Now that most of the snow has melted, we are entering the ugliest time of the year. It is no longer a crisp, white winter, but it is not yet a warm, green spring.
We are no longer constrained by the cold and the dark, but we are dispirited to find that we can’t yet make good use of the outdoors. The ground is too soft, there are puddles and snow patches all around, and it still gets too cold to plant seedlings outdoors. The remaining snow now looks terrible since the debris it once covered has risen to the surface to form an unsightly desert pavement. The plants are mostly still dormant so there is no greenery to bring any joy to the piles of dead leaves or any distraction from the stands of drying stalks.
A tour of our field shows that the raspberries fared better than usual this winter. In the past, I put effort into making arbors with nice wooden posts and cross arms to hold wires at the desired heights. The idea was to provide support for the canes at different stages of growth.
Now that I have more experience with growing them, I have refined my arbor system. I use T-posts positioned every 10’ on opposite sides of the row and only one wire on each side of the row. Each time a wooden post breaks, I replace it with two T-posts.
The wooden posts looked nice, but they consistently rot a few inches below the ground and break off when the moose rub against them. The T-posts are a more-pragmatic choice. They don’t rot and seemingly hold less appeal for the moose. I know the moose have continued visiting the area every bit as frequently because they leave fertilizer pellets where they linger.
The lower wires have proven to serve little purpose since the bushes rapidly grow past that height once the growing season begins. Now, the arbor wires can easily be twisted to fasten them at any desirable height and can be easily untwisted for removal before the winter. Removing the wires before the snow falls on the bushes seems to have no ill effect on the bushes, but reduces the damage to the posts from the snow load and moose traffic.
The compost bin is in need of repair. It was built with wattle fencing, the idea being that the bin would decay and become part of the compost it holds. We planned to build a new bin when we used up the compost in the current bin. The bamboo fencing was added to make the scene more appealing to passersby on the nearby street.
The fundamental flaw in the plan is that the compost did not get used as fast as the fence decayed. In those days, we had ducks. The litter had to be changed frequently because it rapidly became saturated, so the pile accumulated quickly. Unfortunately, the litter was stubbornly resistant to decomposing. Even after 8 years, it is better described as rotten wood chips than as compost.
Perhaps another reason I find this time of year so unappealing is that I no longer have the excuse of winter for postponing projects, but the working conditions are not yet pleasant enough to provide incentive to get busy outside. It is the transition period between the time of inertia and time for enterprise.
