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The Growing Things That Lie Beneath

Warm weather has reminded me that there is life under all that snow. Sure, it won’t be out for a while, but now’s a great time to start thinking about that dormant pollen factory.

Following is my list of things to start working on now that the snow level has reached a paltry two feet.

  1. Prune the oaks – Oaks should never, ever be pruned during the warm seasons. Just before Spring is the best time to safely trim those bad boys. Oak wilt is a huge problem, especially with red oaks. Late winter pruning helps avoid the disease, which is spread via sap beetles.
  2. Unwrapping trees – They’re not quite ready yet, but I would much rather unwrap my trees early rather than later. Once it heats up the wrap can actually start to damage the tree.
  3. Buying seeds – Seed catalogs have been out for a while, but I’m more of a fan of store bought seeds. It doesn’t hurt to buy early, and if things need to be started indoors, well, I guess I’m probably too late for that.
  4. Research – I have a mugo pine which really, really needs to go. This isn’t like last year or the year before when I said it needed to go. This year it’s really going to happen. It’s too big. It’s infested. I just need to figure out what to replace it with. There’s more, too. I would like to get a shed, but I need to plan where to place it. Also, I need to figure out what kind of shed I want.
  5. Budget – Now is a good time to put together this year’s budget. If I don’t, I’ll end up buying all sorts of expensive things that I don’t need, like a shed.

Happy Spring, everybody. Well, late Winter, anyway.

And with that I suppose I ought to leave a picture taken on May 2nd of last year.

Just your standard May weather around here.
Just your standard May weather around here.

2 thoughts on “The Growing Things That Lie Beneath”

  1. We’ve been lucky to have grass most of the previous months. The jonquils, daffodils and freesias are flowering beautifully. We bought a box of 100 flowering bulbs, which we planted before Winter. Now we’re getting lots of surprises.
    Love your daughter’s choice of reading material.

    Reply
    • I’m hoping my daffodils do well again this year. It’s hard to tell what’s going to come back with the brutal cold we had this year. I’m always a big fan of bulbs just because of their surprise factor.

      Reply

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