Given the slug population explosion these last few years, this season in the vegetable, Red Shiso and Venus gardens we are forgoing our usual deep hay mulch to see if a scorched earth scenario breaks the slug cycle. After twenty years of keeping everything covered with a deep layer of mulch hay, I find myself very uncomfortable with all this exposed earth. I certainly hope it is making the slugs MORE uncomfortable.

Here is Elizabeth building the center piece of this year’s main vegetable- a tent of Scarlet Runner Beans. Note abundant exposed soil and tiny weeds demonstrating that without mulch, it is going to be a long summer of weeding.

In the Flowerbeds, the Tree Peonies are either about to open or just opening-

Emily is back from a wonderful adventure in Sicily and we are all so happy she is

ready to take on all the bindweed in the perennial beds which are looking very lush right now.

The beautiful new cold frames built by Jim during his April “vacation” are chock a block full of baby plants, hardening off until the end of the month when they can be planted out. The greenhouse also is teeming with baby plants and a lot of grumpy tropical plants who impatiently await their summer season outside after a long winter inside.

It is SPRING and our cup runneth over! I hope you too are wallowing in new life!

In between snow flurries, the gardens go about their business.

As do the bumblebees.

I wish I could convey here in this blog the haunting clove fragrance of the Black Currant blossoms. They make every trip past the berry patch a pleasure.

I am only glad that so many of you can catch the perfume of Lilac on the wind right now. Dear Lilac, such a generous easy friend!

Last week gave me ample opportunities to keen like my Irish ancestors when every plant in the garden got blasted by MORE snow and arctic chill.

Even the Pansies found this a bit much. First looking like this

then looking like this.

For a number of years, I have been cajoling a Pink Flower Almond Tree into settling into our orchard. A Green Hope friend from Barcelona had given me a tiny bottle of its stunning Flower Essence and I have worked for several years to grow this tree and convince it to bloom even though this is not even close to a climate it prefers. This year it was radiant with blossoms and fortunately I made an Essence before the snows, because this tree that looked so magnificent before the snows looked rather irked at me after them.

I hope the Pink Flowering Almond will give us a second chance with our climate. At least I can promise that it is unlikely the same thing will happen this time next year (something else equally strange will).

This weekend also worked in my favor with the Almond Tree. Its in the nineties today. Yes, in this era of confused climate, I should have expected the five inches of snow to be followed by full on summer heat, but some part of me still finds it bizarre to bundle in woolens one day then find it too hot to be out in the gardens the next.
I did have enough energy to go out and cut a handful of tulips before they got all blowzy in the heat, and I couldn’t help but notice how fresh and beautiful they looked upside down as I walked them into the house. Everything is unexpected these days, but often so very beautiful.

As the granddaughter of teacher #1, daughter of teacher #2, wife of teacher #3, and mother of teacher #4, sometimes I waste a lot of time trying to approach my life in a half baked academic manner to please all of them. Like the last hour I wasted reading internet archives from 1971 about why farmers call spring snow, “poor man’s manure.”

What I learned was a lot of “experts” have different theories about “poor man’s manure,” and like to bandy about words including sulphur, nitric acid, soil saturation rates, metric tons, and ammonia while explaining their theories.

My conclusion? I have no idea why it helps the gardens, but am nonetheless very grateful that it is one manure I don’t have to spread myself. In fact, the snow, hail, and sleet this weekend gave me a wonderful excuse to stay inside and read a trashy book by the fire while all that manure was being spread.

This was much easier on the hands than my shovel had been, and when teacher #3 and #4 came in and found me wasting my time with said trashy book, I pretended to be having a lot of wise thoughts about manure, but really I was just thinking about the heroine of the Georgette Heyer regency romance I had clutched in my wonderfully warm and dry hands.

Spring is about many things, for many people. But for me, one major focus is piles.

This is the Rose Garden whose gorgeous face graces the top of almost every page on the web site. To have it look as lovely as it does in June when that photo was taken, in April I need to:

Haul manure from the manure pile to put on each Rose.
Haul compost from a well composted compost pile to put on all the Flower beds in the garden.
Make piles of the weeds and Rose suckers that I have weeded out of the garden.
Haul away these piles of weeds and Rose canes and add them to a new compost pile.
Haul mulch from the native bark mulch pile to cover all the exposed soil in the garden.
Come inside at days end to find a pile of dishes.

Is it any wonder that I am missing Emily, who last year came home from college in April to be my pile partner?

This year, while Lizzy, Deb, Sophie, and Jess manage the office piles of orders and packages, I am in charge of the outside piles, because for Emily it is still

while for me, it is dawn breaking over the biggest pile of bark mulch yet.