Saturday is a Projects Day

I have been substitute teaching a lot this year. Politics being what they are, here in Wisconsin; there are a lot of teachers re-evaluating their life choices. One teacher I know is getting his CDL and I moving to India (where is wife teaches in an international school. Another, having her first child at the advanced age at which I gave birth to Handsome Son. All of this subbing, although great for my paycheck, is not so good with just getting everything done in a single parent household. It seems my car is constantly behind on its oil change. The vacuuming is never done, a job I thought I could delegate to Handsome Son who failed to realize we had a busted belt and the roller was not turning. It wasn't until I attempted to follow up on his shoddy performance on his bedroom carpet, that I realized what the problem was.

So today, I have a full day looming large. A day filled with laundry, replacing said belt and vacuuming, cleaning, potting on seedlings, planting seeds indoors and out, and also, in general, sprucing up my home in anticipation of the Commencement of Handsome Son.

I have also taken on a quilting project  for the mother of the manager my Handsome Son's basketball team.  She wanted a memory quilt comprised of squares from T-shirts her daughter had collected from various school and extracurricular activities.  The quilt sits at the top of my to-do list because the mother wants to display it at her graduation party.  The top of the quilt can be seen in this picture.  It gives you the general idea of the project, although unfinished.

Watering my potted seedling like the pretty peppers, pictured here, is also taking up more of my time. I am not sure what sort of harvest we will have, but with five weeks until the earliest plant out date for peppers they will demand a lot of care. One thing gardening does teach is consistency and follow-up. It is so easy to lose an entire crop with one day's indifference to the goal.

These are petunias I have grown from seed without special lights. I used regular shop lights, 4' florescent bulbs. They have been spending most days on the deck (out of room under the lights as I continue to pot on more veggies) that needs it yearly painting (being south-facing), but although frost-tolerant, even these guys have been brought in most nights. As for the beginnings of our local food harvests: There was no maple syrup season to speak of this year. My apricot tree looks pretty sad, its leaf buds and any small leaves having froze; I can not foresee a crop. Not only have the first blossoms of my strawberry plants froze, but additional blossoms as well, all spotting the "black eye" foretelling a sad tale. My very early 'Honeoye' are probably a loss. My neighbor has been putting a frost blanket on his,but as cold as it has been, Dr. Apps reports it has frozen through this safeguard, as well for his earlier cropping strawberries. He does have hopes for 'Sparkler', though. I do not have any 'Sparkler' planted this year. My blueberries, I have 'Blue Ray' and I think ' Northern Blue' like it cold, it seems; and the early variety is loaded with blooms. I may get a quart or two on the small number of bushes here in the potager. The family garden's blueberries, I do not yet know the status. As for the rhubarb, one of the earliest perennial fruits, it has a number of stalks, all very short. There are two flower stalks forming already though, which I will need to yank out. I thought this year to make rhubarb juice using my brother's fancy steamer. Hopefully, adding a fruit juice to our larder, low on juice types Handsome Son will consume. So start your projects people. It is a spring Saturday-- although at 47 degrees here-- it does not feel much like one!

Around the Garden: What's Up, What's Blooming, Booming...

The star of the garden show, my rhododendron 'PJM', blooming nearly a month earlier than it ever has.


These scilla bloom under the carefully manicured privet hedge. They are only truly visible to my ankles and the rabbit. The privet is just starting to leaf out so there is a bit of a blue glow about the base that is visible, and that's cool.

These are the unopened flower of the prairie smoke, geum triflorum. Each phase of the flowering, bud, flower, and seed pod looks like a "flower" so the triflorum part, I suppose. Although, if I actually pulled one apart, I'd bet I see only three sepals or tepals.

A better look at those pretty blue scilla.

Raddichio in garden, coming up from last year. It seemed to have a very bitter taste last year. I see this morning the rabbits have found it. The flavor must have improved.

Lysimachia 'Gold Coin', has a beautiful gold glow this time of year.

Rhubarb just coming up.

There's a lot going on in the potager. The peas I have planted are up. I got a great stand, good germination rate. I typically plan on 50% -65%, but I would guess it is closer to 100%. This March has certainly been good pea weather, unlike last year.

That means over in the family garden the peas are certainly coming up, too. These are the peas my sister-in-law asked me to please plant for baby Asher, who has stubbornly not made his way into the world.

Other things have been stubborn this March, too. My Internet connection has been driving me nuts. Currently, we are able to make only a tenuous hardline connection to the Internet, in a household filled with wannabee wireless devices. Probably a router, but maybe a cable. More trouble-shooting this time-waster.

The huge limb that broke off and hung up 30' up in my white pine crashed to the ground last night. Just last week, I was calling around to find someone with a cherry picker to come and charge me an arm and a leg to remove it from the tree. Last night's wind did the job for me, saving me $250 to $500, maybe more.http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif My calling range was getting increasingly larger, 100 miles. No one had the type of equipment that would have been needed. With our early spring, I was increasingly worrying about finding someone with equipment, AFTER my gorgeous hosta had poke up their eyes and started unfurling their leaves. I had ghastly images in my mind of torn, tattered, and bedraggled hosta just in time for my Handsome Son's graduation party.

And, I heard that another boom rocked Clintonville last night. Out of curiosity, I will check the vertical ground tracking on the Shiocton seismography station. (It does appear there was some heavier vertical plate grinding between 4 and 6 AM.)

My son and I always talk about preparing for the Zombie Apocalypse. Perhaps, we should now be thinking earthquakes, instead. Possible the earthquake dislodged my stubborn white pine widow-maker?

Tonight, as fate would have it the Emergency Management Direc`tor for the county has a tabletop disaster exercise planned. I get to play myself, village trustee. Invite only, it should be interesting.

Vegetable and Fruit Planting in Central Wisconsin

The Rhubarb that Ate Elgin, Illinois.

Pictures tomorrow, but today I will doing some planting on the family garden! I will be laying down black landscape fabric to warm the soil for melons, tomatoes, peppers. Potatoes, which are always planted in April around here, also need to get planted. I am establishing raspberry, strawberry, and blackberry beds today, too. More on this tomorrow.

Today, I am sharing a picture of my rhubarb, part of a hill that I will be transplanting some of to the family garden. It came to me as part of the rhubarb planted in the garden of the first house I owned in Elgin, Illinois. This rhubarb was so spectacular it was said to be abundant enough to fee the entire city of Elgin in the 1940s and 1950s when the population of Elgin hovered around 50,000. This was back in a time when it was not unusual to have the neighborhood grocer bartering for produce.

When I first bought that house, the first cousin of the deceased previous owner of my house lived next door. He was in his 90s at the time and was the sweetest guy. I remember him bringing me a huge armful of carnations when my son was born.

He told of how the area where our houses were was the first annexed subdivision in Elgin and originally the site of Elgin's harness racing track and stables. My soil was always wonderful and had so much latent fertility. I even found a horseshoe, which was the largest thing I ever found in the yard while gardening.

At the time the track was sold for housing lots it was the late 1920s. The cornerstone on my house is dated October, 1929.

The whole family, a cousin, an aunt, the previous owner of my house and his parents all got together and bought half of the city block. Their backyards all opened up on one another and it was more a compound than a housing division.

I have wonderful stories of the house and those people. My ex still lives there; and I, well, I have this incredible rhubarb!