Port Potager

Kind of a sucky gardening day. I don't think that I should need my winter coat and gloves to fertilize fruit trees in April. I don't think there should be a windchill of 29 degrees in April. And I definitely don't think there should be 35 mph wind gusts in April: That's the destruction: yet another fence section bit the dust in the wind. So instead of building our last cold frame, Kirk is spending a cold afternoon working on rebuilding the fence section. Not cheap, either. The only bright side is that we can salvage the scrap from the old one for our new potato boxes . But still ... damn. Oh, and here's the death: These are ( were , in the case of all but three plants) our broccoli and cabbage seedlings. I've been hardening them off over the past two weeks, but this week was really too hard, I guess. They started out pretty spindly (especially the broccoli), most likely due to a two or three week stretch of cloudy days after they first spro...

Many can brook the weather that love not the wind. ~Love's Labour's Lost , Act 4, scene 2 Again . There hasn't been much winter weather to speak of this year, but when the wind blows in Newburyport, things fall down. Another section of fence between us and our nice neighbors is flat on the ground. I think the whole thing is doomed, but it's not the time of year (financially or weather-wise) to put up a whole new fence. We haven't even fixed the section that came down last year yet, which is, admittedly, pretty sad. We are lucky to have great neighbors, though. We bumped into them during a wine store run downtown this morning, and we'll split the repair cost and responsibility of the two sections. I suppose if they get their section up really fast, we'll have to get out there and finally finish ours, or we'll look like terrible neighbors.  Still, if we have some time to think about it, we could revisit the design of the fence. The n...

Today we could actually go outside without dehydrating in five minutes, so we were back to work on getting grass to grow. We peeled up the plastic  in the side yard and were delighted to see lots of crispy, withered crabgrass underneath. Success! After we took a hoe to chop up the dead weeds and pulled out the remaining giant living ones, we measured and cut some of the black plastic sheeting to the size of the raised beds that will be in this area (for blueberries, raspberries, and cranberries). We held it down with off-cuts from the raised beds, which made us feel a little better about all the waste that resulted from building 27-foot beds. After that, today was basically a repeat of last week: pull the weeds, lay the fertilizer , spread the seed, and cover with compost. If you're a process person, you can check that out here . We found another sprinkler in the garage, et voilà:  We now have three sprinklers in action in the back yard, and I set a timer...

We've been taking some time this holiday weekend to rest from the physical work, spend time doing fun stuff with the kids, and clean house. A lot of that stone dust we were laying bricks on got tracked into the house, and after a couple weeks of ignoring the toys and the laundry and the clutter, it took a whole day to set things right. But on the Fourth, in between the beach in the morning and the burgers, beer, and sparklers in the evening, we spent some time in the garden fixing up a part of the design we knew we would have to change. It's kind of windy here in Newburyport. On our second day in the house, for example, this happened: That is a 60 foot tree that came down right over Atlantis , breaking the fountain and stripping the side of an oak that used to be in that awful raised bed in the middle of the yard. This literal windfall actually helped our design by reminding us that, yes indeedy, that stuff had to go. And I suppose it saved us a few hundred bucks on tre...