Spring showers
The morning is drizzly – just light enough that I feel it’s not really raining enough to stop me from being outside, and just heavy enough that the ground is getting saturated and heavy, so it’s sub-optimal for me to go out and dig it. And that’s what I need to do.
I need to dig up a particularly nasty perennial weed called couch grass, which spreads by underground rhizomes through my garden beds. I started yesterday and hoped to finish today, but the rain has other plans.
So I’m sitting in the living room with the back door open to the cool, damp air. Coffee steams beside me, the dogs snore on the sofa, and there are a dozen eggs lying on a towel by the sink, air-drying. In the winter we only check for eggs maybe once a week, as the hens don’t lay often, and this time of year we’re having to retrain ourselves to check every other day. If we don’t check more frequently, the likelihood that the hens step on and break eggs in the nests grows increasingly higher.
They love this time of year, and not just because the lengthening daylight hours are so encouraging. I’ve spent the weekend weeding the vegetable garden, particularly of two friendly perennial weeds called chickweed and purple dead nettle. Chickweed, as the name suggests, is very popular with chickens. It’s a semi-succulent weed with tiny white flowers shaped like stars. It covers my garden beds every winter, serving as a cover crop and providing green food for the hens when virtually nothing else will grow.
Purple dead nettle sounds dangerous, but “dead” in fact indicates its safety. Unlike nettles native to Europe, particularly the UK, which sting when you touch them, the fuzzy purple-flowered nettle that grows here is “dead” – it doesn’t sting. Purple dead nettle is used in lots of old folk remedies and homemade salves for stings and irritated skin. Today, we know that it has a remarkable antioxidant effect. It’s perfectly edible. If you own a yard, it’s probably growing there. Cut off the tops and put them in smoothies, salads or stir fries.
The hens are not only eating the weeds from my garden; they are also eating the over-wintered kale from the cold frames. My cold frames are sited at the top of our west-facing hill, near the greenhouse. They are four-by-eight feet and about 24 inches deep, half-filled with soil. In October, I planted kale, cabbage, collards, chard, beets and winter lettuce in the cold frame. They grow slowly all winter long, covered by clear plastic tops with hinges so I can prop them open on sunny days. As the days lengthen, their growth explodes, until by February they are rising so rapidly you can see it.
We’re still eating the collards and chard, but the kale at this time of the year is setting flowers and going bitter. Aphids are colonizing the tops, eating the most tender new growth. I cut the tops of the kale and feed them to the hens, who get extra protein from the tiny bugs that would otherwise be the bane of my existence.
In the cut flower garden, the tulips are just flowering, and the daffodils are just going over. The pansies I bought and planted in pots in October are covered in bloom, and I thank my past self for resisting the autumnal colors and instead choosing golden creams, mauves, violets and the occasional brilliant orange-pink. The daffodils beneath the apple trees, naturalizing among the grass, were prettier this year than they’ve ever been. The apples are just beginning to bloom; it looks like a good apple year.
The peach trees I planted last year are blooming, too, and – surprise! – I found three more little peach trees growing off my garden path this year, in a place where I’d spread compost last spring. A fun little gift inherited because I never get my compost hot enough to be proper. The downside is that my compost is filled with weed and arugula seeds, but on the plus side, I have three new little peach trees.
It's that time of year when spring is still slow – the Leucojum are blooming in the jewel garden as they have been since February, and the forsythia are still gleaming yellow on the hillside – but you can see the speed coming, like an oncoming train. This week will be rainy and warm, and on the other side of it, the grass in the yard will be five inches tall. The lilacs will be in bloom. Every bud on every tree and shrub will burst into green. The weeds won’t be small anymore, and I’ll be wishing I’d ordered the mushroom compost already, and that I’d dug in the new peonies and transplanted those little chard seedlings before the rain.
April is nearly here.
The rain has stopped, and my coffee is cool. Time to get to work.