that out.

Entre dos mundos

Today I weeded my onions, garlic, peas and beans, all of which are already in the ground. That took me a couple of hours. I don't know how people do it for a living, all day, six days a week.

I think I'll actually plant corn tomorrow, and start putting out some of the tender plants -- forecast is for rain starting Monday, and mild temperatures, so now's the time. Also tomorrow, I'm going to grab some firewood left from when I helped my neighbor clear his interior road of trees that came down in the hurricane.

Then on Monday, I have to engage in the bizarre practice of neck binding -- meeting all morning, and then a formal business dinner in the evening with various high and mighty people of importance to my professional milieu. I get a kind of psychological whiplash from this. But that's the how it is these days. The money is in the city, the peace is in the country.

Gardening

Today I did some weeding of the onions and peas. It was a good day to try to get ahead of the weeds a bit since we just had a good soaking rain after a considerable dry spell and the weeds are jumping. I also did the first mow yesterday in between showers. I'm going to put some broccoli and basil seed in the ground today -- we might get a light frost later this week but that won't hurt them, and that will be the last danger of frost, I think. Corn goes in and then the tender plants starting in the greenhouse will go out, maybe next weekend.

I need this because I'm a bit spiritually starved right now. A relationship that seemed so right that didn't work out, needing to find a second wind in my research career -- I only get excited by new ideas but I have to take the time to apply the old ones first, and it can seem like drudgery. The woods now are full of birdsong and shimmering with the pale green of new leaves. There was a tiny toad in the garden that was almost indistinguishable from the dirt, but fortunately I didn't step on it. I've seen a fox and bobcat in just the past week. So I'll be alright.

Yep, it's finally here

Last weekend my friend and I picked up a truckload of horseshit, spread it on the garden, tilled it in, and planted three pounds of onion sets. Also planted raspberries. Today, there are just a few onion shoots showing, and buds are swelling on three or four of the raspberries. I'm going to sow a third of a row of lettuce later today and maybe plant peas. Meanwhile the tender crops will get started in the greenhouse.

Buds are swelling on the fruit trees, the briars in the woods are already green, and I'm giving it a week before we start to see the beech trees come alive. I never quite trust it, somehow, but it comes.

I need to make sure I find the energy this year to make the most of spring and summer. I have to do it in two places, maybe three, for two or three people. -- the possible third being my mother, but she may be okay without too much intervention from me. We'll see. Anyway, I'm psyched to make a little bit of the world better for people I care about. It's a great blessing to have that opportunity.

The never ending struggle . . .

lest the jungle reclaim it's own.

My neighbor owns a lot of forest. He has a long road -- a mile and half or so -- from his house to the swimming hole, which is an idyllic spot in the woods with a waterfall going over a dam. Spring weather has come at last and the mud has dried so it was time to clear the trees that had fallen across the road in the storms of fall and winter. As you may recall, this included the most powerful northeast storm in recorded history, and as you might well imagine, there were a whole lot of very big trees lying across that road.

Three of us pushed down it from barrier to barrier, wielding chainsaws and using my tractor to push the big trunks off to the side. It took a good four hours and there's still a lot of work to move brush by hand and clean up the edges.

As I have mentioned before, I mow a pretty good sized clearing, right now I'd say it's about 2 1/2 acres. The fact is you can't stand still -- I have to keep pushing back the edges or the forest will come in on me, thorn bushes and beech saplings in the vanguard. No road in the forest will stay passable for more than a year without fairly serious attention. We hold nature to a draw with our petroleum fueled brush cutters, mowers, chain saws, and tractors. Our predecessors here wielded axes and scythes and two-man crosscut saws and used horses for the heavy traction. Of course they had to feed the horses which meant keeping three or four times as much land open. I don't know how they did it.

The Indians, on the other hand, didn't bother. They'd girdle some trees and burn the underbrush to make small clearings for gardens, cultivate them for a year or two, and move on. Maybe not such a bad way to go after all.

At last . . .

The snow has mostly disappeared (except from where the humans piled it up), the ground has thawed, at least to some depth (though I haven't stuck a pick in yet), the garlic has awakened, and the buds are swelling. No real greening of the grass yet, but I'll let you know.

Yesterday when I got up I saw a big buck walking through the woods. He had some sort of a tumor on his left rear leg and a noticeable limp. Just a reminder that wild animals don't have doctors and stuff like that, which would probably be a minor problem for us today, will kill them. Since he doesn't have to worry about wolves and mountain lions nowadays, maybe it's something he can live with for a while, I don't know. But in the end, for most sentient creatures, it's a hard way to go.

What this country needs is a better class of groundhog

With cabin fever getting the better of me, I took a walk around the farm to look for any signs of greening in this chilly spring. So far, sadly, I didn't see much. The snow is gone from the sunniest flat and south facing ground, but it's still pretty thick in the woods. Down in my field, there's a pretty benign weed -- I don't know the name of it -- tiny, shallow rooted plants that just hug the ground. They stay green, and manage to very slowly spread, right till the ground freezes, and they take advantage of even a superficial thaw to perk up. They're looking alive, obviously, along with some patchy bunch grass in the very sunniest places. My irises are showing the tiny tops of blades poking above the ground.

That's about it. The garlic is dormant, the tree buds aren't swelling, the earth is still pretty much asleep. The prognosticators aren't encouraging either -- the rotten bastards are talking about snow on Monday. But I'll keep looking. It's time for plants to start happening.