Triage Garden Tasks - Plants to Save Come First!
The list of jobs is ever growing
from one thing to another I've been tossed
If there were a master gardener here
Tasks would be wisely bossed.
Perhaps the last freeze is past,
though not the final frost
Any plant outside now
might become a harvest lost.
Seedlings beneath the lights
Plants too big for seedling tray,
Some can live there for a while
Others suffer from delay.
I turn my head and plainly see
Too many jobs to do
Even when planted outside
The work is never through.
There is a need to choose a path
A time to make decision
Decide the fate of each dear plant
A choice, I pray, by highest vision.
As I make my "Sophie's Choice"*
between this life and that
I hear the term in Hot Lip's* voice
as if I wear a doctor's hat.
A term I learned decades ago
from Hawkeye* and the crew
Triage - to choose who lives or dies
by how well the cure might do.
The plant that cries the loudest
Finest flavor on my tongue,
The plant most rare and precious
I choose to help that one.
Evening comes, the sky is darkening
I'm still outside with my hoe
working the soil to welcome
All the beautiful plants I know.
I'll take you each in turn
Before it is too late
Triage is only a place in line
To grow in love for all, is fate.
by Rachel Claire
* respectful credit to whomever owns the intellectual property mentioned
Dear Readers,
This blog has been having some technical issues between an upgrade of the blogging software (RapidWeaver 4.2.2) and a new feedburner link and trying to function with Blotanical.
Hopefully this link will feed both into feedburner, blotanical and have comments available through JS-Kit.
If not, I'll try again. If you were able to see this post, please let me know below on the comments.
May all your decisions bring Peace and Joy for all!
Dug Up: Raspberry Roots 'n' Shoots
So Spreadable - Its Incredible! Raspberries Multiply Like Maniacs.
The Gardener had to move the raspberries out from the garden to the yard, way far away from everything. Many viable clumps of roots and shoots were happily given away. Very quickly garden club members and neighbors came by, visiting the greenhouse. They left fresh eggs, tomatoes and peach jam, taking home lettuce and small plants too.
Roots and shoots excavated and placed in a pan.
This photo is among the best from the garden in 2008.
The raspberries were packed as bare root, wrapped up in newspaper envelopes and kept damp. The paper is about torn through now, but fewer packages are left. Hopefully they will be all gone soon to good homes and can quickly take over the world.
Raspberry flowers and leaves
This gardener's sense of "right to life" is lovingly granted to almost all plants, save weeds in the garden. Sadly, she still practices preemptive attacks on plant-eating bugs.
The raspberries are fall bearing, sweet and delicate. The books say they are best for eating when ripe, without trying to save or put them up. The plants could use a little support and reportedly like a little potash (wood ashes). They expand exorbitantly through the root system. Give them lots of room, far away from every other plant!
Bug Report:
Bugs that bothered these raspberries in 2008 included some kind of red-headed black-bodied cut worm (I think), grasshoppers, blister beetles, and a large two-legged fructivore that stopped by between garden jobs to graze.
But let's not think of frost
or a season time has lost
as we eagerly coax seeds to sprout
hoping soil will dry out.
And for you who plant a tree to fruit
in five years or in ten,
Radish will adorn your salad sooner
than a dream of future "when" ...
Silence of the Snow
How still, serene the solitude
Of White, with lines of grey
The peace and blessed silence
Of a Nothern Winter day.
Yes, I know the gardeners in the South exult in early Spring
And the gardens of the North are but dreams
in the too clean hands of those still wrapped in down.
So here is a short list of things to comfort the Northerners.
Things you don't have (and don’t miss) because of your wonderful long cold winter:
Armadillos digging up the lawns, fields and anything they can get to, some really big holes too!
Chiggers, invisible, annoying, long lasting itch producing bug - the best reason to bathe nightly any day over 50 degrees!
Too Short Winter rest! Enjoy the silence of the snow!
Here in the middle of the Mid-West, not North - nor South
we seemed to have but one month’s rest between
the season of harvest storage
and beginning to start seeds.
I’m delighted to have the greenhouse to jump start the growing life,
but I imagine another month’s rest also would have been good.
Where ever you garden - Grow Happy!
Freezing Rain Falls
the sullen skies pour forth
a gentle even, inexorable flow
of tinkling sparkling ice.
It sticks to earth, dried grass and steps
and hides the greenhouse roof.
I’m glad I took the seedlings
to a warmer upstairs room.
The stream had ice a couple of days ago when the temps went up to 70 degrees.
