The very act of writing it down might jinx it, but…it looks like we’ll be snow-free this week! No white stuff in the forecast, for once! I’m massively excited about that – it means maybe, just maybe, I can get a bit more work done in the garden.
In between snarly springtime bouts of rain and snow and sunshine last week, I finally cut back all the perennials, and dug in some of the leaf litter. I removed a fair amount of leaves as well – there are several green ash trees and poplars nearby so you can imagine the quantity I’m dealing with. I sidedressed the existing plants with new soil and compost (including some of the castings my vermicomposting worms had busily created over the winter). Hopefully I’ll have enough time after work this week to get the edging started – not my favourite job (is it anyone’s?), but it always looks so nice afterwards.
Now I just have to wait for the end of the overnight frosts (June?) to get down to a garden centre and do some serious plant shopping. (Note to Hubby: you don’t see that word “serious” in there. I’m really only going to pick up “a couple of things”). 😉
Over in the community garden, I’m delighted to report that the building of the hoop tunnel that I had blathered on about last year actually took place a couple of days ago. Better late than never or something like that. (I’ll post a photo later this week). The community gardening group held its spring clean up event on Saturday – it was so muddy we risked compacting the soil in the perimeter beds, and so cold very few weeds had popped up to pull (which I’m totally not complaining about). We focussed our attention on other tasks instead, and I’m fairly certain we may now have the cleanest garden shed in the province….
I was so happy to see that the rhubarb in the community garden is starting to emerge. We are currently splitting the produce from one plant between 30 garden members, so we each average a haul of about two stalks per season. I already have plans for mine: Special Rhubarb Cake. It seems like a must-try, don’t you think? Or do you have another favourite rhubarb recipe to recommend?
Flowery Prose. 