Just came in from dumping scraps in the compost. Everything is frosty, and wow the ground under my wellie booted feet was hard as rocks when I did a quick walk around. I just checked as I was writing this, and the temperature had just risen to 32°F. Continue reading “The year is already getting away from me.”
…I started to tell the story of our garden here in Gardner, and even posted the image above that showed part of the garden’s past we had inherited when buying this land.
In truth, I’m now writing this quite late–on May 11, 2020. I abused the magic of backdating to get the date at the top right. As folks reading this know, our whole world was swept up by March 31st with news about a novel coronavirus spreading. At the time, Massachusetts was just one place struggling with it in spades. I was spending more time than I like to admit watching the daily videos our local hospital was putting out, scanning news articles, watching broadcast news, and bookmarking more C-19 stat sites than now seems sane in hindsight. Can you blame me, though? My partner is “an essential worker”, a postal carrier. Heck yeah, we had some scares. But enough with the excuses! (I will end this topic by saying if he did get it from work and passed it to me, we still don’t know.) Continue reading “Two years ago today (sort of)…”
There is ongoing controversy as to what constitutes a “native” plant. There are oodles of factors (wind, Pangaea, migration, et al.) that can go into the determination of such, which I will not get into here in length nor detail because the same info can be found elsewhere.
Having said that, instead I am hoping that this will be the first in a series where I highlight a given plant that can be found in the U.S.A., and how I came to find out if it was a good choice or not for my aim to foster habitat that will encourage and support local wildlife to visit our yard. Continue reading “Why latin plant names matter #1, lupine”
…on Nov 8th with it being 30°F outside! Going down to 18°F tonight. Continue reading “Finally emptied the rain barrel…”
We knew the expected frost date was bearing down on us, but some things just aren’t done growing yet that we want to harvest. As I write this, it’s 43°F, and it’s expected to drop down to 36° in the wee hours before dawn. Continue reading “Frantic defenses against frost…”
