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<\/a><\/p>\nBut, luckily for Papa, there was another place I could exhaust my energy.<\/p>\n
The garden.<\/p>\n
Because if cleaning the house and the barn doesn’t burn off all your blues, the garden is happy to work you until you’re too tired and sore to be sad about anything except the way your knees and lower back scream when you try to get off the couch.<\/p>\n
Despite a recent snow, the fall crops had survived the entire winter.\u00a0 The only problem was that the warm temperatures that spared the veggies also encouraged the weeds.\u00a0 Chickweed and hairy bittercress were taking over among the spinach and lettuce.<\/p>\n
I don’t deny these weeds their beauty.<\/p>\n Especially in the season of mud, any green seems like good green.<\/p>\n But I was hoping to grow these onions to maturity, not let them get choked out.<\/p>\n Believe me, there’s nothing better than sweet Vidalia onion rings, battered and fried fresh from the garden.\u00a0 I mean, isn’t the point of gardening to grow wholesome healthy veggies that you can transform into fat laden perfection?\u00a0 Isn’t it?<\/p>\n Anyway, chickweed and hairy bittercress both form thick mats so they can’t be pulled up individually like other weeds.\u00a0 Which is fine because I just turn them under to make room for the next season’s crops.\u00a0 Their greenery adds nitrogen to the soil and their roots keep the freshly turned soil from running off in the heavy spring rains.\u00a0 These weeds are actually an important part of the raised bed gardening we do on our farm.\u00a0 Which isn’t to say we invented it.<\/p>\n A lot of farms seed and grow cover crops like clover, winter peas, mustard, or rye.\u00a0 Then they use machinery to turn it and till it into the soil before spring planting.\u00a0 We just invented the free version of this method where the crops that grow are sown by Mother Nature and the soil is turned by hand.\u00a0 It’s part of our commitment to running the farm without heavy machinery and use of fossil fuels.\u00a0 Plus, we can’t afford a tiller.\u00a0 But I’m sure that even if we could afford a tiller, we’d do it by hand. (Probably….. Maybe…..Don’t quote me on that, I’d hate to hurt Santa’s feelings if he ever brings me a tiller….)\u00a0 Anyway, doing the garden chores the old fashioned way certainly comes in handy when you have to work off a bad Monday.\u00a0 Or eating an entire party size bag of M&M’s.\u00a0 Or both, since those things tend to occur together.<\/p>\n So I set into the job.\u00a0 One shovelful at a time.<\/p>\n And once it was turned over, I used the trowel and the spade to break up the root mats.<\/p>\n Then I picked out the scraps of greenery for the goats and the pony.\u00a0 And voila!\u00a0 A fresh planting bed.<\/p>\n Working by hand meant I could cultivate between established patches of veggies.\u00a0 So we could continue to harvest lettuce, spinach, and swiss chard while waiting for the newly seeded sections to grow in.<\/p>\n That’s called a “four season garden”.\u00a0 Otherwise known as a fluke, darn lucky, or a consequence of global warming.\u00a0 Your pick.<\/p>\n Next I raised the skirts on the brussel sprouts.<\/p>\n Which just means I pruned all the lower leaves that were dragging in the soil.\u00a0 Slugs were making their way up the leaves into the plants.\u00a0 And the leaf cover was encouraging a bit of rot and mildew at the base of the plants.\u00a0 Their new look let in lots of sun, discouraged pests, and made it easier to harvest.<\/p>\n Then the peas got a makeover.<\/p>\n Gardening books say that you’re supposed to rotate your crops because planting one crop in the same spot, year after year, depletes the nutrients in the soil that the one specific crop uses to grow.\u00a0 That’s a good theory.\u00a0 Unless you’re talking about peas.\u00a0\u00a0 Rotating your peas means you have to pull up all the stakes and trellises and cages that the peas use and put them someplace else.\u00a0 Year after year.<\/p>\n Not gonna happen.<\/p>\n Besides, you can<\/em> plant your peas in the same spot every year.\u00a0 Just whenever one of your dogs gets out and massacres a free range hen, bury the chicken body at the base of the pea plants.\u00a0 Replaces all the nutrients in one big bang.\u00a0 If you don’t believe me, you should know that I put down pea seeds right after clearing the debris off those cages.\u00a0 3 days later, I had this:<\/p>\n All thanks to the Ameraucana that the dogs discovered digging for worms in the far corner of the backyard a couple months ago.\u00a0 There’s nothing more powerful than the circle of life, my friends.\u00a0 Om.<\/p>\n Finally, I pulled up the dried old flower stems and added fresh soil to my cut flower garden.\u00a0 Which I keep in very fancy…tires.<\/p>\n Providing cut flowers for the house has always been a problem for me.\u00a0 I love to have a vase of pretty flowers on the table, in the entry hallway, and on the windowsill.\u00a0 But I hate cutting up my perennial flower garden.\u00a0 So I settled for planting some flowers in tire beds in the vegetable garden.\u00a0 The tires keep them from spreading and choking out the vegetables, and I can cut them up to my hearts content since I’m the only one who sees the butchered base of the plants down in the garden.\u00a0 Half-massacred zinnias, sunflowers, and peonies are kind of like the drippings between the stove and counter.\u00a0 Nobody’s bothered by what they can’t see.\u00a0 And by the time they’re in full bloom, they even cover their pathetic tire bases.<\/p>\n With the sun going down and the kids asking what was for dinner,\u00a0 I knew I was done for the day.\u00a0 But I felt a little better.\u00a0 The March garden requires an appreciation for loosely flowing and free form cottage gardens.\u00a0 Things are still weedy on the edges, wild onions are surfacing with abandon, and the survivors of winter are a bit paltry and frost damaged.<\/p>\n But it’s eagerness for life is heartening.\u00a0 And it’s endless amount of chores can take the edge off any of the strife that life hands out.\u00a0 As a matter of\u00a0 fact, as I left the garden I had my eye on that vine climbing the fence behind the blackberries.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n