Okay… I can almost see that picture in your mind: Ayala stepping out of a (currently imaginary) greenhouse warmed by our local stallion’s stable droppings, with an armload of bounteous beautiful red VINE-RIPENED TOMATOES…
Scratch that!!!!!!
Actually, I just went under the rosebushes and snipped some chives for a (storebought) salad~~
So much for the first of April!
But hey… these very fresh very green GREENS hold the entire summer’s promise in their chlorophyllic aroma. Very intense! And prolific. Next, they get snipped into scrambled eggs– our blessed hens never stopped laying this winter! Love those gals.
Yuh, all enthusiasm aside, it’ll be midApril before I put in the peas and potatoes, and end May before I even THINK of setting out tomatoes. This is one cold little hollow up here at a mere 1,000 feet. The arctic kiwis used to bud out during the February thaw, but even they are more cautious these years– I see slight swellings along their vines but it’ll be a while yet before they trust their new leaves to the variable spring weather.
Meanwhile I’ll be picking up some of the last bareroot bargain fruit trees at Farmer’s Market this Saturday. The 3 small meadows that we live on in the midst of this 16-acre burgeoning old-growth forest certainly DON’T need any more trees making shade… so I’m getting all dwarf and semidwarfs. Still a nook and a cranny here & there to tuck them away, and the lure of our own FRUIT is such a draw…
We’ve been buzzed by HUMMINGBIRDS for a couple weeks now, although the mason bees are more cautious and won’t venture out ’til the Oregon grape blooms. And we’re hassled by robins, towhees and thrushes who LOVE to kick leaf mulch all over the place… now along with housekeeping I keep a rake by the front door to restore my borders twice daily!
With such promise in the air it’s real hard to restrain myself: must, just MUST soak a few sweetpeas seeds, though… never can tell, might be the againth case of delusion, but if we have an accidental early spring I couldn’t bear to be left behind!