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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
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.
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.