her able hands

I didn’t think any of the plants I shoved in the ground in the middle of last summer’s draught were going to make it through the winter, but alas, some perennials, like Comfrey, are tough broads who won’t give up the fight to a little snow—two feet for weeks on end—and subzero temperatures. The Comfrey is on the left, lovely spikey leaves pushing up through the hard soil and next to her is the single stem of Bee Balm that I’ve been nursing along since moving to Ohio. It came from my sister’s mother-in-law. I planted it at the old house in a spot that drains too quickly, in poor soil and it never grew beyond 3 or 4 stems and a foot tall, wheras her parent plant is a 3-foot high beauty with massive red blooms in summer. I see that she inched acros the spot I dug to get closer to Comfrey over the winter even though I planted them at least twelve inches apart. Do plants get lonely beneath the leaf mulch blanket?

Comfrey figures in to many of my long-term plans for this property. My vision for the future is of an edible forest with many outdoor rooms, but the soil here on the hill is like cement. We tried to dig a hole near where I scraped back the sod and a few inches of the topsoil to plant the two in the picture, and it was like trying to dig through a driveway. Comfrey is an excellent, prolific soil-buster—plant her wherever you need to loosen the soil because she sends down very deep roots and those roots work as dynamic accumulators, gathering nutrients from the soil that then become available through the leaves. She works above and below. Let the leaves fall and mulch on the ground over winter and the soil improves quickly. I will plant comfrey this year around the areas where I want to plant fruit trees next spring.

You can lay wilted Comfrey leaves in the trenches or holes you make for planting potatoes. They break down quickly and provide a boost of potassium. The nice thing about this plant is it’s up and producing leaves early in spring. You can also add a few inches of her leaves to the compost pile, but not too much because it gets sludgy and slimy in thick layers. I also use her leaves for green manure tea all through the summer. I set up buckets with lids by the garden beds (empty kitty litter buckets–cleaned out–not the prettiest, but practical) and fill them about 1/3 full with greens from plants like Comfrey, Burdock and Dandelion, then fill with fresh water and set the lid on without sealing it so a little air gets in. After about a week in the sun, you have a great (stinky as hell) tea to feed to the vegetables, herbs and flowers once a week.

Her leaves are also a fantastic supplement for the chickens, and every few days in summer, I cut a few handfuls of the tender, young growth to toss in the tractor with the other scraps. The girls go crazy with mad joy. The color of the egg yolks deepens to rich orange with the addition of these vitamin and mineral rich leaves.

Lucky for me (not so lucky for the people who buy our old house if they aren’t into kitchen gardens that will not quit) I planted some Comfrey by the deck out in the country a few years ago and it has spread into a six-foot square patch. I noticed that it’s coming up strong when I was out there poking around last weekend, and I intend to bring along my digging spade and fork and a stack of pots this Saturday. That patch was started with a few bits transplanted from my friend Debra’s garden and has pale lavender flowers. I also have a giant plant on the other side of the deck that I started from seed my first winter here. When she’s in full bloom, she drips with dark purple bells and her leaves are much darker green.

She’s coming home with me too and I’ll be posting photos of these lovely ladies in their full glory sometime this summer.

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Goodness, I just put up my winter banner, and already I need to work on something green. The thaw is here, and I hope final, though I know we could still get a dump load of snow straight through till May. That thought nudges the back of my mind but I try to ignore it, especially in light of the 70* evenings, the hawks mating in the sky over our house, the Teenager who spends half the night skateboarding in the cul-de-sac behind us. This is progress. We can make plans.

This is part of the mess in the woods. It’s incredible to me that every effort we make to improve the property just creates a bigger mess that we have so little time to clean up. So far we have two beds made with the chicken tractor, and now the girls are on a new spot to build one more. It’s on my list to call about manure and compost deliveries today. I hope I remember to make the time. I could have peas and other cold weather crops in the ground by Sunday if I manage my days well.

In an ideal world where I didn’t spend 45 hours a week in a cubicle I would be building beautiful paths between the beds with shallow trenches filled with cement and beach stones pressed down into it to form mosaics. But yanno, that’s just not in the cards this year. I just need to focus on getting some food planted and call that good enough for now. Someday, though, that’s the big plan. Get all of the brush and wood cleaned up. The brush into bark mulch, the wood chopped and stacked neatly in the lean-to we’ll build by the new shed barn that we’re ordering. I’ll have lots of shade-loving plants to form low hedge rows around the perimeter of the garden area, and along the paths to form cozy nooks within the woods. I can see it now, but realistically it’s a ten-year plan.

But the girls, so happy in their new spot!

The fun part of this spring is seeing what pops up around the property for the first time. I brought over several plants from the old house and stuck them in bare spots in the perennial bed. It looks like I lost my French Lavender, not surprising after the super dry summer and then the bitter cold. I should have nursed it along more than I did, which was not at all. I dug a hole in June, shoved her in, patted the soil down around her roots walked away. Hello spring and skeletal remains!

The first clump of daffodils opened up, such a striking glow on the brown landscape.

My Thyme seems to have done alright, lots of dead, but some hearty green persists and makes a most wonderful scent when rubbed. Here’s one of the surprises. I stuck Ms. Thyme right on top of tulip bulbs. Whoops!

I also found some chives set back amongst a bunch of bulbs in the treeline behind the swing set and plan to make a light vegetable soup this weekend with chopped chives garnishing each bowl. It’s time for spring tonics and I’ve scoped out dozens of tender, green dandelions.

I need to decide where I want to start my kitchen herb bed. I’m afraid to do anything on the south side by the kitchen door because we eventually plan to add on over the kitchen and across to the garage, make a mud room and office/work space. I’d hate to have to move a thriving garden. So I need to focus on the other side close to the woods, which still gets plenty of sun all season.

Chris had his awakening to the season of outside work the other night as well. He bonded with the new back neighbor by taking turns tossing a steel weight tied to a rope over a very high tree branch. The tree is on our property, but the offending branch is rotten and hangs right over their back yard where their lovely 3 year-old daughter plays every day. It took them about 30 or 40 tries, but eventually they snagged the branch and together, with much groaning and brute-strength, pulled it off the tree.

Chris brought out the chainsaw (grinning ear-to-ear, for this is the way the man likes to garden, with a motorized tool of destruction growling in his hands). He trimmed up the branch and brought over the nicest piece, with such an interesting curl to the wood.

Any suggestions on what I could do with this beautiful hollow log?

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It was a hard winter for everyone, including our sweet little ceramic bunny that the previous owner left for us, tucked under one of the bushes by the back steps.

I took a bunch of photos around the property last night, but overslept this morning–first night sleeping with the window open and the warm spring air slipping across my dreams. Delicious. I also overslept because I had half of a celebratory Hen’s Tooth Ale with dinner last night. Why the celebration? Because I had my performance review at work yesterday and was told some very nice things about myself and received an equally nice raise.

I’ll post the rest of the photos this evening.

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What a glorious spring day. Wow. The whole neighborhood buzzed with busy outdoor projects. Roofing, chopping down dead trees, cleaning cars, washing windows, raking, burning brush (I even rode my bike in the morning for half an hour-oh, delicious endorphin rush). And in the evening all settled down to the quiet hum of traffic on the main drag a few blocks west and joyful bird song while we sat on the porch and stared at the moon and enjoyed the warm breeze. We didn’t get as much done this weekend as we’d planned due to the fact that Chris worked both days and we had a birthday party for his dad. But we did do a little brush clearing in the woods and got the chicken tractor moved to a new spot with the help of our burly wrestler neighbor and his friend (also a burly wrestler). It pays to know people with big muscles. We paid him back with eggs fresh from the chicken’s butt (so to speak).

Oh, my goodness, the girls were so thrilled. Silly me, I forgot to charge the camera battery, so I have no proof of this. You’ll just have to take my word that after the indignant, squawking, shrieking, wing-flapping fuss it was nothing but pure bug buffet contentment. Oh, the scratching and pecking and gobbling! Such happy noises, I swear I heard them chanting thank you as they scratched around in the humus for the rest of the afternoon.

We moved them over about ten feet onto a spot that had a big brush pile on top of it for five months. That pile got moved to one of the other (dozens) of piles in the woods in preparation for the day our friend brings his industrial chipper. Mulch! So after we raked up the area, the bug and worm activity was just incredible. Those girls were all over that protein like Chris on Prime Rib.

Speaking of Chris, that wonderful man decided to mechanize my light stand. (Heh. That sounds mildly p*rnographic.) He still has a little more work to do on it (several important pieces are still down at the old house—oops). But he made a crank system for raising and lowering the lights, a very fancy way of solving my leggy seedling problems. I haven’t seen it yet, it’s still at the shop, but I cannot wait to get it set up and dig into my seed starting mix from Fedco. Looks like not until next weekend, which may be too late for onions, but I’m going to do a tray anyway, because hey, maybe it’ll work just fine and then I’ll have incredible Italian sweet onions when it comes time to make roasted tomato sauce.

Again, from the Fedco Seed Catalog:

Borrettana Cipollini Onion (105 days) Open-pollinated. Italian heirloom makes the quintessential boiling and braising onion. Shaped like a button, up to 4″ wide (normally 3″) but less than 1″ thick. Flattened spheres with shiny golden skin slightly brighter than Copra’s. Fine-grained flesh has a very mild yet well-developed flavor. Appreciated in soups, stir-fries and shish kebab. Braids beautifully and keeps till late winter.

I’d say that’s worth the gamble, wouldn’t you?

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Colleen over at In the Garden Online started a new garden blog and website award, The Mouse and Trowel Awards.

I know I’m going over to nominate a bunch of my favorites and I hope you will too. Heck, maybe you’ll even nomintate this here old blog for a category or two.

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