Snow in April

It isn't sticking, but it is falling in tiny, hard balls of cold. Since Miss CP and i are still under the weather, our out-of-doors time is limited today.

Allow me to introduce one of our trees that shrugs off cold weather all the way down to -40 degrees! This is a Garfield Plantation sour cherry tree. It was traditionally grown on farmsteads in Aroostook County, Maine, the part of the state that abuts Quebec. If left to its own devices, the Garfield Plantation Cherry will sucker into a large shrub but it can be kept as a tree with determined pruning.

I have visions of sour cherry preserves and sour cherry pies and cherry pit necklaces for the Miss.

Creepy

I have planted seeds of creeping thyme between the flagstones of our front walk. supposedly it can handle being stomped on, and it will gently fragrance your approach to our front door! the trick is, it grows in alkaline soil and our is so acid it almost burns. Pine trees prefer to grow in acidic soil and their needles decompose into a lovely low ph compost. so it takes acid soil for them to grow and they like to keep it that way.

i sweetened the dirt with ash from our wood stove. not only does it raise the ph but it also adds yummy things like potassium, phosphorus, magnesium, calcium and delicious delicious sulpher. add a generous dollop of compost and it's great soil for creeping thyme! i hope. cross your fingers for a creepy walkway!

So Honey, what did you do with your day?

Miss Critterpants and i dragged our sick selves (yes, still sick, eternally sick) to a friend's house In Town to collect on her very generous offer of plant divisions. Wild Ginger, whose roots taste kind of like the ginger you get in the store. Lady's Mantle, which has all sorts of good properties, mostly to stymie bleeding and things to do with mysterious Women's Ailments, and anti-wrinkle tonic. And Alpine Strawberries. they are short on fruit, but long on pretty pink flowers. All of these lovely plants are going into THE SHADE GARDEN. the garden that i will putter around with in all my spare time.

when we got back from Town, My Guy had taken a tree down. The Big Tree. After the local school bus had pulled his hot rod truck from the muddy ditch (that is another story), he showed off his morning's work. He totally wins the big project of the day.

Easter

Even though we were still all ill, we made a good showing.

Never give up! Never Surrender!

After sleeping 19 hours yesterday, i was fed up with being sick. We are all fed up with being sick. So we took our orange juice outside and did springtime things. The mulch with the sticks poking out are our much beleagured berry bushes.

sick

two out of three of us are sick. i am holding out, but it isn't pretty. you will be spared pictures, for now.

three days of rain

It has been raining solidly for three days, and entertainment is scarce on the ground. our front yard is under three inches of water and the soil is so saturated i fear i will never plant anything. my perception of New England weather in entirely different this year with the garden in the works.

MAPLE SUNDAY!

delicious! the annual celebration of the sugaring season. we go to my favorite local sugar shack for maple candy, maple syrup, maple creame and the smell of sap cooking down. this year we brought home dark maple syrup (it is more strongly flavored), maple cream and we bought candy. that didn't make it home at all.

it takes 40 gallons of sap to make one gallon of syrup!

Next year, My Guy hopes to tap a few trees for sap to make homebrew.

Too Cold

We are in the middle of a cold snap that is too severe even to have protected seedlings out during the daytime. but we are determined to take advantage of the sunshine. behold the Maine Red Hot Dog.

Springtime Snow

we woke up to snow this morning and it has snowed off and on all day.

The playset was built by My Guy and Slick out of cedar trees from the garden clearing. if you look really really closely, you can see the raspberries and blackberries struggling miserably in the left-hand side of the pic.

The picture showing the wood shed also features our plum "orchard" of two trees. They are planted super close to each other to help with pollination. The far tree is a Kaga Plum and the closer is a Gracious Plum. Both are very pretty when they bloom!