Garden Soak

Feeling a little low today so I started the day with a little meditation in my sunroom Mama-Space and then strapped a warm mug of tea to my side to keep my company while I dressed various short people and made breakfast.

But the real pick-me-up was some garden time. God, I miss being out in the garden. Right about the time February is arriving, I am starting to go crazy for a touch of something, anything that's green. The weather was incredibly warm and inviting this morning, a light, misty fog rolling down our hill and an inviting giant mud puddle by the back door waiting for the boys. I took the pruners and some stray yarn (for tying up raspberries), a trowel, some scissors, and a trowel out and I just did...ceaselessly for a little over three hours. Pom rode along on my back, sleeping peacefully through most of my work.

The smell of leaf mold, the damp earth on my knees, mud on my hands, and the sight of all those tiny green tips working their way out of the soil, promised me that this isn't forever...soon we'll be well again, soon there will be spring and soon we can cure our grumpy days with picnics.

Boy, does that sound good!

I feel a lot better.

Some Women Knit Booties

Some women (even me) have been known to make booties in the third trimester. I get crazy ideas about making giant sculptures out of sticks in the yard. It takes all types to make a world. Last year I posted about my first round of pruning the apple tree, and this year I knew another big whack needed to be taken at it but it was a daunting task for a pregnant chica in winter. Teetering on a ladder in January with a saw is now always advised in prenatal texts. Wow was I relieved and excited when A surprised me and manifested his own spontaneous interest in fruit tree pruning and decided to practice on our apple! Whew! He really went to town and took off several limbs I was too intimidated to try to saw through. When he was finished there was a giant pile of sticks and branches sitting on the lawn. He hauled some of them to the curb for spring cleaning pick-up by the city and then I stopped him because a wild, hair-brained idea struck.

Beginnings. A big heap of apple trimmings. You can see how I was starting to lay out the arch shape, flat on the ground on the left side of the photo.

"Leave the rest! I'm going to build something!" And so I did.

And here's the finished project...at least as finished as it gets until it has plant occupants.

Lots of scratches on the arms and loads of grunting, hoisting and weaving later...we have a giant stick sculpture arbor that leads from our driveway into the back garden. Kind of fun! I'm not sure how long it will last, its not exactly permanent but for now it is a pretty fun thing to have accomplished. I was thinking of the hood-type willow weaving I did in our condo garden a couple of years ago and then as I worked it ended up being a lot bigger than I was expecting. Am still trying to decide if it needs some kind of foot anchoring via stakes or something or some other reinforcement but it is pretty heavy and although it flexes a little in the wind it has managed to stay standing quite solidly so far. Now...the big question is what to plant on it! Clematis? Morning glories? Climbing roses? Honeysuckle?

Poetry Friday: A Pruning Poem

Image via Wikipedia

Happy Poetry Friday to you! A pruning poem for you all today. It is pruning season, or at least the tale end thereof. (We must celebrate something in the bleak end of winter after all)  Time for all overgrown trees to get haircuts and all shrubs to get trim jobs that will have them prancing around in high-style once the warm weather has them leafing and blossoming all over the place.

I have been working, little by little on pruning our very large and very neglected apple tree and hoping on one hand that spring comes soon to rescue me but on the other hand that it holds off long enough to let me finish all the snipping and clipping this old tree needs. If a tree is clipped once the sap has really begun to flow hard it can "bleed out" and pour sap from all its wounds and end up dying in the warming, early spring. As I work, racing spring I have been thinking out a poem about the whole thing. This morning I took a little stab at putting down the bits that have been rattling around in my mind as I traded clippers for saw and then saw again for clippers in the chill wind.

Pruning The Apple Tree
I am pruning the dear, ancient apple tree
That leans, reclining over the back hedge
Behind our new home: a tall, old colonial.
It might turn out to bear nothing at all but
Small, hard crab apples like bitter marbles
(For some reason the neighbor can't remember)
Then, I know, my husband will see no point
And archly suggest a chainsaw at the trunk.
I finger all the thickly twisted branchings
And tilt my head as I envision each of the
Diagnostic choices: this branch or that gone.
My glittering saw makes fragrant, smooth
Work of the chosen amputation and the wound
Yawns open, fresh and yellow in the cold.
I am glad the ice-wind is blowing stiffly,
From the north, the better to anesthetize
The patient who sits numbly through my surgery.   
I see signs of other years here on the boughs:
Roughly hacked, black stubs of once-limbs,
Places where the tree has grown a living mace
And one limb that has gone thickly into
The very flesh of its widely forked neighbor
I drop branch bits on the snow and wonder as I
Climb a broad trunk, my palms splayed open,
Against the icy bark if the tree will
Shake its head pinkly, rouse as fragrant cloud
And bear me saving fruit for pies or if it
Sleeps deeply, sunk into a peaceful reverie
Tiny, unborn marble-fruit held tight in every bud,
Knowing this is the last cold, drowsy winter
It will arch sagely over my back hedge.

Image via Wikipedia

I really do hope it turns out to be a grand, old standard apple of some kind, don't you? Even if it is a crab, I have half a mind to try to convince A to save it just so I can make glittering apple jelly every year. I do hate to lose a wise old tree like this. I wonder who planted it and when. Guessing the age of trees is a very tricky game although even I can tell ours is quite old. I'd have taken a picture for you but it's doing a cold drizzle outside and there's no real love for a camera in that kind of weather.

You can find more Poetry Friday entries at our host Sara's blog, Read Write Believe.