February in the Garden

...



This past weekend, I finished grafting my fruit trees.  If my goal was to make the garden look like it belonged to Crazy People, I succeeded admirably.  Something about hanging labels made of cut-up soda cans, and sticking cling-wrap flags on all my trees' branches makes me wonder if it won't be long before I'm building God's throne-room out of tin foil and light bulbs.




The weather was particularly mild this weekend, and so Robb and I tackled our much-neglected garden.  Once again, I have utterly failed to grow broccoli.  I don't know what it is about my garden and cruciferous vegetables.  With the exception of kale, every vegetable I plant that's in the cole/brassica family dies a miserable death.  Without fail, they refuse to grow at all, and eventually bolt.  Sad.  Really sad.  I tore out my pathetic broccoli, and spent several hours digging up the never-ending crop of Italian lords-and-ladies.  It's a shame we can't eat those, because if we could, we'd never go hungry.




Some things are doing well in the garden.  The kale is growing, slowly.  The garlic is doing very well, as are the shallots.  The hops are just starting to poke their noses out of the ground.  If you look closely at the photo of the baby garlic, you can see that the orange colored cup fungus is still going crazy. 




We have an insane variety of mushrooms sprouting up all over the place.  Doesn't this one look like some kind of primitive sea creature?

Robb cleared out the Pile of Denial between the henhouse and the compost bins.  This part of the yard had morphed into a Crap Dumping Spot, and needed to be uncluttered.

Robb has also been re-working the roof of the chicken's run.  He tore off the random assortment of junk that was masquerading as a roof, and re-worked the pitch of the roof, so that rainwater flows off in a more sensible manner.




I re-arranged the empty beehives, and in the process disturbed all sorts of wildlife.  I failed to get a decent photo of the False Black Widow Spider, so you'll all have to make do with pictures of one of the many Slender Salamanders we unearthed.




Look at his tiny little toesies!  He's sitting on my gloved hand, which should give you a sense of scale. I've become quite fond of these little fellows, and am delighted that they have a home in the darker corners of our garden.  I've worried from time to time that we would tidy up too much and drive them away from their homes under rotting planks.  But let's be real. There's not a lot of chance of that happening.  This garden will always be a bit of a tangled thicket.

That's the thing with keeping a garden.  It's never really "finished."



Comments

Norma Chang said…
Will you do a post about how you graft your fruit trees? That is so fascinating.
Your garlic looks very healthy and happy I see a great harvest.
Michelle said…
There's so much to enjoy on your garden! Jellyfish fungi, salamanders, and exotic looking fruit trees. I love those salamanders, I find them all curled up under pots and boards - they are so cute.

Popular Posts