I am finally laying down. Well, it is not the first time this weekend, but it is the last time this weekend. I ache from head to toe and my body is questioning my sanity. Sometimes I do too. I just want to note that all of the time it was not raining or sunny, it was flurrying snow. All weekend.
The week was nice. I spent most of it watching the weather through the window at my office wishing I was outside in the gardens. I even got some cold tolerant tomatoes planted over the course of the week. They are protected by plastic milk jugs I cut the bottoms out of, but so long as they don’t freeze solid, they should be ok. Stupice, Siberian and Sasha’s Altai have all done well for me in crappy cold weather. If they do freeze out I have more I can replace them with. One thing I am not short on is tomato plants.
And old friend invited me to go crappie fishing on Saturday morning. I love fishing, and when I lived on Lake Superior I had a year where I fished a total of 350 days out of 365. I really really really love to fish. However, life has a way of taking you in various directions, and in the last two years I had wet a line exactly twice. I thought an early morning fishing expedition would be a good way to start out the weekend. Good turns out to be a matter of perspective maybe. Indicative of what the weekend would be like is perhaps more apt.
It was raining. Hard. I got up at 5 am to be ready because I had to find all of my gear. What I found though was that my rain gear was literally completely inaccessible. When the chicks are grown more and no longer in the temporary coop in our breezeway, and instead out at David’s house, I can remove the chicken home Patti built and open the wardrobe again. Until that point, my rain gear will not be something I have access to. Not to be deterred, I found my old Carharts and put on a lot of layers of wool, packed two pairs of finger gloves, a wool hat and a hooded sweatshirt.
5 hours later we had caught exactly 5 crappies, and only two of keeping size. We had a couple of largemouth bass as well, but you cannot keep them at this time of year, which sucks, because it is the only time of year they are both easy to catch and taste good. Once the water warms up and it is legal to catch them, they taste of mud and grass. I was soaked through and the 35 mph winds and driving rain had brought on uncontrolable shivering which I suppose was hypothermia. At the boat landing I called home and asked Patti to have a hot bath ready when I got there. She did, and I laid in it until I stopped shivering, then climbed into bed and passed out for about an hour.
When I woke up it was sunny out, but not really warm. I was glad the rain was done though and worked in the garden as much as I could in the wet ground preparing beds, planting some of Tom Wagner’s potatoes, planting broccoli, 30 feet of carrots (3 10 foot long rows next to the broccoli) hauling finished compost out of the bin, and gardening things until it was getting dark.
This morning I headed out to the Minnetonka gardens with a bucket of whole potatoes, mixed long storage types, some gardening tools, and a bag of Telephone Pole Shelling Peas. Soil was still soaking wet, it was flurrying snow, and it took me two hours to do 50 feet of potatoes, then 15 minutes to turn over the soil beneath the pea trellis I built the other week and plant the peas underneath it. Over the course of the time I spent there 6 deer walked by on the other side of the ravine that the garden borders. Each stopped in its turn to contemplate me, switch it’s tail and then move on. We had no deer go in the garden last year. It has a 40 inch fence around it and last year the only predators we had to deal with were woodchucks (we killed over 20) and raccoons which wiped out the sweet corn I tried to grow there. The woodchuck trap is still there. Suppose I should start setting it again. Not going to try to grow sweet corn there again. Not worth the time and effort to feed the wildlife.
I called David up, told him I was frozen and encrusted with mud, and would he please put on a pot of coffee for me, then I packed up my things and drove to his house (only about 2 mile from that garden) washed the grime from my frozen hands, had a cup of coffee, admired the finishing work being done in his basement, went home, and passed out for an hour again.
I got up at about 3, had something to eat, and waited for my girls to get home. (They had gone to visit Patti’s sister) When they got home we went to the Ness farm, and I put in 75 more feet of potato rows. 25 feet each of Tom Wagner’s Banana Fingerling, Nordic October, and Tom Khaigan. I had cut and scabbed over Carola potatoes with me, but it was nearly 8 pm, and I wanted to get the posts set and top and bottom wires on for the peas we planted the other week. It has been so cold they have not sprouted yet, but we had the rows marked with stakes and twine so we knew where they were. Claire helped me with that, then we packed up and were on our way home by 810 pm, home at 830 pm, and eating stir fried venison on sweet rice done with ginger, garlic, molasses, sugar, chili paste, and all fried in chili oil by 9 pm. Kids done eating and in bed by 930. Weekend is done and so am I.
