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“The First Flower on the Deck for 2014”

I just opened my eyes, rolled over and checked the clock. It was 6:30am and I was awake, it was morning, and the only thing on my body that wasn’t sore or stiff was my eye balls as I looked around the bedroom.

Without a doubt I love Spring time but OMG the work involved. The last week has been nuts and the weather has been just warm enough to make me crazy. As always I tend to overdo at this time of the year in my lame attempt to make the warm weather get her just a little sooner. I’ve been "garden" involved almost one hundred percent these last few weeks. I’m trying to get as much of the preparation done as I can before I take my trip to Texas over Memorial Day. I’ll be returning from there just after the holiday and I need the garden ready for planting when I get back.

My main project for the last week was the rebuilding and repairing of the raised beds that I initially built five years ago out of non-pressure treated lumber. They were slowly rotting away and were filled with bugs and other unwelcome guests. It was easy enough to just tear the wood out of the ground but getting the required replacement lumber to the house without paying Lowe’s huge delivery fee was a bit more difficult. I have no immediate access to a pickup truck so I had to improvise. I drive a small and cute PT Cruiser that is my all time favorite vehicle. I was forced to turn her into a workhorse for two days as I made numerous trips from Lowe’s to my house with 12 foot long pressure treated boards sticking out the passenger side window at least four feet. It was the only way I could get them in the car and close the rear tailgate door. It made for a very interesting drive home. I accomplished it without killing any pedestrians who happened to be standing along the edge of the road and I also dodged hundreds of mailboxes that I came within inches of as I sped past.

Everything was delivered to the house with minimal damage to the car, to me, or any innocent bystanders. It’s not something I ever want to try again. Lugging all those heavy boards around has accounted for most of my sore muscles and general overall feeling of "death warmed over".

The pictures will show the new and improved beds and the other work that was done. The gardens have been cultivated, composted, and the fabric put in place covering the soil.

This week I’ll be planting the cold weather crops such as lettuce, kale, and spinach. I visited a nearby nursery yesterday and made a few preliminary purchases to place temporarily into the cold frames. While chatting with the owner I was able to pick up some valuable information on upcoming weather patterns and all of the problems with specific plants lost or damaged due to the rough winter.

I’m now in the process of preparing the hoses and sprinklers for installation. They should be up and operational in a day or two and then I can relax for a week or so before my trip.

My better-half is suffering from a raging Spring Fever that has taken complete control of her life. We have a wrap-around deck that partially circles the second floor of our house. This deck becomes our second home during the Spring, Summer, and Fall. As you can see she has moved many and assorted pots to the deck to begin planting her container garden. She’ll have pots full of a grand assortment of flowers and certain selected vegetables making it like a jungle out there in just a few weeks time.

Once I return from Texas I’ll be back to my good old Maine gardening ways doing all of the things I enjoy most. Fortunately for us both all of the really hard work will have been completed by then allowing us to enjoy the garden and deck time well into September. Then the canning, herb drying, and wine bottling can commence once again.

I’ve been boring the hell out of everyone lately with the trials and tribulations with my garden and my DIY projects. I apologize for that but only just a little. My main goal for April was to get all of my old projects put to bed before I start creating new ones or “God Forbid” before my better-half does.

We both let a number of things slide last Fall when I broke my leg. I decided today to do one chore I’ve come to hate and one I’ve always loved to do. The first task was to empty my huge dehydrator that has contained five pounds of habanero peppers, one pound of cayenne peppers, and a tray or two of red chilies, for more than a month. I kept procrastinating because after drying them thoroughly they must be ground into a fine powder. I’ve done it many times before but it’s a nasty job.

The last time I attempted it I paid a horrible price. As I began grinding up the peppers the dust from the grinder filled my man-cave very quickly. I was forced to flee when I couldn’t stop sneezing. Along with the sneezing my face was on fire. I was smart enough to wear latex gloves but I quickly found out they weren’t thick enough to keep the pepper dust from burning my hands and anything I might accidently touch later in the day. I won’t get into any intimate details but I had a selection of body parts that felt like they would at any moment burst into flames. It took the better part of a day for everything to return to normal but I learned a few valuable but painful lessons.

This time I was wearing yellow dish-washing rubber gloves, ten times thicker than latex, a face mask with an air filter, and a long sleeved shirt. I was sitting on an upturned bucket on the back porch with an extension cord to run the food grinder. I thought I had it all covered but once again I was sooooooo wrong. Within minutes the mask turned into a death trap. The filter was keeping everything from entering my nostrils including air. I cracked the mask just enough to get a breath and instead got a nose full of the dreaded pepper dust. It was all down hill from there and another day of pepper pain awaited me. I finally finished the job and now I have these three jars of hot pepper dust that I need to use sparingly so I don’t have to do this again any time soon. I might be forced to rent a SCUBA outfit the next time.

The second job is a fav. I need to explain that I’ve been a winemaker since the mid-1980’s. It’s a skill I picked up from my late grandfather whose elderberry wine was to kill for. Late last summer my better-half and I decided to make a batch of blueberry wine made with good old Maine home grown berries. The wine was almost forgotten with all of our Fall activities, my broken leg, and the holidays. It’s been sitting for the last ten months in my man-cave and today I shook off my laziness and bottled it.

And here’s the finished product.

Of course a good winemaker always tastes his final product and I tasted the hell out of it. I was as surprised as anyone when it turned out to be possibly the best wine we’ve made in the last ten years. I’m going to find a dark corner of my wine cellar and hide it for a few more months. It should be spectacular by then.

And our Spring continues to roll right along.

Archive for the ‘Home Brewing’ Category

05-03-2014. Journal Entry – Spring Continues! Leave a comment

4-25-2014. Journal Entry – No Wine Before It’s Time! Leave a comment

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