Spring forward? (73 days to go…)
by Max Akroyd
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By any measure, spring has arrived. Typically, the demarcation “on the ground” is less certain. Beautiful, but frosty, mornings give way to sunny, but dry, day times and none of that is particularly conducive to rampant growth. Underneath a dusty exterior, the soil retains its winter stock of moisture for now – but we definitely need rain soon…
Oh well, it keeps the weeds in abeyance. And the working conditions are nothing short of glorious. Unimpeded by soggy ground, the days uncover a repetitive formula: a couple of hours digging, a couple of hours maintenance (mowing and/or strimming), an hour’s potting on or sowing in the greenhouse… add in an hour tending the animals, plus a bit of daydreaming – and that’s what a day’s work looks like. A steady cadence pervades every activity. You could be lulled into just going through these motions all year and not planting a single thing in the ground!
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I didn’t fancy my beer and chocolate budget disappearing on something as dull as bamboo canes. My present stock is all bleached and brittle from being stuck in a field in Brittany. But some of my scattered thoughts are already turning to planting out sweet peas and, later, climbing beans. If that seems a bit premature it’s only because I’m conscious that the season for cutting bean poles and pea sticks from our hedgerow is coming to an end. Instead of a defined silhouette of poles in the low spring sunshine, the coppiced hazel will soon be an amorphous, leafy mass.
It’s not just the money-saving aspect that makes this particular job a pleasure. Hazel seems designed for the purpose of supporting beany things. Having cut down a decent size pole, I cut off the side branches to make pea sticks and then all but one of the bits where it divides at the top – here I preserve the one that curves in a way that will help form the top of my bean structure. I then sharpen the other, thick end by hacking at it with a billhook. If you’re lucky you even end up with a the vestige of a side shoot in just the right place to assist in forming the apex of the edifice, and another one further down the pole that you can stand on to drive the thing into the ground.
When I do remember to put something potentially edible in the soil, it’s usually a potato. All tucked up snugly in a bed of grass cuttings. I’m tentatively filling the trenches thus, mindful of the wreckage that the May frost caused last year. Back-filling said trenches proved there’s heat in the sun alright – it was the first hot work of the year – but the wind is still too cold and withering to chance transplanted seedlings…
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The calm can’t last much longer. Soon the assault will begin. The tinpot plans of the gardening dictator will be flattened by nature’s show of overwhelming force. An inexorable tide of weeds and other shock troops of the wilderness will flow in and all we can do is hang on the best we can.
But hanging out the washing very early yesterday and I’m still believing it’s a beautiful world, despite everything. After all, the mean and dismaying plans of politicians and the like are slight and ineffective when compared to the seasonal change taking place right now.
Hazel supports just look so right don’t they. The thought of spending precious beer and chocolate money on something so mundane as bamboo canes must act as a real push for coppicing all the surrounding hedgerows for anything vaguely suitable, (and of course you’re tidying as you go, so two jobs in one).
Spring is definitely here now the warmth is just starting to be felt but the most obvious is the light and the length of the the days. Our clocks go forward this weekend and we lose an hour of sleep, but the pigs are up and about from 7am now, an inearthly hour for them, of course they have the luxury of going back to bed or snoozing all morning in the March sunshine, whereas I toil on until the rumblings in my tummy tell me I missed breakfast yet again and its down tools and back to the farmhouse for sustainance and mugs of coffee and the inspiration to continue my toils in the form of reading Blogs like yours while drinking it.
I’m so glad you’ve decided not to vanish in June, my farm would have suffered considerably as a result!!
Sue xx
Evening Sue,
Thanks for the comment – as ever. My pigs are spending all day dozing in the sunshine too. I guess I will benefit from that vitamin D one day, but it does make me a bit cross as I’m digging away and they are lazing around! (Although I’m not sure I could prove that their choice was less intelligent!)
I need a rainy day to come along so I can catch up on your blog and others. This glorious sunshine is ok but I’m very short of excuses to stop and read around… and I never, ever forget my breakfast!
Just another little reminder that I truly enjoy reading your blog.
Thank you silvercannon – I can’t hear that reminder often enough!
I think the whole world must now have learned that nature will have it’s way! Hazel sticks would be perfect. We did have a stock of old ones (the previous owners) in the firewood pile we inherited, but they’re now burned. For my peas etc. I tend to use almond cut offs from the neighbour’s pruning. They don’t sound suitable, but they’re not bad.
Hi Jan,
I think almond prunings sound pretty exotic as pea sticks! Although it was almost Mediterranean weather-wise today, I don’t think there’s any chance I’ll be using that particular off-cut around here..!