LJ Idol: Morgenmuffel
The end of winter is a sad time for me. I love the cold, the frost in the morning, the promise of a snowy day. But the Earth turns, the seasons change, and winter warms into spring. I always see the first really warm day of the year as a personal insult, especially when the winter was as short as this year's was. We had a 70-degree day at Christmas, couldn't we have waited until April for the next one?
No, we couldn't. It's been in the 70s for the last week. Granted, I live in North Carolina so I don't trust that this weather will last. Fool's Spring is a real thing here. It's the time of year people start invoking the specter of The Blizzard of '93. There's a reason conventional wisdom states that you don't plant your tomatoes until Mother's Day up here in the southern Appalachians. The threat of a killing frost hovers over us all until at least mid-May.
Needless to say, I've been in a rotten mood for the last week and a half. Part of this is due to work stress (program "upgrades"), part of it is hormones, but most of it is this darn warm snap. Stupid spring weather, I want to keep wearing my sweaters! But you can't fight Mother Nature. So I put on my short-sleeved shirt and went outside. During my after-work walks at Duck Pond Park, I noticed the big pink-flowered tree by the pond was starting to bloom. I snapped a picture of the blossoms. Not just to enjoy the beauty of the flowers, but because I wanted to know what the heck kind of tree it was. I have an app on my phone that tells me what that plant is and it told me that was a Saucer Magnolia. Now I know.
There are other flowers popping up as well. Tiny spring flowers I've seen my whole life and never knew what they were. I've identified Birdseye Speedwell, Hairy Bittercress, Lesser Celandine (not just an alchemy ingredient in The Witcher anymore!), and Chickweed. There are pussy willows near the broken boardwalk on the greenway. Daffodils galore are popping up all over the yard. The Lenten Rose is blooming right on schedule. Irises and tulips are pushing up leaves. And it looks like the peony survived the winter (such as it was) and we might be getting some big fluffy flowers this summer.
My housemate Irish Storyteller is a gardener to the core. He's spent the last week raking all the dead leaves out of the hillside garden so the phlox and lilies can breathe. There are piles of leaves all along the raised beds and by the front garden. He inspired me to take care of my own little herb garden this morning. I took the rake to it and cleared out all the dead leaves, pulled up the weeds that popped up, turned up the earth a bit, and checked to see what survived. The thyme, the sage, the johnny-jump-ups, and, surprisingly, one of the verbenas. Didn't expect that one to make it.
That got me in the mood for more, so I turned my attention to the melon patch next to my garden. I ripped up all the weeds along the front edge along with the straggly broccoli that almost made it. I got as many of the dead leaves out as I could. I went down to the front garden and raked it out and moved the leaves into a pile. Then I remembered the weather forecast. It's supposed to rain the rest of the week. There are piles of dead leaves and sticks all over the yard from the winter storms.
Time to light up the burn barrel! It's a disused oil drum that a welder friend of Seasonal (Irish Storyteller's wife) had decorated with a Green Man. I filled it up with dead leaves and sticks from the closest stick pile and lit it up. The rest of the morning I spent burning all the leaves and sticks from the closest piles so we can fill it up with the ones from the other parts of the yard.
After spending the morning covered in dirt and smoke, I'm ready for spring. I uncovered lots of tiny shoots and the first crocus of the year. The yard is slowly looking like something. And in a couple of months I can fill in the empty spots in my herb garden. I think I might also know how to keep the [multiple profanities deleted] chipmunk from eating my dill again.
Dirt is seasonal coffee. Get a little bit of that in (or rather on) you early on and you're set for the rest of the day.
No, we couldn't. It's been in the 70s for the last week. Granted, I live in North Carolina so I don't trust that this weather will last. Fool's Spring is a real thing here. It's the time of year people start invoking the specter of The Blizzard of '93. There's a reason conventional wisdom states that you don't plant your tomatoes until Mother's Day up here in the southern Appalachians. The threat of a killing frost hovers over us all until at least mid-May.
Needless to say, I've been in a rotten mood for the last week and a half. Part of this is due to work stress (program "upgrades"), part of it is hormones, but most of it is this darn warm snap. Stupid spring weather, I want to keep wearing my sweaters! But you can't fight Mother Nature. So I put on my short-sleeved shirt and went outside. During my after-work walks at Duck Pond Park, I noticed the big pink-flowered tree by the pond was starting to bloom. I snapped a picture of the blossoms. Not just to enjoy the beauty of the flowers, but because I wanted to know what the heck kind of tree it was. I have an app on my phone that tells me what that plant is and it told me that was a Saucer Magnolia. Now I know.
There are other flowers popping up as well. Tiny spring flowers I've seen my whole life and never knew what they were. I've identified Birdseye Speedwell, Hairy Bittercress, Lesser Celandine (not just an alchemy ingredient in The Witcher anymore!), and Chickweed. There are pussy willows near the broken boardwalk on the greenway. Daffodils galore are popping up all over the yard. The Lenten Rose is blooming right on schedule. Irises and tulips are pushing up leaves. And it looks like the peony survived the winter (such as it was) and we might be getting some big fluffy flowers this summer.
My housemate Irish Storyteller is a gardener to the core. He's spent the last week raking all the dead leaves out of the hillside garden so the phlox and lilies can breathe. There are piles of leaves all along the raised beds and by the front garden. He inspired me to take care of my own little herb garden this morning. I took the rake to it and cleared out all the dead leaves, pulled up the weeds that popped up, turned up the earth a bit, and checked to see what survived. The thyme, the sage, the johnny-jump-ups, and, surprisingly, one of the verbenas. Didn't expect that one to make it.
That got me in the mood for more, so I turned my attention to the melon patch next to my garden. I ripped up all the weeds along the front edge along with the straggly broccoli that almost made it. I got as many of the dead leaves out as I could. I went down to the front garden and raked it out and moved the leaves into a pile. Then I remembered the weather forecast. It's supposed to rain the rest of the week. There are piles of dead leaves and sticks all over the yard from the winter storms.
Time to light up the burn barrel! It's a disused oil drum that a welder friend of Seasonal (Irish Storyteller's wife) had decorated with a Green Man. I filled it up with dead leaves and sticks from the closest stick pile and lit it up. The rest of the morning I spent burning all the leaves and sticks from the closest piles so we can fill it up with the ones from the other parts of the yard.
After spending the morning covered in dirt and smoke, I'm ready for spring. I uncovered lots of tiny shoots and the first crocus of the year. The yard is slowly looking like something. And in a couple of months I can fill in the empty spots in my herb garden. I think I might also know how to keep the [multiple profanities deleted] chipmunk from eating my dill again.
Dirt is seasonal coffee. Get a little bit of that in (or rather on) you early on and you're set for the rest of the day.