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What a perfect afternoon for working outside! The balmy days that come along in early spring to tease us are lovely ... but imho nothing beats a cool sunny day for actually getting the heavier gardening chores done.
The garden is starting to take shape out back and the three composters are finally empty. On another day ... when there is no wind to add to the challenge, they can be moved closer to the vegetable garden where they are normally needed.

The Lady's Mantle is starting to settle in nicely. Its a nice sheltered south facing spot so it should do well there. Its prospects are certainly better there than had they been left in the dogs' new play yard : ))))

My little greenhouse is really nothing more than a glorified walk in cold frame. Until things warm up again, the extra layer of windows will protect the seedlings which are starting to show signs of life.

Dollar for dollar, lilies of any type are a great investment for the garden ... especially for anyone looking to keep things low maintenence. From the heirloom lilies down by the road, to the sweep of day lilies coming up the lane to the water lilies in the ornamental pond ... they are faithfully there every year. Once they start blooming, the Stella D'oro daylilies and the water lilies will keep on blooming until well after the first frost.

If you look closely at the new leaf growth, you will see this years new tadpoles growing along with their future lily pads : )))

The Lydia Tree

This is the Lydia Tree. It came home in my hatchback from the Briar Patch the day my daughter started into labour. I knew I was only going to have one grandchild so I put a lot of thought into choosing the tree.
We knew the baby was going to be a girl, so I wanted a tree with feminine energy. A good friend of mine had suggested a Mountain Ash or a birch, but I already had them in abundance around the yard.
So the choice narrowed down to a weeping willow that both I and my neighbours would be able to enjoy.
In keeping with the traditions of our people, the placenta is buried under the tree. We had arranged this beforehand with my daughter's obstetrician and it was included in her birth plan. If you are planning on doing this yourself, you'll be pleased to know that while it wasn't an everyday occurrence at the hospital, but we certainly weren't the first to make this request.
The Lydia tree certainly wouldn't fit in the hatchback now. I haven't measured it, by by my best estimate its at least ten, perhaps even twelve feet tall. Because its such a special tree, it was also given an extra boost with a rich mixture of good compost, ground potatoes for extra nitrogen and for good measure its located on one of the many natural springs on my land.
Actually before I bought the land, I had an old well driller witch the property to make sure that there would be water. Water! He found three strong veins of water and pointed out three more surface springs for good measure.
In fact, the bottom piece was so wet that everyone else had been put off. So why did I want it? Besides the fact that the price was right? It already had a tractor road in ... which really saved both on the cost of putting in a driveway and in not having to put in a culvert. I had gone land shopping on my bicycle, so I knew that I'd be within walking and biking distance of the village. Best of all, the land had been vacant for years so it was as close to chemical free as I was likely to find.
I moved my mini home out there in the fall of 93. The following spring, I had an excavator in to dig what I call the upper pond. It has three natural springs, is just over 60 feet long and in the centre is well over ten feet deep. Twelve years later it is well naturalized and new visitors can't imagine it hasn't always been there.
Instead of having the fill from the pond trucked away, I hired a guy with a dozer to sculpt the front yard. Why did I go to all this trouble? The pond acts as natural drainage for the lower end of the yard and makes the entire yard usable. Without it, I wouldn't be able to put a tiller in the garden until august
Everyone who grew up around here remembered playing hockey on the lower pond. When I bought the land, the owner had already brought in his own excavator and opened up the bottom end of the pond in the hopes of draining the land. The year after I had the upper pond started, I had a guy with a backhoe close the lower pond back in. Nobody plays hockey anymore, but I've lost track of how many folks have mentioned how glad they are to see it back.
That almost makes up for still being referred to, after sixteen years, as the new girl who bought Ralph Whynott's old cow pasture: ))))

The rhubarb is up ... just in time so that I can divide it while its still cool. The original piece came from my parents farm and has migrated around the yard several times before settling in for good on the west side. Rhubarb is the first of the seasons pleasures and I can already taste the stewed rhubarb : )))
All of the trees that were planted four and five years ago have really started to settle in ... and if this years new growth is any indication, all of these trees should shoot up more quickly now.
Anyone looking for faster results for a wind or privacy screen should think about shrubbery. Within a couple of years, the dogwood and nine bark that I planted at the same time as the trees towered much taller than me. Siberian pea shrubs and lilacs grow even more quickly than that.
Plan b for the new pond has started ... the waterfall end of the kit has been settled in place ... levelled and plumb to make sure it doesn't flood in behind and then heave when things freeze. Helpful hint .. while all the connectors are in place at this end of the stick, I'm going to wait to connect the other end of the hose to the pump housing until I have the pond sculpted ... that will allow me to sculpt the pond without worrying about the length of the hose.
Next step will be stacking the stones to start the raised walls of the pond ... but that will have to wait until Monday when the moon will be back in a barren sign.

This morning, when I was in the woods with the dogs, I was trying to decide what to put in this bed as filler with the lady's mantle. As it happens, once I started dividing I was actually hard pressed to fit all the divisions in the new big bed. It doesn't look like much right now, but under that veneer is a rich mixture of compost and aged manure that should give all the new divisions a great start.

Tomorrow I'll be sculpting the new garden by the new pond so there should be new pics tomorrow of that when its done. Done being a figure of speech as the side with the new pond will take more than a day. It would be overly optimistic to plan on perennials there and it will likely be the best place for the annual flower seeds I saved last winter.

But then we gardeners are always optimists ... or we would lose our enthusiasm on the first bad weather year: )))

I heard the Marsh wren last night ... and around here that means spring is really here. Its one of those funny years where the forsythia is already yellow before the pussy willows can rush to catch up.

Tomorrow, we have a third quarter Pisces Moon, which is a perfect time to transplant perennials and shrubs. I've been working all week getting the beds ready out back as there is quite a bit to move this year.

All the perennial herbs of course need to get out of the new play yard for the dogs. The sturdier stuff ... like the oregano and the wormwood ... can stay, but the more delicate things like Lady's Mantle would never survive a season of such boisterous play that one friend of mine refers to as wrestlemania. Its well worth the work of moving herbs, because now I have a safe place for my dogs to play off leash. The downside of living with all this wildlife is that there really are no safe places to take the dogs off leash close by here.

I like starting things from seed ... and this year there is a treasure trove of herbs that are ready to come out of their birthplace in the main garden. It would be tougher to move them next month if we get hot dry weather that that everyone is expecting .. and this will also free up the bottom end of the garden bed.

As part of all this, I've been sculpting a new pond out back. In realspeak that means lots of heavy work with a shovel and prybar. This afternoon, I thought I was going out to finish digging, only to discover that I'd located the new pond on a natural spring. Why is that a problem? Wouldn't that be a good thing?

It was a great thing when I had the upper pond dug ... in fact if there hadn't been three natural springs that project would never have got out the gate.

But this is a different kind of pond... and not just because its hand sculpted instead of created by an excavator. ( Even 16 years ago, it would not have been "an achievable objective" for me to hand dig a pond over sixty feet long: ))))

This one will have a waterfall ... which means a pump ... which in turn will need a liner. The ornamental pond out front has a proper heavy duty pond liner ... but for this project the liner is going to be the liner from the above ground pool that I used to have. ( I loved having the pool all those hot summers when I worked as a cook, but honestly once I retired, I simply didn't have the time to use the pool ... let alone to maintain it. It was frosting on the cake that when I took the pool down that I was left with a lovely flat round spot to put in the brick patio : ))))

Happily, its less work to fill the hole in .... even when its full of water to the brim. There will still be a pond ... but plan B involves building up "walls" rather than digging another hole in the hopes there will be no spring there either.

The first signs of life are popping up in my little greenhouse. Its a little cobbled up thing of recycled windows and wood and in no way could it be considered weather tight. The layer of windows that were propped on 4 by 4 ends seems to have given the seed flats the protection they needed during that last cold snap we had ... phew!

And yes ... that is an old fridge serving as a potting table: ))) Laid on its side, its the perfect size for the spot and it needed to get out of the workshop.

If you are doing any transplanting of your own, this entire weekend will be the last good opportunity to do this until we get to Friday, the 7th of May.

Yup ... it really is true ... now that I'm retired I can't imagine where I had the time to work : )))))

I heard this years first geese this morning. Not enough for a full v ... just a few early optimists in leading the way for the rest. That also means that its time to get the greenhouse organized so I'll be ready to start seeds on the next fruitful planting day .. which will be next tuesday, the 23rd. ( will be a second quarter moon in Cancer )

Is it a sign of my age that I set such store by all the old sayings? Nope ... I learned most of these bits of folk lore at my mother's knee, and they have stood me in good stead over the years wherever I have lived.

So, I always wait to start my greenhouse up until the geese are back .... I never direct seed in the garden until the leaves are on the trees and if the Full Moon is early in the month of May, I wait until the end of the month to transplant my seedlings. ( this year I'll transplant in early may .... likely on the 7th or 8th... because the fourth quarter is a great time to transplant and the Moon is in

Pisces. )

Last summer I built a play yard out front for my dogs. There is so much wildlife around here that is the only reliable way to keep them safe off leash. Now I dearly love my dogs, but some of the herbs in the pond garden out front will have to migrate out back to the new gardens that I'm building out back. The Lady's Mantle, the Comfrey and the lavendar simply wouldn't stand up to the exuberant wrestlemania and games of hide and seek: )))

Every year the reach of the to do list for the yard easily exceeds my grasp: ))) One of these years I'll actually get to building the cattery , which is the only safe way for country kitties to spend time outside, with the Lee Valley gazebo kit that I bought for that purpose.
Last year I refurbished the little garden shed .... having finally decided to keep it in place if for no other reason than to serve as a privacy screen for this little back garden. By the time the 34 fence post holes were dug ... in land that is, as the locals say , 'a little ledgey", summer was nearly done and it was almost hunting season before the play yard was finished
If, like me, you are planning on building a pond this year ... be on the watch for underlay that gets put out for spring pickup. Just because you wouldn't use in your house doesn't mean that it won't make great underlay for your pond to protect the liner. If you know anyone who has dismantled an above ground pool, the pool liner makes a dandy pond liner too.
If you live in the Greenwood area, the crushed brick for the path around the round patio came, very reasonably, from Happy Joes.
PS ... don't toss out cracked and broken clay pots as they can add interest (and refuges for toads) in perennial gardens

My mother's journal

My mother always kept a journal. Old school ... in notebooks that are still bundled in boxes in my brother's basement. Too precious for the recyclers but too private to go rummaging around ... at least yet.
Opposite sides of the coin are still tempered from the same metal. Different generations still share the same underpinnings ... gardening, cooking and even nagging politicians.
This isn't my mother's journal .... and yet it is. Mom was ahead of her time when it came to feminism and ecology and was often frustrated to tears at the way women could be their own worst enemy.
Today was one of those frustrating days for me .... until a good friend reminded me that "all you can do is stick with your own values and do and write what you want - the world will catch up with you some day."
Well the world did catch up with Mom .. more or less. She did live to see most of the changes she had hoped for with women's rights, but sadly even the melting icebergs haven't changed the political doublespeak about global warming.
You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete - Buckminster Fuller, philosopher, futurist and global thinker (1895 - 1983)