Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Early daze of spring

It's spring in the Pac NW, which means it's going to rain until June.  No exaggeration there.  The weather folks said we'd have a sun break on Sunday, but it was a no show.  That's going to be typical for the next long stretch.  Chances of a little sun for a few hours, but no assurances that they'll actually occur.  

Now, I don't mind the rain, really.  It makes me sleepy, but that's about it.  It's pretty, and it makes the air smell nice, and I don't have to worry about watering my garden.  But.  I really want to garden.  I made a lot of progress in February and early March, and I got addicted to spending that time outside getting ahead of schedule.  I sweat, I breathe more deeply, I connect with the earth, I enjoy the birds and insects and get an occasional tiny jet of adrenaline when I freak out over spiders, and I can immerse myself in the beauty inherent in fellow living things.  I especially like plants having sex, aka, blooming.  I love that.  Pregnant plants are awesome too.  I eat their babies.  Mwa ha ha!

But I can't do all that.  I'm either stuck inside home, stuck inside a business elsewhere, or stuck in heavy clothes in the rain.  There are alternatives, but the ones I can think of are expensive (travel) or not enjoyable (dancing naked in the rain is, as far as I'm concerned, a sport for warm summer rain, not freezing cold March rain.  It was 35 degrees F yesterday.  Distinctly *not* Kami dancing naked in the rain weather.)

On the plus side, I have fewer distractions from writing.  The writing seems to be coming along nicely.  Now, if I can only get through my reading list!

4 comments:

Kai Jones said...

I feel the same about my yard: I have so many plans for it, and I even started some seedlings that I want to get into the ground soon. But it's waterlogged out there.

We have to squeeze our gardening into June through September. I'm going to plant some musk melons and hope for sunny hot days all summer long.

The Moody Minstrel said...

We're having kind of the same problem on this side of the pond, too. We do get sun, but when we actually get time to do things it starts raining again...not to mention that the temperature, after a brief stint in the "shirtsleeve" category, dropped right back down into the "slightly above freezing" level.

Kinda sucks, really.

Kami said...

Mmm, musk melons ... I would suggest getting the biggest peat pots you can find that degrade easily when planted. Some of the big nursery ones have too thick of walls for that so not those. Start them indoors in accordance to germination. So, if it says on the package (or online) that it takes 2 weeks to germination, start them end of April/first of May so they have a couple of weeks to develop their first leaves, but won't get so big that the roots will begin to poke out before you put them in the ground. Melons and squashes hate to be transplanted. They don't like their roots messed with at all. So the best way to get a jump on the season without losing ground to shock when you transplant is with the peat pots. They also hate cold earth, so if the ground feels chilly, hold off on planting them. The cold ground goes for tomatoes too. I don't plant mine until the dirt under that surface layer has lost that icy chill. Sometimes that doesn't happen until mid-June or even July. Tomatoes don't mind transplanting, so you can keep putting them into bigger and bigger containers until the ground warms up.

Get a little sunshine and that spring fever comes on hard, doesn't it? I think everyone is impatient for warm, sunny weather.

I hate waiting. :D

Kami said...

Oh, btw, some people cheat with the warm ground thing. They buy a bag of topsoil and a bag of manure, leave them out in the sun to warm up, put that in a trench, cover it with black (or red) plastic to keep the solar energy working on the soil, and then plant in holes poked through the plastic. This works really, really well with melons, tomatoes, pumpkins, squash and so on. Not so much strawberries or any plants whose crowns are vulnerable to slugs or mold/mildew, because the plastic provides the perfect habitat for those.