Archive for the ‘spring’ Tag
Our fear of snow and frost has finally past and I can get on with our Spring and Summer plans. I’ve been sun burned once already and now I’m taking extra steps to be a little more careful. With the remodel in the house completed I can now center all of my attention to the yard and garden.
I visited a friend yesterday who lives nearby and owns a small nursery. He is a supplier of plants to many of the local and larger nurseries in southern Maine. He’s been very helpful over the years in educating me on growing plants in this State. I decided to shop around a little because every year he offers plants for sale that many others in the area do not.
I started looking through his new greenhouses and I couldn’t stop myself from loading up on plants. I have a fairly large cold frame at home and I purchased enough plants to completely fill it and then some. I filled my car with hot peppers, pickling cucumbers, squash, zucchini, and mustard plants. It was an excellent start for the season. I also purchased seedlings of three types of lettuce, spinach, and a couple cherry tomato plants. I’ll be planting the cold resistant plants today but waiting another week before starting anything else. The weather here can be weird at times with unannounced frost occurring well into May. I’ve been burned before so I won’t let it happen again.
Every garden has issues and mine is no different. I’ve been trying for years to grow big, fat, and red tomatoes with absolutely no luck. We instead plant the cherry tomatoes which always thrive in the same damn soil. I had the soil tested and added whatever was needed to get it balanced properly and still no success. I love making my homemade pasta sauces and salsas but it’s always much better when made with freshly grown tomatoes.
I finished construction of a new type of trellis for my beans. I’m planting both red and yellow climbing beans which should completely fill this trellis in no time. We always do well with them and eat those beans all winter long. There is nothing better to eat on a cold February night.
I’ll be looking for some kale seedlings in the next few day as well. Our harvest of kale last summer made our winter soups pretty damn tasty. I just wash it, blanch it and the freeze it. I like it almost as well as frozen spinach and I’m hoping I’ll have the same success as in the past.
My better-half is obsessed with sun flowers and required me to set aside an area in the garden for them. She usually plants a large variety of sizes and colors including the mammoth plants that can get 10 to 12 feet tall. At the end of the season we allow the heads to dry and they feed hundreds of birds for a few weeks.
Well, the plants have been transferred into the cold frame to await a warmer week. I installed my simple but effective sprinkler system which should keep all of the plants well watered and healthy. Now all I have to worry about are Mother Natures little helpers. Deer, rabbits, squirrels, horn worms, and all of natures other little inconveniences that make gardening such a challenge.
I’m lying here this morning and cursing the fact that Spring has apparently sprung. These last few days of beautiful weather must have effected by mind and made me even more stupid than people say I am. I’ve been completely caught up in the Spring Fever craziness and I’m paying the price for it today.
Yesterday was my first full day dedicated totally to yard work and garden preparations. I dearly love gardening but I made a rookie mistake and allowed myself to forget about the basics of working outside. Full sunshine should never be ignored or forgotten, EVER. I started my day by pulling out the rototiller and spent an hour turning over the soil in the garden to loosen it up before planting. Then getting even more stupid I continued working by placing black landscape fabric over the garden frames and attaching it to the ground with large metal staples. This fabric is cool because it eliminates weeding but still allows the rain water to soak through. The sun was very hot but I was in the gardening zone, unfortunately.
I was still pumped about the day so I decided after finishing the fabric installation to fire up my riding mower and do a quick yard cleanup. Now I’ve been in the sun without any lotion or hat for some four hours. I was still feeling good so I kept on going by cutting the grass for the first time this year.
If you look up the word stupid in the dictionary you just might find my photograph there. I am the poster boy for stupid as reflected in my cherry red head, nose, cheeks, ears, and lips. I took a shower before going to bed and I’m surprised the neighbors didn’t hear all the screaming. I am an effing moron who looks like a French Fry. I slopped at least a pint of lotion on my face and head hoping that it would help but it didn’t. I probably won’t be able to shave in the morning or even smile.
After all of that I still had a great day. Having been sick for the previous week really put me behind schedule on the garden work and unfortunately Mother Nature waits for no man. Now I’m fully up to speed and back on schedule. As soon as my face stops glowing I’ll be right back out there playing in the dirt and enjoying as much of the warm weather as I can.
I’d like to continue this posting but a cold shower and another bottle of lotion await.
I had a hour of free time today so I decided to take a trip down memory lane. My better-half has gotten it into her head to do a little redecorating of the house. She’s started using one of my own favorite terms against me, "think outside the box." I’ve been trying for years to convince her to leave her comfort zone and use her creative abilities and now I’m afraid I may have created a monster.
For years I’ve gone through creative periods myself and produced art works that are considered unusual by some and well "outside the box" to others. Many of those pieces were discarded as I moved from place to place over the years and I regret that. Fortunately, many others I did save and have been moving them around with me for decades.
After I moved into this house I laid claim to a very small and unused room where I now store many of these pieces. My better-half has requested that I look through the room for anything interesting she could use in her redecorating efforts. I began today by slowing pulling out each piece to determine condition and suitability. It was like a really weird trip down memory lane. As I looked at each piece the exact memories of when it was made come rushing back. I was able to remember people and places I thought I’d forgotten. I was very surprised just how quickly and vividly those memories came rushing back. I guess it’s my own version of a poor man’s time travel machine. It appears to be true that the brain keeps all of our experiences stored away in it’s attic awaiting retrieval.
One of my most involved projects took me years to complete. It was a series of twenty collages varying in size from a few inches to four feet in length. These collages contain tidbits of my life that I began saving when I enlisted in the Army. They contain bits and pieces of my life collected over many years with photos of old friends, , family, love letters, newspaper articles, mementos, and just about anything else you can think of. The entire project was called " My Life Panels".
I spent almost all of my time yesterday just sitting and reading these panels, seeing forgotten old friends, and remembering details of my rather interesting life. I’ll have to continue this process at a later time because today I’ve become totally distracted. It might be easier and go a little quicker if I have my better-half involved. She’s always had the ability to keep me from becoming too sidetracked.
I can look back now and thank myself for a job well done. I truthfully never expected the day to come when I’d be using the panels in this way. I think I did good.
This has been a slow news day for me. I was so excited to complete my room remodel that I celebrated a little too much and got stupid a whole lot. The sun was shining, the temperature was in the high sixties, and I was on the deck catching some rays and loving life. Portions of our deck are protected from the wind so I was hot and sweaty in the sun but then when the wind shifted the temperature dropped about fifteen degrees. I didn’t let it phase me or so I thought.
Last night at nine I started feeling a bit flushed and then a little clammy. Right as I was going to bed I felt that well known indicator of bad things to come, a scratchy throat. I hoped and prayed I was wrong but I knew I wasn’t. At three in the morning I woke up coughing and with a light fever. At four I was awakened because I was having difficulty breathing from congestion in my head and chest. It was quickly becoming a really bad day.
I seem to have lost the good health battle to a rather fast moving virus of some sort. I honestly don’t think it’s the flu because of the speed at which it’s progressing. I’ve been low on energy all day today and been doing all of the normal run-of-the-mill remedies to help myself through this. Lots of liquids, rest, an occasional throat lozenge, and a few Tylenol. It’s now four in the afternoon and things are status quo.
I hate being sick and confined to bed but my better-half (the female warden of this prison) has laid down the law. I’m in freaking jail with no chance of parole at least until the fever breaks. I’ll only be allowed out to play with the other kids after I start feeling better and when I stop being a whinny baby (her choice of words, not mine).
So this posting will lack my normal sarcastic bent because my head hurts and I’m in dire need of a lengthy but loving back rub. The warden says if I’m good I can watch some TV and she’ll make me some chicken soup. Screw the soup, I want a really detailed and thorough sponge bath with all the trimmings. It would lower my rising temperature, clean my filthy body, and give me a cheap thrill or two if she does it just right.
So that’s it for today. I can see the warden heading my way with that Nurse Ratched look on her face. I hope she’s not going to try that enema thing again. LOL
Another sunny and warm day here in Maine. I’m already getting spoiled by all this good weather and it isn’t even May yet. I wasn’t all that motivated today but after a couple of cups of good coffee I was raring to go. I had a few errands to run and decided to get them out of the way early.
I first made my way to my favorite book store to return a few paperbacks and to buy a few more. When you read as much as I do it can get very expensive very quickly so a cute little store like this is a god send. I returned five novels and repurchased six new ones for a grand total of $13.00. As always I also get fifteen or twenty minutes of excellent and intelligent conversation at no cost. It’s nice to find a person who is well read and can speak on almost any subject and keep it interesting.
After returning home with my bag of guilt, that once-a-month fast food sin I permit myself, I sat on the deck and ate a thick, greasy, juicy, luscious, and heartwarming hamburger. I can’t even explain what an evil pleasure it gives me along with some salty, oily, and scrumptious french fries. You know when the slop your eating and clogging your arteries with is good when you‘re required to wipe your hands and arms to remove the excess salt and oil. Soooooo effing good!
After partaking of my weaknesses for bad food the guilt was almost unbearable (I did say almost). I decided as penance that I needed to do something worthwhile today which led me to the workshop for primer and painting supplies. I primed a section of my remodeled room, got paint all over me, and then said the hell with it. I cleaned up, took a shower, and settled into the living room with my X-Box. Nothing like a couple of hours of roaming through the world of Harry Potter to relax a person. It was great as always.
My better-half came home from work and surprise, surprise, neither of us felt much like cooking. Into the car and off to our favorite sports bar, The Strike Zone. It just so happened to be “all you can eat” haddock night. So in the spirit of the moment we sat there with a couple of good drinks and stuffed ourselves with all the haddock we could eat and it was incredible. There was one low point to the evening which will require me to drop a note to the chef on my next visit. They have the absolute worst coleslaw I’ve ever tasted in my entire life. Any person serving coleslaw that tastes that bad should be beaten and then arrested and then have his ass kicked again.
I wish I could be a kinder and gentler person but but when someone screws up my coleslaw it really pisses me off. I think I may need some food style anger management.
My drywall frustration continued again today shortly after I started priming the ceiling. I’m enough of a realist to understand that no matter how hard you try it’s almost impossible to do a remodeling project in an old house that is just perfect. I accepted that fact and decided early on I would deal with those problems as they occurred. Well, they did.
I purposely made the decision to for this to be a winter project and to take as much time as necessary to do it right. From the first that freaking ceiling was a problem. It wasn’t level and the room wasn’t square but I fixed each issue as best I could and proceeded on. In my heart I knew that no matter what there would be certain areas I could never get perfect.
As soon as I began painting today I discovered a new drywall rule of thumb. Everything good is really bad and everything bad is really good. Every area that I was concerned with turned out perfect and the two areas I was worried the least about became the biggest problems. One area couldn’t be properly fixed and will require additional repair work once the remainder of the room is completed. It’s just so damn frustrating.
Enough with the damn remodel. I finally made my way outside and it was the most gorgeous day so far this month. I managed to complete some of the yard cleanup, chatted with a neighbor or two, and cleared my head of remodeling issues. After my better-half arrived home from work we sat down and began to plan the garden. What and where we should plant, buying additional soil to fill the frames, and a possible expansion of the garden to allow her to plant thirty of forty of the larger species of sunflowers. It was an hour well spent that will make this year’s garden preparation less of a challenge.
One of our neighbors stopped by and he really has a bad case of garden/spring fever. Over the past few summers he and his wife created a basic home garden and discovered how much they enjoyed it. This year their two young daughters, ages five and seven, are becoming more involved. The girls are are ready to jump into things immediately and have already started a few seeds and can’t wait to get a little dirty with their mom and dad in the garden. It should a great summer for all of us exchanging gardening tips and canning techniques. I’m looking forward to my first visit from his girls to talk about our gardens. They’re too cute to be believed.
My book reading goal was reached last night when I completed both my sci-fi and non-fiction novels. I read well into the night and had a great time in the process. Now I can finish the third book at my leisure and take a little time to properly enjoy it.
Slowly but surely I’m making progress.
Let’s add up the tally for today. My better-half has a day off, that’s one. The sun is shining and the day is clear, that’s two. I’m sitting enjoying my morning caffeine, that’s three. The yard and home are in desperate need of attention and cleanup, that’s four. Do you have to guess what’s coming next or can you do the math.
A sunny yet cold day that’s deceivingly enticing can be instantly turned into a backbreaking, ball-busting labor camp by my better-half who’s heavily intoxicated with a killer dose of Spring Fever. I’ve again been assigned the position of worker bee while the Queen barks orders as she lays on her comfortable chaise lounge on the deck. I exaggerate a bit for maximum effect since I know she’ll be reading this later.
Clean that porch, lift that barge, tote that bale, rake the yard or you’ll land in jail. What more can you ask for but a huge amount of work that needs doing and a person who stands by to assist you in doing them in the proper order. This is just the beginning of another Spring that forces all Maine residents to get up and get moving.
You need to understand that the growing season in the state of Maine is about fifteen minutes long. Winter starts in late October and lasts into May. Then you have a few weeks of rain and mud and all of a sudden it’s June. If you plan on your garden being successful without fear of frost you must wait until mid June before planting. That gives you about ninety days to grow your garden, harvest the fruits of your labors, and begin preparations for the coming winter. So complaining about the Spring cleanup is a total waste of time. The work must be done quickly but never silently. I work a lot better when I can schedule a few “bitch breaks” to make myself feel better.
We made a great deal of progress today but there’s still a lot of work ahead. I finished up in mid afternoon and we returned to the house to be hit with the Boston Marathon bombing news. Our sympathies go out to those families who’ve suffered the ultimate loss and those with maimed or wounded members. It’s a sad fact of life that these killers are still out there and we’re still as vulnerable as ever, even after spending billions on prevention.
I only hope our current administration shows more resolve in dealing with terrorism than it’s shown in the past. The Presidents speech last night didn’t fill me with confidence. I would have thought that Mr. Charisma could have shown a bit more emotion or actual concern. I guess his charisma only kicks in when he’s talking about himself. I can already picture his possible cynical political maneuvers from this tragedy. This may give him the excuses to push for armed drones flying over American cities armed with Hellfire missiles to kill suspected terrorists. God help us all!
More good news today. After an entire week of forty-five degree sunny days, we have another effing snow storm working it’s way here from wherever the hell they come from. Once again we’re to be buried in more than a foot of snow. There goes that good old Spring Fever feeling right out the bloody window.
Today is sunny and wickedly cold but I’ll deal with the cold to have this much sunshine. It’s amazing what energy a little sunshine can create to help motivate me. I’m doing a small amount of work on the remodel this morning but nothing too strenuous. After all it’s Sunday and that supposed to be a day of rest, right?
Since it’s a lazy day for me I’m determined to do a few things that I’ve been procrastinating about for weeks. I spent some time cleaning my camera and lenses. Removing the silicon skin used for protection against my clumsiness is a pain but the camera needs a thorough cleaning. It’s something I should be doing on a regular basis but for some reason I never seem to make the time to do it.
Next is my work shop. It’s a freaking disaster area and while I might make some progress in cleaning it today, it’s going to take many more days before it’s anywhere near clean and functional enough. What I really need is a huge dump truck, a five gallon can of gas, and a pack of matches. Nothing says cleanup like a raging bonfire. I’ve promised myself that fifteen minutes after the last of the snow has melted there’ll be a huge bonfire and I’ll be feeding it until the workshop is emptied of trash and old wood scraps.
This snow storm is really screwing not only with my head but my Spring schedule. Mother Nature truly is a "heartless bitch". Our Spring and Summer seasons here in Maine aren’t very long as it is but these late snow storms are just salt in the wounds. I guess I’m becoming something of a whiny little bitch so I’ll shut and get on with things. Thank God It’s only a few stupid chores that are irritating me. I mean it could be much much worse. I could be returning to the workforce, right Lily?
It’s time for me to get to moving, stop complaining, and become a useful citizen once again. I hate that.
With winter seeming to drag on endlessly I decided to spend time today working with my photographs. I currently have almost fifteen thousand photos taken over the last five years that need to be properly sorted, filed, and backed up. It’ a tedious and time consuming process but absolutely necessary when dealing with these large numbers of pictures.
It’s a chore that I really enjoy and it gives me an opportunity to again relive when I took them and in many cases why I took them. The last two summers I’ve been involved photographing a subject I just love, dragonflies. Dragonflies have become one of my all time passions due to their delicacy and beauty. I purchased a great lens about five years ago and it’s primarily used to take macro photo’s. These photo’s are so detailed you’re able to see the segmented wings and the gorgeous colors like never before.
In a local area nearby I found a small isolated pond that teems with dragonflies of all types and colors. I spent many hours sitting near the swampy end of that pond amongst the cattails observing the dragonflies and attempting to identify the many types I was seeing. They’re very curious and upon my arrival they normally swarmed around me to see what I was doing. Getting them to pose for photo’s was difficult at best because they almost never stop moving. It was frustrating to say the least and it required me to study up on the species in an attempt to solve that problem.
They live in a larva stage in the water of ponds often for years where they’re able to prey on small fish to survive. The winged stage is very short and is for mating, egg laying, mosquito eating, and then death. They’ve been around in one form or another for millions of years and have slowly evolved into these smaller versions of the originals. Fossils have been found with dragonflies more than two feet long.
I did discover that many of the smaller ones I photographed were not actually dragonflies but damselflies. Dragonflies have huge eyes that touch each other but the damselflies eyes are separated and they’re much smaller. They come in a number of vivid colors but the ones I see most often are an electric blue. Both species as I mentioned earlier are very curious and militantly territorial. They spend their entire lives looking for food and fighting to maintain those territories whether in the water or out. They’re what you might call scrappy.
I needed to find a way to get them to sit still for a few seconds. Taking their photographs in flight while OK wasn’t giving me the detail that I needed. I first took a small piece of gum and attached it to the end of a reed sticking up in the swamp. They did land occasionally on those reeds and it appeared they were resting or possibly sunning themselves. No luck with that strategy, they landed for a second and then were gone. I next tried a drop of sugar water on the reed and had some successes but still not what I was looking for. Eventually I found an ant, squished it, and then placed a piece of it on the end of the reed. Bingo, they landed and stayed for a few seconds longer than usual and I began to get some great pictures.
Over the next two months I took some truly amazing photographs. Once they determined I wasn’t a threat they forgot about me completely and came close with little or no fear. If you’d like to give it a try you’ll certainly need a great deal of patience and a supply of ants.
Well, back to the computer to finish up my sorting. I’m starting to get a small jolt of spring fever and excited for warm weather so I can get back to the swamp.
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