So… yeah… uh… my cat died, too.

Charles came from the pound in San Francisco about 14 years ago. He was likely part Maine Coon and part something walking down the street when his mom was taking a nap on the sidewalk. If mom was anything like Charles, she was completely inert and didn’t even wake up while it happened.

Charles spent most days in the garden with me, following me around. I don’t know why… we were just hanging out, I guess. He was completely useless as a mouser. I remember him taking a nap right next to a fieldmouse that was sleeping on a laptop power supply in my office. “Live and let live” was his motto. That, and “give me tuna, dammit.”

He’d been through… lots of stuff in his day. He had a nasty fungus once that nearly killed him (cost him a few teeth), he had diabetes for the last six years or so (two shots of insulin every day), and he even got his tail closed in the door once. Most recently, several months ago, he got pancreatitis that involved us hooking up a saline drip bag to him at night.

But this time… everything went to hell in a handbasket. So, Charles has been excused from duty.

You were a good cat, Chuckles.

See ya.

Since it’s on my own mind… and since Ted asked… here’s a few things I’d suggest doing in the garden this month:

• Mason bees: If you haven’t done it already, clean out your mason bee houses.  I just took all my tubes, unrolled them, washed the cocoons off in (very) mild bleach water (don’t worry, they can take it) to kill the mites and get rid of any mold, and put about half of them out in the release box.  In the next week or so, I’ll reload the blocks with fresh liners and mount them back on the post.
• Honey bees: It’s a good time to check the hives and make sure that there’s a) enough food in there, and b) anyone living in it.  See my recent post on that one.
• Chickens: Given the lousy weather that usually precedes this break, I find that any sunny day is a good day to get out there and give the coop a good refresh.  Scoop out the old, damp litter from the henhouse, put in some fresh stuff, remove any leftover scraps and junk from the coop, and maybe scoop out a layer of litter from the coop floor if it’s nasty– though, I rarely find the need unless it’s getting too deep.
• Fruit trees: This is always tricky.  The general rule that I follow is to work backwards from fruiting time to pruning time– so, if something fruits late, I prune it early.  The first things I tend to prune are apples and pears.  The very last is cherries and peaches.  It seems that the stone fruits will be less likely to develop diseases if they are actively pushing out their buds before you prune.  Again, as a rule, cut out any clearly damaged, diseased, or crossing branches first.  Then, look at removing branches that are too close together or unattractively placed.  It’s more of an art than a science.  Anyway, I use a 10% bleach solution to spray my pruners between cuts to avoid spreading diseases (though, I’ve read that the bleach can ultimately damage the pruners, old habits die hard).
• Vines and shrubs: Get your grapes and kiwis pruned before they start budding again.  Prune a grape too late, and it’ll bleed and bleed and bleed… probly won’t kill it, but it’s clearly not ideal.  I usually try to thin out my shrubs of all kinds about now.  I used to “prune” them a lot more.  Now, I mostly just try to keep them relatively open and airy and let them worry about size and shape.
• Fruit trees, part 2: I should also say something about spraying and feeding.  You’ll want to apply any dormant type sprays now or forever hold your peace.  The nasty non-organic, engineered, carcinogenic petrochemicals… well, I don’t know, I wouldn’t touch that stuff.  Since I don’t like to spray much, and I can’t remember my own name, much less a spraying schedule, I just apply a lime-sulfur-dormant oil spray to everyone before the buds show color.  I have one particularly sensitive peach tree that gets a shot of copper about that time, too.  I don’t like to spray much of anything after that if only because the bees will start to visit as soon as the buds open.
• Rhubarb, asparagus, strawbs, etc.: Now’s a good time to plant these “root” starts.  I won’t go into how to do each one, but suffice to say that you can get them in now (at least in zone 8b) and they’ll have time to get rolling down under and start growing as the days warm up.
• GARLIC! You should get your garlic in the ground now, if you haven’t already.  I’ve planted it anywhere from fall to spring and always had good luck.  I put mine in a coupla weeks ago, and it’s already shooting up.  I (heart) garlic.
• Potatoes: You might put some potatoes out now, but it’s still pretty cold.  I usually put out a few early ones just to see…
• Dirt: If it’s dry for a couple days, I like to go fork my soil a bit to loosen it up.  Unless I’m really working a sad bed, I don’t turn things too much– it totally ruins the day of the worms and fungii and what not who’ve set up shop down there.  My chickens do enough of that.  I do like to jam a fork into the beds though and rock it back and forth to loosen things up, though.  The rains tend to pack things down a lot, and the weeds come out a lot easier if I do that.  After that, I’ll usually cover all the beds with a thin layer of compost to replenish some of what the Portland rain washed away.  I don’t find it’s necessary to work it in– the aforementioned worms will take care of that.
• Weeds: Get on them and stay on them.  You’ll be glad you did.
• Pests: I have two main, ongoing, pests in my garden: slugs and weevils.  Theoretically, my chickens should be eating both– slugs, eggs, and weevil larvae.  My chickens won’t TOUCH a slug.  They accidentally do sometimes and freak out like “oh my GOD, I put my beak on a SLUG!  WHAT THE HELL?!“  The weevils… I’ve been dealing with by crushing and applying nematodes in the fall.  I think I’m getting ahead of them… who knows.  Anyway, I think now’s a good time to apply iron phosphate (Sluggo) nuggets for the slugs and maybe to start your nightly headlamp hunt.  What’s clear to me is that, like weeds, getting on them early saves you a lot of work (and damaged leaves) down the road.

That’s it for today… but… let me just add this: don’t worry about it.  Really.  Whatever the problem you face out there, plants want to grow.  If you don’t panic (panic kills), and you methodically address anything out of whack, your garden will, in fact, try to come back into balance.

It doesn’t mean you won’t lose all your strawberries to mold one year or get all your leaves chewed off this or that the next.  Take that as a lesson.  Plant lots of different things so any losses aren’t emotionally overwhelming.  Pick stuff that works and get rid of anything that just stresses you out.  I know how it is, believe me.  I go around and around grasping at the desire to grow this or that… to have that “perfect” garden… to get it all “done”.  You know what?  There’s no there there.

Someone said to me once “garden is a verb.”  It’s true.  The fun is in being there, doing it, and dealing with the way things really are.  If you get a shiny, delicious apple out of the deal, great!  If not, great!  Now you can think about why not.  What aren’t you doing that you should?  What are you doing that you shouldn’t?  Are you SURE that’s an apple tree?

I’m talking to myself right now as much as anyone.  Suffering comes from comparing what is to what you think “should” be.  You should have perfect cherries that the birds don’t eat.  You should have tomatoes before the 4th of July.  You shouldn’t have ALL THESE SLUGS!!!  Says who?

Instead, if you take a minute and stop… look at the situation… think like the tree… think like the bird… think like the dirt… what’s everyone after?  It’s all one thing, and you’re part of it.  Can you introduce other pieces to the puzzle without shooting the collective whole in the foot?  Aphids will give up with as little as some aggressive water sprays and the ladybugs won’t mind eating what’s left over.  Birds can’t eat all your cherries if you put a net over some, and no one gets hurt.  How much of your problem is because you’re planting in dirt that’s too full of clay?

My point is… it’s never going to be “perfect,” but it’s always perfect, if you see what I mean.  It’s not the garden that’s the problem.  It’s the gardener.  Without you standing there worrying about it, there’s no problem.  The slugs don’t care what your leaves look like.  For that matter, the leaves don’t care.  By really allowing yourself to accept that you’re just one more part of the scene and not somehow responsible or in charge of it, you can really take the self-induced pressure off.

G o n g g g g …

Hey.  What’s up?

Let me just catch you up since… about November.  Firstly, I am feeling much better.  I’ve been exercising a lot, eating moderately well, and generally trying to take better care of myself.  Stress is a nasty, nasty thing on one’s mind and body. The other thing is that stress is a little like that horrible story about putting a frog into water and gradually turning up the heat until it boils.  The froggy, theoretically per this story, never knows what hit him.  Metaphorically speaking, me = frog, stress = heat.  I thought everything was cool, but in fact, it had gotten quite warm.

Secondly, I got a job– rather, an “engagement”, since I’m a consultant.  It has absolutely nothing, whatsoever, to do with gardens, chickens, cooking, bees, or cooking bees, for that matter.  You can get a general idea about it on my other blog.  Anyway, that’s been great for addressing little distractions in my life like providing food, shelter, and healthcare for my family.

What does any of this have to do with backyard farming, you ask?

One side-effect of my new job is that I’m traveling a couple of times each month.  That means I need to rethink my otherwise time-intensive approach to planting every spot in my (enormous) city lot whereupon the sun shines its life-giving radiation.  The Urban Hayseed Center for Intensive Backyard Agriculture (or TUHCIBA, pronounced “TUH chee bah” for short) is now The Urban Hayseed Center for Low-Attention Agriculture (or TUHCLAA, pronounced “Took-Lah!”).

That means, we’re going to spend this year looking at how a guy who works, minimally, 40 hours per week, has two young kids, and travels a week or so each month can still get the dirt to cough up some delicious good-goods.  Luckily, during my TUHCIBA phase, I planted a bunch (i.e., 20 or so) fruit trees and scads of berries and started my beehives and chickens.  Those components should help a lot since they don’t require an awful lot of day-to-day maintenance.

Still, I have to do annuals.  I needs me some garlic, ‘maters, ‘taters, chard, basil, etc.  But, I don’t need to do so many experiments.  I don’t need to plant so many of everything.  I think I can condense my veggie gardening back info the confines of the farm.  I also think my newfound mastery of my ADD will help me to just get rid of a bunch of plants that… well, I kind of hate.  Before I’d just stare at them and think swirling, pointless thoughts about how “they’re perfectly good” and “what if this is the last of a rare variety” and “why was I standing here again?”

So, anyway, I’m going to try to get back outside and report on it here.  In fact, today, I planted half a bed of garlic, some sprouted potatoes, and some leftover shallots, and I re-arranged my raspberry bed to get it closer to the Raspberry Room idea I’ve had (canes trained to the walls of the patch with an open center for picking and hanging out.)

I’ll try to get the camera out there one of these days when the yard doesn’t look like a mucky monster truck rally ground.

Anyway, if there’s anyone out there anymore, I’m back.