By Jill Williams
“In the Junes that were warmer than these…”
-Yeats
Spring has been particularly green and lush this year here in the valley. It was good to see the daffodils and tulips last for weeks in the cooler rainy weather. That doesn’t happen every year.
Most of the ice storm damage around the house has finally been cleaned up. It’s interesting to me that the two remaining old apple trees close to the house had no ice storm damage at all. They were untouched by the Apocalypse that went on all around them.
The new little tree apple that planted itself beside the garage was covered with flowers this year. Last spring it had only a few. It turned out to be a crab apple and is possibly a seedling of one of the old trees. It survived some winter mouse damage to the bark below the snow. This winter I will be more careful and put tree wrap around it. If nature has given me a tree in exactly the right spot the least I can do is look after it.
There was a modest morel harvest this year. They appeared in their usual haunts and popped up in two spots where I’ve never seen them before. Some years they don’t appear at all; they are mysterious as always.
n the recently thinned red pine plantation next to me the beautiful little red columbine is popping up. They often appear when soil is disturbed. There were a few red trilliums in the same plantation; the thinning of the trees has increased their numbers. I will be interested to see what else appears in the new spaces that have been opened up.
I am told that this has been the coldest and wettest spring for decades. It has certainly felt like that. I can’t remember another spring when I had the kitchen wood stove on for days after the long weekend. At least it doesn’t take very much wood to banish the cold and dampness at this time of year.
Last spring I very stupidly planted hot peppers too early and had to wrap them up when we had a few very cold nights. This year I’m trying to be smarter and waiting longer to plant. I am trying to avoid the fuss of covering and uncovering. I might get away with it if we have no cold nights in June.
I will also be late planting zucchini and cucumbers. There’s no advantage to putting seeds for warm weather vegetables in cold wet ground.
The cold weather vegetables meanwhile are doing very well. It has been a good spring for spinach and snow peas. And I’m encouraged to see how much the sweet peas have grown already.
The baby phoebes have hatched in their new nest. I have no idea why they didn’t do as they usually do and reuse last year’s nest. It’s still there should they ever decide to go back to it.
I hear them cheeping every time I go in or out of the house. They get bigger every day and it won’t be long until they are big enough to fly away. One day I will look out and they will be comically too big to fit in the nest and the next day they will be gone.
I’m trying not to be too negative about the cold, wet spring; it has given us certain advantages. Along, warm fall will go far to make up for what we are experiencing now.
Let’s be patient since we will be complaining about the heat soon enough….