8:24 PM 3/28/2025

Friday, 28 March 2025

In the evening, I raked the asparagus bed clean enough that I will be able to see when the spears start coming up.  I raked until I could see the dead stalks, then cut stalks until I could rake some more.  I mislaid the pruning shears -- I was using them yesterday (on the asparagus bed) when the new microwave arrived, but they aren't in any of the places where I might have put them down.   The lopping shears worked better; I didn't have to get down on my knees.  But I hope I find the pruning shears before they get rusty.

The asparagus bed needs a lot of weeding.  

Then I raked most of the leaves between the rows in the garden into the compost heap.  It won't be long before I can Culta-Eze where I've been digging out the winter onions and start replanting one or two of every clump I dig.  I harvested for the first time this year on the last day of February.  I could have harvested on New Year's, but had some scallions in my fridge.  The weather socked the garden in immediately after that, and I broke through a thin frozen shell when digging the first scallions.

We raked leaves off the rhubarb yesterday, and it's up.  The catnip started showing at least a week ago, and I've been harvesting garlic chives, but there are no signs of life in the thyme and oregano.  There's a leaf on the marjoram.

Hope I remember to take the kitchen shears out and trim the dead twigs off the oregano.  I cut the rue back severely yesterday.





Saturday, 5 April 2025
10:37 AM 4/5/2025

Nothing but catnip and, I suspect, creeping charlie in the herb bed.  I thought I saw some green in the marjoram, but it's a seedling creeping charlie.   Which I'm leaving, for fear that it's Kenilworth ivy.   The strawberries have come through the winter in good shape.

The garlic chives could use a heavy harvesting.   I'll cut a few to put into the potato salad I'm making today.

Daffodils are in full bloom.   The hyacinths were the first to open, and one plant isn't quite fully open.  Others need to be dead-headed soon.  While checking, I noticed sod invading the fern bed, but despite the soggy soil, it broke off instead of pulling up, so I fetched the glass tabletop that has been cluttering the asparagus bed and covered it.

Yesterday I raked a substantial layer of leaves off the old compost heap onto the current one; I must have had a load of raked leaves dumped on it at some time, but they showed no sign of having been through the lawn mower.  

When digging scallions for the colcannon, I replanted some too-small-to-mess-with plants, so I've a start on repopulating where I've been clear-cut harvesting.  

The space between the winter onions and the edge of the garden is nearly sodded with sprouted bulbils; how did I come to miss so many?  I'm leaving them in the hope that they will get big enough to mess with before they get in the way.  They make it awkward to find a place to put my feet.