April 2024: April Showers Bring April Flowers

April was rough with way too many severe storms, violent wind, and tornadoes coming way too close to our house. The worst of it was April 2 when we were awake at 5:00 am and heading to the basement to shelter from tornadoes. Thankfully we made it through the month without storm damage.

Meanwhile, everything emerged in my garden. Some of my favorites were the ferns as they curled their way out of the ground and expanded into their spots in the garden. I always love their changing structures and textures. Another plant with a beautiful emergence is the peony whose leaves twist and turn as they expand from the soil. I also love the colors and textures of the epimedium leaves that line up and expand together in a team of hearts–not to mention the fairy-like epimedium flowers held on delicate stems.

The early spring daffodils and tulips had mostly passed by the start of April and were replaced by things like wild geranium, tiarella, irises, and azaleas. The colors in my garden intensified as the plants began to fill the formerly-empty space. My berries bloomed, and my garlic grew ever larger.

I didn’t do much work in my garden, spending the month mostly just watching its progress and taking pictures. I did start a few tomato plants and sweet potato slips. Many years I’ve felt like I got them going too early and had to try to hold overly-eager plants indoors for too long. Trying to avoid that, I think I may have gotten them started a little later than I could have, though it’s always difficult to know what to do.

On the last weekend of April, John and I were able to go to Scratch Brewing, one of our favorite little breweries. It’s located in Southern Illinois and we’ve gone several times before, though it had been almost a year since our last trip. The beers are hyperlocal and incorporate many plants that the brewers have foraged from the land around the brewery. The flavors are complex and unique.

We arrived late in the afternoon and shared several rounds of samplers along with a couple wood fired pizzas. Beers on tap that weekend included one brewed with dried oak, hickory, and maple leaves; one brewed in a copper kettle with wild cherry bark; one brewed with elderberries; and one brewed with chanterelle mushrooms. All of these items were grown or foraged nearby. The pizzas also featured local foods for their toppings.

In addition to having really interesting drinks and food, Scratch has a beautiful setting. The indoors is full of artwork and the outdoors features a variety of rustic seating areas. We ate in the roofed area built around a log cabin. We had a view of the woods, and an Eastern phoebe had a nest nearby in the eaves so we watched her come and go.

We spent the night nearby, then checked out Inspiration Point in the Shawnee National Forest the next morning before going home. At first, Inspiration Point didn’t seem all that inspiring, but then we braved the steep little side trail and gusty winds to get out on the actual point where the view was, in fact, inspirational. It was a fun little trip.

March 2024: Blooming Time

February’s crocuses and early daffodils were the opening overture for the springtime blooms. March followed with a solid performance of flowers mixed with emerging leaves. March began with the last of the crocuses and the final two of my four hellebores. The magnolia started slow, and I was afraid that it had been frozen out by a couple warm-then-cool cycles in the weather. However, I shouldn’t have worried because it soon burst into full bloom.

The first ferns began to unfurl, the raspberries and blackberries leafed out, the redbud bloomed, and life generally returned to my garden. By the end of the month, there was more than the promise of spring. I could begin to hear echoes of summer approaching in all of the bright colors and bold blooms.

I still haven’t done much gardening for the year. I planted a small raised bed of lettuce, which then took its time to get growing. I also did some cleanup here and there, but that’s about it. I was out of commission with the flu for part of March and was traveling at the end, so it’s good there wasn’t really much to do. At this time of year, I just let the plants do what they want to do, and I’ll assess where we’re at once things get a little farther along.

February 2024: The First Signs of Spring

The first flowers are stirring in my garden. I saw my first crocuses around February 9, the first daffodil followed around February 20, and the snowdrops jumped in somewhere in between. One of my hellebores was probably blooming even before the end of January, but it is located pretty far back in my garden and it took a while for its low, nodding blooms to move above the leaf clutter. By February’s end, my other hellebores were blooming, too. I also have shoots of garlic showing above the leafy mulch in their bed, promising that the garlic has spent the winter growing underground. I’m always tempted to photograph every new crocus that blooms. I have different varieties scattered all around my yard, so it’s always a surprise to see another pop of color appear in one place then the next. After months of drabness, each one is a small celebration.

January 2024: Cold and Atmospheric

January was cold and then it turned frigid. We spent the middle of the month in a polar vortex which brought temperature highs down below freezing and lows into the single digits for more than a week. Add in some windy days, and we had wind chill warnings on top of it all.

Even with the new Feralvillas that I’d gotten for the outdoor cats, I didn’t have confidence that we could keep them sufficiently warm, so we evacuated them to an emergency shelter. We did the same during similar weather last year. They spent 11 days together in a small bathroom and were very much ready to go home by the end of it. They did stay safe and warm, however.

There were no particular happenings in my garden during January, but we were treated to a range of natural beauty. There were cold, crystal-clear sunsets with slivers of moon, enough snow to smooth and brighten the landscape, a stunning sunrise, and particularly dense and mysterious fog.

At the end of the month, I saw the first signs of spring as a few hellebore leaves and buds began to emerge from beneath the dried leaves. There are also some early crocuses, bluebells, and daffodils starting to poke up above the ground.

The sharp-shinned hawks that live in a huge oak across the street are more noticeable and active as the days start to get longer. The other day, I was walking Perry at lunch and noticed a pile of feathers in the backyard next door. When I looked more closely, the hawk was still eating its meal there in the yard. It flew off with its kill (probably a pigeon, judging by the feathers). I’ve noticed the hawk family for years and it’s been interesting to see their activity throughout the seasons.

December 2023: Wrapping Up Another Year

December brought quiet beauty in the muted colors of the remaining leaves. With so many browns everywhere, the remaining greens, yellows, oranges, and reds really popped. The color bled out of the last of the hosta leaves, leaving them collapsed, pale, and skeletal. The heuchera leaves remain colorful as they sit tucked into the leaves fallen around them. And the blackberry leaves are some of the most tenacious, turning both darker and more golden before they will eventually fall away.

I didn’t really work on anything in my garden in December, even though there is still some clean up to do. Instead, I put up my outdoor Christmas lights, and John and I got a Christmas tree. Again this year we got a commercial tree that had been farmed in Northern Indiana. I believe that the days of our stripper pit Christmas trees are probably gone, sigh. Still, the tree we got was tall and skinny and perfect for our house, so we were happy with it.

Another December project was making some new cat houses for the outdoor cats. I always worry about keeping them warm enough in winter. Ever since our first winter with outdoor cats hanging around I’ve had some insulated cat houses with built-in electric heating pads, but Spike has claimed them all and does not share. A couple years ago I made a couple cat shelters using plastic tubs for Mark and Junior. But all of these shelters seem drafty to me and I’m doubtful that they’re enough to keep the chill wind out.

So this year I decided to upgrade to Feralvillas, which are ready-to-assemble cat shelters that some people make in a small shop. I ordered them online, they arrived quickly, and they were super easy to assemble. The cats enter the Feralvilla on a lower level and from inside they can move to an upper level that is enclosed, sheltered from the wind, and completely insulated. I anticipated that cats would be cats and would show me who’s boss by waiting to use these nice things I’d gotten for them, but the cats were using them the first night that they were available. They must be good. I got one for each cat, and the cats appear to have sorted out whose house is whose.

A Cat a Day: December 13

Mark

A Cat a Day: December 8

More of Mark “helping” me in the garden at the end of October.

November 2023: A Short Month

I was traveling at both the beginning and the end of November, so I don’t have as much to show from my garden this month. Overall, there was a gradual decline in greenness and growth. November 1 dawned with the first solid freeze of the season. This halted most of the plant growth, but surprisingly not all of it. I was amazed to even have a few tomatoes to harvest mid-month. Things faded a little more every time that the temperatures dipped near or below freezing. Finally temperatures got to the low 20’s at the end of the month and crushed the last of the green out of any remaining tender leaves.

In my garden, I had only a couple accomplishments for the month. I got my garlic planted in my vegetable garden and then I blew all of the fallen leaves around to cover it and my other garden beds. Hopefully the garlic grows happily all winter now that it’s tucked into its bed. In addition to tidying up the leaves, I started my general garden clean up before winter hits, but there’s still plenty more to do.

October 2023: Fall Fluctuations

Temperatures were all over the place in October. We began with days in the 90’s, but things quickly turned colder, and after the first week the lows were consistently forecast to go below 50. That was my signal to bring in my houseplants. Often, this process is really rushed because I like to leave everything out till the last minute, but then the last minute comes unexpectedly and the next thing I know I’m dragging a bunch of plants into the kitchen in the dark after work. This time around, I was able to spend an entire morning giving the plants a little TLC before I brought them inside and found places to put them all. Finding places for them is always a challenge because there are very limited spots inside the house where they will get enough light. Because of that and because they take extra fiddling indoors, I start looking forward to taking them outside again as soon as I bring them in.

Temperatures stayed pretty steady through the middle of the month. Some days were a little warmer and some were a little cooler, but there were no extremely warm or cold days. That meant everything could just keep growing pretty happily–as long as I watered. Our drought continued with hardly any rain to speak of. Leaves gradually started to change. My plants started to crisp here and there as they began to anticipate the end of the growing season.

I picked several rounds of lima beans and got a few more of the fancy blue beans I was trying to grow. Among the limas, I successfully got some very pretty ping zebra beans. I’ve been trying to grow them for a few years without success, but this year I’d read that they simply take a long time to mature. I took the suggestion of starting some plants early indoors, and that did the trick. The blue beans were an experiment that I shouldn’t try again, but it will be tempting to give it a shot. They have an amazing blue color, but only if they mature in cool temperatures. Apparently, temperatures here weren’t cool enough for blue beans until September, so I only got 5-7 blue ones, but those few were pretty spectacular!

I also got an assortment of tomatoes. Every time I enjoy fresh autumn tomatoes in a meal, I think of the guy I passed once at a farmer’s market who was proudly proclaiming that he never eats a fresh tomato after Labor Day because he thinks they’re inferior then. He’s missing out on a couple months of tasty tomatoes!

Things continued along until the final full week of October when temperatures ticked back up into the mid-80’s. Despite the toasty temps, the forecast was to end the month with a serious freeze, so I spent the final weekend of October working to harvest everything I possibly could. We also (finally) got rain, though that made the harvesting more difficult. I was able to harvest my sweet potatoes before the rain started, which made digging through the soil much easier. My harvest was ok, but not nearly as good as last year. The plants had looked healthy, so I’m not sure what happened. I also picked even more lima beans, a few more of the giant zucchino rampicante squash, all my basil, some tomatoes, and some melons that may or may not be ripe.

The zucchino rampicante squash was incredibly happy in my garden this year. I’d gotten three giant squashes from it in September and it was working on several more through October. Unfortunately, quite a few of them had blossom end rot and weren’t usable, but I also got the biggest one of the year that was about 34 inches long. Another had buried itself in my neighbor’s hydrangea plants. A few more of the squashes were still young and tender, so I picked those to eat like zucchini.

I’d hoped to have time to turn all the basil into pesto to freeze for later, but there was too much to do and I wasn’t prepared with enough of the right ingredients, so I decided to grind up the basil with a little olive oil and freeze that. My hope is that it will still be relatively easy to pull out of the freezer and turn into pesto one batch at a time.

A Cat a Day: October 9

Mark