I've got so many projects in mind for this spring and early summer that I may be forced to write down what I'm hoping to do.  It might also be a way for me to keep track of what I need to be doing at any moment - much like a time line.  So what's my first project......how about getting a floor pour in my chicken coop!  Ok.....I hear it now, who has a chicken coop and why?  Well let me tell you about my chicken coop.  It sits on the sunnyside of the lilacs. From the road you can't see it.  You have to walk to the barn and then you pass it on the left.  Anyway, this little out building has been around for years. Could be forty or fifty years maybe older.  It is about 12 feet long, 6 or 7 feet wide and maybe 6 feet high. A tall person has to stoop when walking around.  Anyway, there are two windows on the south side and two on the east side. The building has a tin roof, which we paint with that silver gray metal roofing paint and it has the same red barn siding as the barn. I ordered two windows as replacement windows, barn shash I think they call it and will cut off an inch on the top and bottom to make them fit. The width of 24 inches is fine. The coop is painted red and has a door to get in. And a dirt floor. Good for chickens but not for storing things. Every year I say what a great place to store my gardening tools; dry and safe. I bought a Mantis - a light weight cultivator a few weeks ago and am about to buy a garden cart and a few more rain barrels. So pouring a concrete floor for the things you use primarily to prepare a garden and during the gardening season is my first to do this year. So where are all my gardening things at the moment?

 

About 12 years ago I built a garden house.  It's dimensions are about 15 feet by 12 feet, fully insulated, with electricity and heat. The only thing missing is the sheet rock. It now housing everything from fishing rods, golf clubs, an air compressor, outdoor furniture and God knows what else.  This year I'm reclaiming my space and putting a summer room/bedroom out there. Last year I invested in a lovely awning that opens out to a lovely brick patio, and in leaders/gutter/drains to collect my rain water. I also had a well dug at about the same time I had the garden house built so that I'd have all the water I needed for my garden. To water as frequently as I wanted would have put a drain on the house well, so really  - out of necessity, had the second well dug. I think you can tell I am ripping..........

 

When I first moved into the house in 1981, seems so very long ago, one of my brothers took all the shutters off the house with the intention of scraping and painting them. It is now 2008 and those shutters are sitting in what used to be an old woodshed on the back of the garage.  Actually that woodshed was my very first project. We replaced the roof and I poured a concrete floor and made it into a sitting room so we could watch the stream. I have subsequently rebuilt the frame of the overhang and the floor is as good as ever. I just might reclaim that area as well! 

 

Anyway, I have hired a carpenter to look at my shutters to see if they can be refurbished. The advantage to using the old shutters is that they have the hardware on them. To buy new hardware is as costly as buying new cedar shutters. So......come h___ or high water, the shutters will be up this summer.

 

So the first three of several projects. I may have to slide the new fence wall and arbor in there somewhere before the roses come.  Now you know what is ahead.

 

Bittersweet

Hello blog friends,

 

Just a quick note to wish you all a Happy Easter.  The weather is not conducive enough for the Easter bunny to be running around but hopefully by early April warmer weather will set in.

 

Our weekend will be relaxing and with March madness in the midst of its tournament, I expect many eyes will be glued to the TV. My Arizona Wildcats lost in the first round so I guess it's.....wait until next year.

 

Our Easter dinner will be somewhat different than usual; a pork roast with sauerkraut, broccoli sauteed in onions and perhaps some rice. Not our usual lamb and asparagus.  But good never-the-less.

 

I close with.....have a good weekend and may spring come soon.    Bittersweet

 

 

 

The weather has been temperamental at the very least.  Perhaps a series of tantrums might be a better description.  The winds last night were 35 and 40 miles per hour, and most of the past week saw sleet, rain, snow and freezing rain. Yesterday it rained throughout most of the day which we should be thankful for because not too many miles north, it was 10 more inches of snow. My ten foot stream has now expanded to a 40 foot wide stream and the wet lands across the street is now a pond. They have spent the past few weeks clearing the brush, and flattening the swamp bogs in preparation for some future dredging. While I'm still very ambivalent about how it will change the life in the wetland, it certainly will enhance the countryside. Now we have a 4 acre lake across the street.  When I first moved up here, I had visions of an ice skating pond and years later it will come into being.

 

My seeds and planting materials have come. I have enough seeds to last me several years but split between two families and shared with other, I think it will work out just fine. I'm going to try and get a load of horse manure from the neighboring veterinarian, and perhaps order some mulch and top soil from the local landscaper. I have several vegetable beds in mind; one for the strawberries, another for the lettuce, herbs and spinach, and the other for the squash, cucumbers, zukes and melons. The potatoes and corn will just occupy regular garden space as will the beans and beets but I may have to treat the eggplant and peppers to a bed as well. The tomatoes I'll buy as plants or a neighbor who starts hundreds of plants from seed has already offered to provide me with several dozen plants. And gosh....how can I forget the fennel seeds.  What I probably will start early from seed are the peppers and eggplant. I have an empty tray on my planter with grow lights that I'll use to start some of these plants......so I'm really looking forward to some degree of success here. We really can't plant outdoors until about Memorial Day weekend; that's when we can plan on not having any killing frost. So peppers, and eggplants will be started inside. They need very warm soil to thrive.

 

I've been reading a biography on Katherine S. White entitled Upward and Onward. She was the fiction editor of the New Yorker Magazine but I am more interested in the series of articles she wrote on gardening. I'm always fascinated when I hear of someone who became a transplant to a most unsuspecting area of the country.  In this case from a New York City-ite who had an apartment in Turtle Bay to one who relocates to Brooklin, Maine. After 35 years on the New Yorker staff, she committed herself to gardening and writing an occasional column on her earthy joys.

 

While reading the biography by Linda Davis on KSW, I can upon several interesting asides. Katherine and her first husband Earnest Angell had a summer home in Sneden's Landing approximately 25 miles north of New York City. But at that time, transportation across the Hudson River was by a passenger boat. In her case, she'd take the passenger ferry from Sneden's Landing to Dobbs Ferry. There was no Tappan Zee Bridge nor George Washington Bridge. Now for my interesting asides.

 

My mother was a caterer. When I was in high school and college, I spent many, many hours helping her prepare the food.  My mother was known for her buffet suppers and one of her community of clients was Sneden's Landing.  It was always known for it's artsy people and I remember one evening she told me she had met Mikhail Baryshnikov. Of course we've talking a difference of 20 or thirty years between when K.S.W. lived there and when my mother catered there.  

 

When she started talking about the ferry, it brought back memories of when from my high school windows I watch the building of the Tappan Zee take place. The Tappan Zee Bridge spans the widest part of the Hudson River, approximately three miles from Nyack to Terry Town.  But I remember having taken one trip in the early 50's across the Hudson in a passenger ferry.  The boat held about 20 or 25 people at best and we were visiting the daughter of my Godmother who was a student at Marywood College. It was a nightmare of a boat trip. We crossed in a rain storm, waves and wind slapping against this barely enclosed boat that was struggling with everything it had to cross this churning river. It was one of those moments where even as an 8 or 9 year old child I remember saying to my self......are we going to make it. I remember being impressed with the dinner - lamb chops, green beans and rice, and strawberry shortcake for dessert and what really impressed me was the table clothes on the tables and the male servers. Guests and students were seated at tables and everyone was served at the table. At that time there was no such thing as walking through a food line.

 

Anyway, I'm almost finished with the book and will look forward to Onward and Upward in The Garden which is a compilation of her gardening essays but together by her husband E.B. White.

 

To all my blog friends......be well.  Spring is coming.     Bittersweet on the hill.