Fixing the Fence

Bunny squeezed through, ate many beans and peas.

A Big White Blur

Welcome to our house!


This will be the winter we talk about for decades to come. It's been one storm after another all through January. Multiple storms dropped a foot of snow. Gabe's Garden is under the snow in this picture.


An early-morning view of Gabe's Garden from the front window. That dimple in the middle is his slide.


The trench leading to the front door is taller than Gabe.


The raspberry row. . . see? See the fence in there? No?

Several kindly neighbors have been by to assist with clearing the driveway. I love our neighbors! Chris is upstairs baking a giant quantity of blueberry muffins as I write this, as a thank-you.

Chris is pretty much recovered from the walking pneumonia now, hooray! And my placenta previa has cleared up - hooray! So we have both been able to do some shoveling. Some. Bless our neighbors!


You might think this was taken out in the wilderness somewhere, but it's a view of one of the snow heaps from the street. That was a few days ago. The heaps are much bigger now.

Yesterday, I had an early doctor's appointment. In one hour, two inches of snow piled up on the car. I slid into an intersection on the way home. We decided it was wise not to go in to work.


This was taken several days ago, as Chris fought his way to the garden to excavate his squashed little greenhouse. I have been venturing out there once a week to take out the compost. That's as much cross-country walking as I am willing to do right now.



And to think we thought this was deep snow!


Can you see the bench now? Neither can we.


Here was the mailbox a few days ago before the plow dug close to it. We are one of the lucky people to still have an upright mailbox. The continuous piling of snowbanks by the plows is rough on mailboxes.


They said on the radio that flat roofs are in danger of collapsing under the weight today, because it is raining, and the snow is soaking up the rain like a sponge. Chris, wisely, removed the 28 accumulated inched from the sun room roof yesterday, as another foot was beginning to fall. We're not as worried about the deck. . . or rather, we're both secretly hoping that the snow will squash it. Hopefully the rest of the roof will be able to withstand the load.

Mmm, I smell muffins!

Snowpocalypse 2011

Wednesday, January 12, 2011. We all stayed home. Chris is still recovering from walking pneumonia, and I am still under doctor's orders to do no heavy work, so we asked a neighbor to clear our driveway. But for most of the day, were were well and truly snowed in.



More than a foot of snow accumulated on the railings.



The branches were so loaded with the sticky snow that you couldn't see into the woods.



Looks like some sort of hunched creature now, doesn't it?



Gabe's Garden, the view from the front door.



Chris' veggie garden.



Check out the fence. Chris had to go dig out the Mousetrap. It was squashed under the weight of the snow, but sprang right back up.



I took these pictures from the windows. I just don't have the energy to be slogging around through knee-deep snow right now.



It's good hibernating weather. Poor crow.



The plows built us some magnificent piles. Gabe would run to the window to watch them work.

I considered opening the door and dipping him into the snow, but he wouldn't have appreciated it. Instead, I brought a bowl of snow inside for him to eat.



My poor shrubs are getting squashed, but I don't have the energy to shake them free of snow. Oh well - they look so pretty like this anyhow.

A Passion for Growing

The ground was bare and frozen stiff this morning. I am worried about the strawberries, which I neglected to cover in straw for the winter. It was hard to get inspired to take care of them at the end of the season after the animals had eaten every last strawberry.

But now the snow is falling again. Hopefully it'll keep up enough to give the strawberries some protection.

But back to fond memories of the past growing season! Here's a little plant that really grew on me:



It's some sort of passionflower. I bought it, of all places, at the grocery store, on a silly whim. I hope I left the tag on it, because it looks like there are several varieties of passionflower, at least one of which are native. Hopefully it's Passiflora incarnata, purple passionflower.

So I was seduced into buying a $10 plant I knew nothing about. I then plunked it unceremoniously into a corner of the veggie garden and proceeded to neglect it through the heat of the summer. It failed to do anything of interest, so I ignored it. Then in September or October, I did a double-take at the six-foot vine that seemed to have shot up the fence overnight. That one branch of green continued to grow as other plants in the yard were going dormant. And the deep green color stayed until I was forced indoors by cold weather.



These plants have amazing, colorful flowers, and they are rumored to have edible fruit, but at this point I'm in love with it's hand-shaped leaves and elegant coiling tendrils.

I hope it won't be too massive for the fence to support.

Waiting for the Warm

Despite a very sunny couple of weekend days the weather remains cold and wicked at night. On Sunday it was also incredibly blustery. It was bad enough that I decided to not even take the tomato seedlings out for some sun because they would have been blown around mercilessly even in areas protected from the wind.

I planted on Sunday, but with the weather dipping into the low forties at night everything is mostly on hold. I planted beets, swiss chard, arugula, bush beans, and onions. I'm not sure when they'll start coming up, but I look forward to seeing more green. The peas are happy enough and are starting to work their way up their supports. I spent a little time trying to encourage them to pick certain strings with their tendrils. The asparagus is also four to five feet tall and looking amazing. Everything else that has popped up is pretty much in stasis, just waiting for warm weather to burst into action. The corn especially looks poor, and I'm regretting putting it out so early. The cold nights are clearly harming it.

I like taking these pictures of the whole garden because it is fun to watch the change over the course of the summer. It looks rather dry and bare at the moment though. The highlight of the weekend was getting to share several spears of the asparagus with some of our neighbors' children. They stop by and visit the garden occasionally and the snap change on their faces from trepidation at trying the fresh asparagus to shock and delight was priceless for me.

I'm going to end with a poem I wrote in 1997 while I was in college at the University of Michigan. I dug it out of my filing cabinet because I couldn't quite recite it to Michelle, and much of what we've been discussing with larger global environmental issues brought it to mind. Tracey, who was one of my close college friends, was tasked with writing her final paper on the work of a living poet for an English course and she choose this poem. It was a great honor for me because I've always been very shy about my poetry, and after reading it her professor agreed to let her use it. If it weren't for that, I probably wouldn't have the will to share it again now.

Gaia's Song

There is a children's song I know
Which says row gently down the stream.
However, if you're rowing down the stream of life
This advice is not as good as it may seem.

For in this world of motor cars
And planes which go so fast.
Rowing gently down the stream
Will surely leave you in the past.

And the past, I'm told, is not a place
You really want to be.
For things back then were slow and dull
Not any fun you see.

Besides it's hard to make a mark
While rowing gently down the stream.
And leaving your mark upon the world
Is an important thing, it should seem.

For everywhere we're making marks
In the Earth, the Sea, and Sky.
Because we want our presence to be felt
When we grow old and die.

So don't row gently down the stream of life
Be more like Adam or like Eve.
Go make your mark in paradise
And then be asked to leave.

Happy Birthday from the Deer

I guess the deer heard that I wasn't wild about bearded irises, because for my birthday they took a bite out of each and every one. Look, you can see the individual tooth marks.



Irises are poisonous to humans, which means they are also unlikely to be any good for deer. These deer are desperate.



Deer also generally don't like anything in the onion family. Here is an ornamental allium that has been nibbled. That's a hoof print in the dirt next to it.




Argh! They browsed my bearberries! Deer supposedly don't like to eat from plants that are woody or that are so low to the ground. Swaths of crocuses also continue to be eaten.



I should have realized sooner, given the perpetually stripped state of this shrub, that there is a deer problem here.



I have revised my tree strategy. All of my tree seedlings will live in pots inside of Chris' bunny fence for the first year. These scrawny seedlings are my "free gift" trees from the Arbor Day Foundation. They look like prisoners in there, don't they?

The Garden Sentinals

Rending claws and gnashing teeth.

Mighty ears and stomping feet.
'neath earth and sky you rend the fields.
Till tears flow free from falling yields.

This year the fight against the ravaging bunny barbarians of the Franklin woods has begun early. With the spring rains they come plundering the land of all its tender offspring. This year we are preparing a mighty wall that shall thwart both bunny and trap small children. The above picture is of the fence post hole for the post that holds up the gate. I wanted to start with the gate because I felt that would be the hardest part.

After getting the post placed and dumping in the concrete I then pounded the heck out of the ground with my rubber mallet to really pack in the dirt. The post is eight feet tall with two feet in the earth.

I assembled the gate in the garage using some cheap wooden boxes we picked up at Ikea in place of a proper work bench. My dad had helped me assemble them, and now that the growing season is upon us I am seeing all sorts of potential uses for them. This being one of them.

When Michelle helped me hang the gate on the post I was all but certain that it would topple over. I tend to be somewhat competent at most things I do because I do a lot of planning and research before I tackle something. At the same time, the first time I do something I always expect it to fail, it makes successes all the sweeter and failures part of the process. I ended up buying slightly warped 2x4's so the gate isn't exactly straight, but it is good enough for my purposes. I still need to place another chunk of wood at the base of the gate that will lie flush with the bottom of the gate. This will then sit on chicken wire attached to it and buried under ground.

The day started with an 8:30am shopping trip to Lowes to buy the 360lbs of concrete mix bags, the wood, and the chicken and fence wire. By 4pm the fence posts were all driven, the gate was hung and...

The ditch was dug along the existing fence and the chicken wire placed and attached to the fence with staple nails. The chicken wire goes down about a foot since we couldn't bend it out. For most of the fence the chicken wire will travel down about 5-6 inches and then out 5-6 inches. This general plan comes from research Michelle did along with a report on Rabbit proofing I found from Australia. I figure the Australians know about Rabbit problems.

By 4pm I was totally spent, and dispite being somewhat under the weather Michelle still had a smile for me while I took this picture of her cleaning up the tool explosion in the garden. There is still a fair bit of work to do with putting up the metal fencing and the rest of the chicken wire at the base, but the hardest part is done. The weakest link in the line will be along the treeline. The roots are incredibly thick so we'll be running the chicken wire out a foot along the ground away from the base of the fence. All our research indicates that this will work, so here's to hoping. Just think, one more weekend of fence building and then I'll be free to start working on the actual garden beds!