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Spring is here and it’s time to take stock. First came the pussy willows (genus Salix), which volunteer around the clearing.
As the snow recedes the seedling evergreens appear and it is a good time to measure their total growth from last season, their lead and in the five splayed branches. But with the snow receding, moving around the property, I also see the white pine buds and cedar fronds (genus Thuja) and red pine needles nibbled off by the deer in the long, dark, cold nights of winter. This happens on most of the two- to five-year-old trees not caged or improperly caged.
The red osier dogwood (also genus Salix), which I like, too are eaten back. The elderberries (genus Sambucus) are the first to break out in leaf. Our elderberries are very young and growing everywhere and quickly, but the young stalks are brittle.
The apples and crabapples (family Rosaceae, genus Malus) roses and mountain ash (genus Sorbus, also known as rowan) have fuzzy gray buds, and they come early. They need to be caged, all, because the deer eat their buds and break off their branches and the bucks rub their horns on the juvenile trunks in September.
photo by James Egan
The naked tamaracks begin to bud with chartreuse colored pimples.
My only success, my only maintained success year after year is the rhubarb, and it is no success to speak of because anyone can do it. The shoots come up green and red and white in the way of lobster mushrooms or skunk cabbage, deformed and bent and earthy.
Under the eaves on the north side of the shack – completely shaded and cool – I have ramps, or leaks, and they’ve broken through the cold moist mulch like tulips.
The strawberries are leafy green all year and this year’s greenery is already small leaves. But the quack grass in the strawberry patch grows faster and thicker. I get a start on weeding the patch of the quack grass, but it feels like pulling the grass from a lawn by hand.
I take stock of what I have to do for gardening and plantings. Hoe the new herb garden, with its rich, dark compost that I made over the past two years. Prepare the hay- and straw-bale gardens for the cucumbers and melons and gourds. Prepare the flower planters – a collection of old tins and enamel pots, of a trapper’s pack and coffee can – for impatiens and moss roses and ferns and flowers.
It is time to get to work. That is, to relax.
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