Sunday, January 5, 2014

Dreaming of Spring

Or at least of temperatures above freezing.
If I could knit, I would sooooo make this for you, MamaPea.
I won't bore you with yet another blog story about how freaking cold it is.  You are probably already painfully aware of that fact.  I did, however, want to let my Mom know that we opened up the barn for Ms. Melman and Nugget (and they still refuse to go in there), that I put a ton of bedding in the goat barn and opened it up for them (where it is normally reserved for kiddings), and ALL of the chickens are in the big coop side, together, snuggling as much as chickens can snuggle.  And, much to Paul's dismay (I love you honey, please don't divorce me), Outside Kitty has been allowed inside the house temporarily.

Being stuck in the house, I've been on the computer a lot and started searching for anything spring-like or gardening-related for some eye candy and to take my mind off the fact that my feet are freezing even in socks and fuzzy pink slippers.  I clicked through enchanted gardens, rock gardens, desert gardens, gardens with sculptures, gardens with cats (imagine that) and garden plans.  They look so perfect, so organized, so wonderfully neat and tidy:

Then there's MY garden plan:

I've got my Baker Creek catalog dog-eared and post-it noted, inked up and generally abused.  Trying to figure out what "New and Improved" something or other I'm going to plant.  Even though I have a bunch of seeds from years gone by, seeds saved this past year, and seeds given to me by friends.

I'm also seriously debating just purchasing the old standbys (Roma/Rutgers/Beefsteak tomatoes, California Wonder Peppers, some sort of cabbage) at the nursery down the road, or, if I'm lucky at the Baker Creek site up in Missouri if it's early enough in the season.  I don't have a lot of dedicated area for growing seedlings and although I'd be saving money to grow my own, I just don't have the patience for anything except hard to find vegetables.  Melons, squash, pumpkins, beans, peas and cucumbers I've had decent success just direct sowing them so I'll continue that route with them.

I've been composting just about everything our livestock can squeeze out their backsides and I'm putting piles of wasted hay in the new garden plot that Paul dozed for me last spring.  In the summer I dug holes in that garden with the tractor auger, filled the holes with compost and put in a few dozen summer and winter squash seeds and didn't get jack from it.  The plants grew to a certain stage, flowered and started to fruit, but the fruit were teeny-tiny.  Not sure if the "soil" is just so crappy (i.e. not so much dirt as it is rocks) or if it was just a bad squash year as I heard other gardeners complain about.  But we managed to get decent garden beds in the Berry Garden after three or four years of constant composting additions so I figure this new garden will just take a while.  But of course, in the interim, I will continue attempting to plant something, anything in there.  And I suppose if the plants don't thrive, if they die, or the seeds just rot in the earth, at least it's adding to the overall soil-building plan.  And one day - hopefully before I'm dead - we'll have another thriving garden plot.

7 comments:

  1. You're ALWAYS good for a laugh. I want that hat BTW. Tell Paul to suck it up. Outside kitties need love too...@;)

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  2. Carolyn,
    Where can I get one of those hats???? LMAO.........

    What Paul doesn't know won't hurt him. I can imagine the cat will be hiding inside.......out of sight, out of mind. The cat needs heat too!!!!

    I have my seed catalogs too, going to do a little paragraph on them in my next post. Last year I did one of those computer drawings for my garden and ended up taking a pencil to the printout. It's better just to use a paper and pencil to outline the garden, instead of wasting time trying to figure a program out on the computer.

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  3. Ha ha ha ha! The hat made me laugh. We are to get temps as cold as -25 to -40°F today and throughout the next 48 hours, possibly colder tomorrow. That is too darn cold for me.

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  4. You crack me up!!!! Maybe Mama Pea could knit that hat for you, lol!!!!
    I planted lettuce the other day, since my chickens ate every last piece of anything I had planted in my raised beds. Looking at it today, in it's cold frame covered with snow and 4* temps outside, I think I'm looney!!!!!

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  5. At least you've got a start on your garden plans. I haven't even opened one of the (many) seed catalogs that have arrived. Heck, I haven't even posted harvest totals from last season . . . something I've been meaning to do (as a reminder to myself -- you know, too much of this, not enough of that) for a couple of months.

    I was gonna say, girlie, you ain't got no right to wear that hat! We had -25° this morning. Up two degrees from yesterday morning. It's obviously getting warmer now.

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  6. Did you pull out your squash plants when they gave you those tiny squash? Just wondering, because many times the early fruits aren't properly pollinated , so they stay small and eventually just shrivel up and die. Later fruits will develop just fine.

    We had our cold spell last month (-4F with wind chill at -15). Looking forward to a warmer than normal January. Our daytime temps are supposed to be in the 40s later this week! Yipee!

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  7. I like your garden plan! Just plant some stuff.

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