Yesterday evening I wrote this dazzling blog for you. Truly dazzling. Deep. Witty. Insightful. Filled with soaring messages of freedom. Just freakin’ brilliant.
I pondered rushing straight to the library to post it, but it was late and I was weary. So I just saved the text file for later. Then first thing this morning … I managed to overwrite it.
I hit the yes button when I should’ve hit the no button … and it was gone. One of those complicated things that happen at 3:00 a.m. when one attempts to think before the caffeine sinks in.
But it was phenomenal. Really.
Okay. Not really. It was about planting apple trees, which I finally did yesterday after three years of delays and two and a half weeks (since I bought the trees) of excuses. It was about me and the Curse of the Black Thumb and all the things I did to those little trees to try to save them from me.
So it wasn’t profound, but it was at least mildly amusing.
Then I got to the library this morning intending to come up with something new for you. And their Internet was down.
One of those days. Just one of those days. And it’s been a fairly busy (though pleasant) work week, so I don’t have too much else for you. I’ll post a few more inconsequential little bits today. And I trust you’ll be willing to await for “profound” to strike some other day.
Meantime … you got any trees or berry bushes or other sorts of perennial plans for your garden this spring? Unless, of course, you live in the Antipodes, where spring arrives at altogether the wrong time of year and I feel very sorry for you right now.
Just planted several “recovered” mature blueberry bushes from a farm that went under and sold all their stock. We’ll see how they do production-wise later this year.
Even with no berries, though, they make a nice privacy screen between us and the neighbors, when planted in a row.
I’m anxiously awaiting the first new growth on my bushes and trees. The five hail storms last summer did major damage, but I have to see how the new growth (if any) comes before I can do any serious pruning. The grapes and blackberries will likely have to be cut to the ground, but if I can save some year old wood, I just MIGHT get a berry or two.
But I started my tomatoes, peppers and a few other things in the little peatmoss pots just yesterday… simply couldn’t stand to wait any longer. Now I need to go out and see if the tubs (my raised beds) are defrosted enough so I can start turning the soil in them. The snow peas need to be planted NOW, so I can’t procrastinate much longer.
What in the blazes were you doing up at 3 a.m.?
My wife and I both have black thumbs. Some people landscape. Some people xeriscape. We zeroscape.
So my “spring gardening” will consist of whacking off low-hanging branches so our lawn guy can mow under them, and any branches that rub on the roof.
The problem with apple trees is apples.
I’ve thinking about planting a cherry or apple tree at the edge of my property. I just asked my wife what she thought, and she says go for it. I looked outside to imagine how it would look, and I see snow coming down. February in Wisconsin can beat the stuffing out of daydreams of Spring.
When spring broke at my new house last year, it became clear I had a landscaping problem. Several ash trees infected with EAB, truckloads of invasive buckthorn, and exotic weeds from far away places.
I’ve got a start on the problem (and a great heap of firewood), but now I really need to get some new trees started. Shame I cant buy a 200 year old oak, and won’t live long enough to see one.
I do, however, have about three months before ‘spring’ comes.