The tomato plants placed in the ground have all lived so far. The extended forecasts continue to show night time low temps staying above freezing, and the trees everywhere are putting out their leaves. This is an interesting spring. I have not, however, placed any more tomato plants in the ground. I have not even planted most of the cooler weather crops I could have, just because we have been so busy in general. The last two weeks we were short-handed at the office and I put in more time there than I generally do. The baby decided that her favorite time to be awake and demand parental interaction and play is from 10 pm to 3 am. The school system thinks our kindergartener needs to be doing homework, and of course the two older girls have a ton of that anyway. There does not appear to be enough time in the day to get done, the things I want to get done, which annoys me, because I usually can get a lot done without a ton of sleep. I just feel as though I am not getting any sleep at all, and I know Patti is getting even less.
We did finally follow through on our plan to have the black walnut tree in our backyard removed. Not sure if I am going to have to dig all of the roots out for them to stop poisoning the gardens, or if they will just degrade now. I hired a client who does tree removal professionally to do the monkey side of the job because all of the limbs needed to be roped down. I did the ground work with the ropes, and cutting with a trimming saw just to reduce the pieces into more manageable sizes as we worked. By the end of the day the tree was a brush pile, and my body was pretty fed up with me. I am going to need to ease back into the really physical side of my outdoor activities a little more gradually I think.
Sunday morning I got up early, and took Nell with me down to Faribault where there is an old seed and nursery company that sells bare root trees in the spring. April 1st is their opening day for the “bare root room” as they call it, and it is a first come, first serve enterprise. Last year I had hoped for a Cortland and a Fireside apple tree to plant down at the Red Wing garden. Instead we just got some Harelson apple trees. Nothing BAD about that, but the Cortland and Fireside are really our favorites, so we were there bright and early. We got the trees we wanted (semi-dwarf so will never be too large) along with a North Star Cherry, and a couple of grape vines I want to try to trellis over the “bean house” in our yard. We picked up some onion and potato sets as well to split with David, though he will not be back for another week.
After this Nell and I went to visit her uncle Jamie at his new home and to have him guide us down the bluff to the Straight River to do some fossil hunting. The walk down the bluff was nice. Hauling 30 pounds of fossil bearing limestone back up the bluff was not as nice, but Nell and I had a good time.
On the way home we stopped to take care of the chickens. They are laying up a storm now that there is plenty of sunlight and it is warm. They are always happy to see us.
Once back at home around 4 pm, I got the 5 holes dug, the trees and vines planted, watered, and dinner made for everyone before I collapsed in bed. Back in the office here this morning, and it feels a bit like a break. Still so much to plant, but spring is early and I am not really running out of time yet.
north star cherry
fireside apple
cortland apple
