Cold spring / gardening
Mar. 17th, 2026 01:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gs_silvaIt's so sunny and beautiful outside! I desperately want to go out and get some vitamin d and rake the side garden. But it's barely above freezing - single degrees C. I'm huddled against the space heater (not literally - that would be a fire hazard) with candles on the countertop (more for ambience) trying to draw more than cry.
(It's hyperbole. I don't cry easily.)
We still have juncos. They're in the hawthorn tree, doing little acrobatic moves to grab the last berries that the robins left behind. Yesterday the crows were around, possibly nesting in the same tall pine tree they did last year. I left them some cat food and it's gone now but I don't hear them today.
Even though my backyard is swampy, I walked through it and checked out the buckthorn patch that I'd started to hack back last fall. There was deer scat in it. I'm glad the deer are finding enough to eat on my property to still make their visits. That's what I'm aiming for by letting the place go native. I was reading about how to stratify turtlehead seeds, and I didn't do exactly as it said, but they've been exposed to the cold all winter, so I guess that means I can go ahead and scatter them now. Which means I need to rip up the pachysandra now. But not right now. I'll try again when it's more comfortable out there.
The storm last night was bad enough to close some roads in my town, but not my road. I only had a couple of fallen branches.
I just saw one of the cardinal couples. Last year I watched them teaching their juvenile offspring the ways of the world - they tend to hang out in the forsythia, and they'll stay there minding their own business as long as I'm minding mine. The mom cardinal especially - she was all over the bird feeder when I had it out, and we could get in and out of the car right next to her and she didn't care one bit. That's so random. I don't know.
It's my kid's birthday next week. He wants to go out tonight though, for Steak Special Tuesday at a local restaurant, so we'll do that. We don't really have a tradition of big birthday celebrations or surprises. Each of us basically states what we want, and the three of us do that, and any wrapped gifts are just incidental. It comes from living abroad for so long. We always survived on a minimum of possessions because we moved so often and wanted to be able to pack all our stuff into 5 suitcases and a couple of tote bags and not have to hire a service to move boxes of stuff. So gift-giving had to be very modest, and mostly focused on experiences.
For instance, one time we took the kid out to see Rogue One, in Phnom Penh. That was fun but weird. (The reason we chose to travel to Phnom Penh to see a single movie is that Vietnam had slapped a PG-13 rating on it, and PG-13 means nobody under 13 is allowed inside the theater under any circumstances, but we're American so of course we're perfectly happy to bring our 8-year-old to watch a Star Wars movie - he's the target audience as far as we're concerned! Phnom Penh is a lovely, crazy city and we generally had a nice time even though it was a short visit.)
Fun fact - my son actually looks like Maurice from Alien Romance. Well, he used to, right up until he was 13 or so. (He had full bangs, though, instead of the middle part that gives Maurice his signature look - ah well, small details.) Then he grew. Now I'll have to invent a taller character to be his lookalike.
***
ETA: It's Poetry Fishbowl! In whichysabetwordsmith writes poems while you watch. Give her a prompt and/or a donation and add to the fun.
(It's hyperbole. I don't cry easily.)
We still have juncos. They're in the hawthorn tree, doing little acrobatic moves to grab the last berries that the robins left behind. Yesterday the crows were around, possibly nesting in the same tall pine tree they did last year. I left them some cat food and it's gone now but I don't hear them today.
Even though my backyard is swampy, I walked through it and checked out the buckthorn patch that I'd started to hack back last fall. There was deer scat in it. I'm glad the deer are finding enough to eat on my property to still make their visits. That's what I'm aiming for by letting the place go native. I was reading about how to stratify turtlehead seeds, and I didn't do exactly as it said, but they've been exposed to the cold all winter, so I guess that means I can go ahead and scatter them now. Which means I need to rip up the pachysandra now. But not right now. I'll try again when it's more comfortable out there.
The storm last night was bad enough to close some roads in my town, but not my road. I only had a couple of fallen branches.
I just saw one of the cardinal couples. Last year I watched them teaching their juvenile offspring the ways of the world - they tend to hang out in the forsythia, and they'll stay there minding their own business as long as I'm minding mine. The mom cardinal especially - she was all over the bird feeder when I had it out, and we could get in and out of the car right next to her and she didn't care one bit. That's so random. I don't know.
It's my kid's birthday next week. He wants to go out tonight though, for Steak Special Tuesday at a local restaurant, so we'll do that. We don't really have a tradition of big birthday celebrations or surprises. Each of us basically states what we want, and the three of us do that, and any wrapped gifts are just incidental. It comes from living abroad for so long. We always survived on a minimum of possessions because we moved so often and wanted to be able to pack all our stuff into 5 suitcases and a couple of tote bags and not have to hire a service to move boxes of stuff. So gift-giving had to be very modest, and mostly focused on experiences.
For instance, one time we took the kid out to see Rogue One, in Phnom Penh. That was fun but weird. (The reason we chose to travel to Phnom Penh to see a single movie is that Vietnam had slapped a PG-13 rating on it, and PG-13 means nobody under 13 is allowed inside the theater under any circumstances, but we're American so of course we're perfectly happy to bring our 8-year-old to watch a Star Wars movie - he's the target audience as far as we're concerned! Phnom Penh is a lovely, crazy city and we generally had a nice time even though it was a short visit.)
Fun fact - my son actually looks like Maurice from Alien Romance. Well, he used to, right up until he was 13 or so. (He had full bangs, though, instead of the middle part that gives Maurice his signature look - ah well, small details.) Then he grew. Now I'll have to invent a taller character to be his lookalike.
***
ETA: It's Poetry Fishbowl! In which
ysabetwordsmith writes poems while you watch. Give her a prompt and/or a donation and add to the fun.