spring chores

Last fall I sprinkled a lot of poppy seeds plus some larkspur and a hodge podge of other seeds in the spot where the burn pile was until I moved it further back. We have sort of encroached on the 13 acre field as have several of our neighbors, at least those of us without a fence behind. Well, that might just be us and Alan and Frank. We keep it mowed along with the rest of the yard and since it is just a fallow field that sometimes gets hayed and is owned by a group of family members in an area where nobody ever sells land, why would you do that?, it's not really a big deal.

Anyway, a couple of years ago, I moved the burn pile further back which left this big burned spot where it used to be. I tried to turn as much of the charcoal and ash into the ground as I could but it still looked pretty black. It's back there at the back of the property in the last 5' feet of our proper boundary at the end of the drain field. Weeds and field sunflowers have been growing in it.

The poppies and other seeds came from a couple of members of the garden club who had collected seeds all year long from their gardens and had way more than they needed. It was actually the acquisition of these seeds that made me look for someplace to plant them and that old spot out in the sun seemed the obvious place so I decided to impose a bit of order on it this year.

Because some of the poppies started blooming last week, I got in there Saturday and cleaned out all the weeds that had taken hold and hundreds of sunflowers that were crowding the poppies (don't worry, plenty left) that are already crowding themselves since I didn't do any thinning.

You can see the new burn pile behind the poppies and despite having burned it to the ground two weeks ago, it has already started to grow again.

Sunday I started on the garden. It needs to be turned and we want to enlarge it and straighten it up this year. This is all I got done, about an 18” - 20” wide strip before my hands started complaining. It is hard, clayey, grass had encroached as well as roots from the tree. It didn't get turned last fall after the long hot dry summer. If I was smart, I'd go rent a tiller instead of using my hands, a claw, and a shovel but I'm not sure I could manhandle the thing.

Besides, I like to dig. I like to feel the dirt in my hands and crumble it, picking out the grub worms and roots and nut grass; getting it all friable, or as friable as possible in this dirt, smoothing it over getting it ready to be planted.

It's satisfying somehow.