February 1-2 is the official start of Springtime according to the Old Calender. The sun is halfway between the Winter Solstice and the Spring Equinox. 6 more weeks until Equinox. We've still got loads of snow on the ground, nearly 100% coverage, some places more than a foot deep. Temps are mild though (40s-low 50sF) and we're supposed to have some rain, so I think it will start to melt. I have all the seed trays and pots in the basement and hopefully today I'll get down there and start scrubbing them out. Also got a bag of seed starting soil out of the shed to thaw out.
I'm so glad I FINALLY had the good sense to sift compost into a big garbage can last fall and put it in the basement. It's beautiful stuff and will save me a fortune on potting soil. Yesterday, I potted up a nicely rooted cutting of my Christmas Cactus...by coincidence, while watering, another branch broke off the mother plant so now that is in a glass of water to root. I've tried several different methods of rooting Christmas cactus and the simplest...stick it in a shallow bit of water at the bottom of a tall glass...seems to work best. I've had nearly 100% success. I should probably try this method for other things too!
I was thinking that since the Old Calender divides the year into 8 parts (not just 4), there really are 8 seasons, not 4. As a gardener, this makes sense because really, each 6-week period of the year has its own character, its own chores, its own beauties and delights.
This season, from Feb 1 to March 20, I think I'd call "Thaw." That's a good old English word (the original was "thawian"). This is the time when, despite more snow and freezing weather, we see days like today when the snow and ice melt and the sound of dripping and trickling water is everywhere. The birds wake up and start to test out their songs. The buds start to swell on the trees. The rabbits start to dance on the snow in the night. Thaw is a season for wakening, I see it as lavender blue and oyster shell gray and the pale iridescent green of crocus shooting out of the ground.
*** Carpet Birding
Feeding the birds has been difficult for everybody because of the deep drifted snow. I felt so sorry for the birds because it's nearly impossible for them to forage in deep snow like this and a lot of my neighbors just gave up filling their feeders, which is very unfair. Normally, I do not feed birds on my property because I have cats and I don't want to lure any birds to their deaths. But this is a "snow emergency" so I thought I should do something to help. Well, i don't have any bird feeders and setting a table or something was impossible in hip deep drifts. So what I did was take an old carpet and toss it on top of the snow very close to my big crabapple tree. Then I sprinkled bird seed all over it. It took about 1 hour for the birds to figure it out and for the past week....it's been a whirlwind of birds feeding! The cats leave it alone...it's far enough off the dug out path that they don't want to bother trying to get across all that snow, and since it's near the tree the birds get out of danger quickly. I am now so enthused by it that I bought a sack of black oil sunflower seeds to jazz up the standard mix .... I'm definitely going to keep this in mind for next winter too. Oh and cleaning up the "feeder" couldn't be easier...shake out the seed hulls and done.
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| Carpet... by plantmanager | Feb 1, 2016 10:22 PM | 1 |
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