I've been tidying a winter's worth of debris from the terrace. As the snow retreats I advance, swooshing leaves and ice-heaved soil from the boards with a watering can, going indoors to fill it for each new swoosh. The water outside is shut off, so no hose, yet.
This wild kitty toed his way carefully along the top of the chainlink down below as I worked.
Above - the pruning book is my bible and is homework for a writing assignment in Cape Town, which will take me - happily - back to Babylonstoren.
My seed choices are modest for spring. The fava beans have soaked overnight and today I plant them. They are a March ritual. They'll have to come up and do their thing while I am in Cape Town. The Frenchman will send progress reports. If all goes well it will mean salads when I am back, then flowers, then beans. The cilantro late last year stood up to several freezings and snow before expiring, so it really, really prefers cool weather.
The pots on the terrace have almost all thawed and the standing water has drained. In some pots, digging speculatively, I found a dark heart of ice, fitting in my palm.
I fed the blueberries Holly Tone, and fed the roses some stinky Jobes granules.
And the doves have come back, along with some friendly house finches. Nobody froze, after all.
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Lovely x
ReplyDeleteI have never had good luck w/ cilantro....it always gets too hot and wilts too quickly. Our kale made it thru the winter in our boxes outside.....we have a new spot for our veggies, no more Militant Community Garden. :)
ReplyDeletePlant the cilantro earlier and later, Stace. not in summer. That used to be my experience, too. The new gardening spot sounds like fun :-)
DeleteHow nice that you can garden so early, my boxes and bushes are still buried under feet of snow. It finally warmed up today to the mid-40s, but they're calling for snow again this weekend, so I'd say I'm still a few weeks away from thinking about planting anything.
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ReplyDeleteI wish I could grow copious amounts of cilantro, but my windowsills are too dark, I fear. There's nothing as sad as a wispy little stem of cilantro, vainly questing for the light. I'm still contemplating a secret garden on the roof of our building.
ReplyDeleteI'm really loving reading about everyone's pre-spring early-spring gardening adventures. It's one of my favourite times of the year. We picked up some potting and seed starting soils yesterday, and soon... soon... there will be sprouts.
ReplyDeleteHow lovely that you will be able to see such visible progress upon your return! I agree with the previous poster, there's a greenish excitement throbbing throughout the world of garden blogging and it's marvellous!
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