Category Archives: Seasons

2025, Family, Farming Update, Seasons, Uncategorized, Weather

First False Spring?

41 Comments

The weekend Farm Report comes to us from Ben.

I feel like I’ve been really busy the past week. I don’t know why exactly, I don’t know what exactly I’ve been doing, I just feel like I’ve been running from one thing to the next.

However I know spring is coming, I heard a kill deer! And the Sandhill Cranes! And I got out the pot with the chives in it. There’s still some ice on the north side of the house and I saw a small snowbank in a patch of grass, but we’re getting there. As I write this on Friday, they’re predicting thunderstorms for Friday evening. ” They” say, the first frost will be six months after the first thunderstorm. Which gets us into mid-September which, while not ideal, wouldn’t be unheard of either. There was a large halo around the moon Wednesday night. Google says spiritually, some traditions see a lunar halo as a positive omen, indicating a time of good fortune, spiritual alignment, and harmony. Good, let’s run with that one.

I spent Thursday at a meeting on nitrogen management in Southeast Minnesota. A continuing education course of sorts. Focus on the southeast Minnesota region is relevant because of the karst geography and sink holes and how rapidly ground water can enter drinking water. Please know, farmers care a great deal about their farms and the water we are drinking, and our soils as well. Putting on more fertilizer or chemicals than a crop can use is a waste of money. There were a lot of charts, and graphs, and a lot of data presented. If you notice from this picture, commercial fertilizer started being available shortly after World War II and greatly accelerated in the 1960s.

Soybeans came into play in the 1940s.

It’s interesting to think how much of our farm practices are not really that old.

One of the comments made was that we could do a lot better with our fertilizer practices if we could more accurately predict the weather. A lot of fertilizer and nitrogen is applied in the spring as pre-planting or at planting. And yet the following picture shows the plants greatest need for Nitrogen is tasseling through ear development.

While the greatest amount of precipitation and the greatest chance to lose nitrogen happens in the spring.

So why do we apply it in the spring?

Well, that’s kinda just how it works. Corn does need some starter fertilizer to get going from seed. And we do soil testing to know how much nitrogen is already in the soil, and it’s just easiest to do it before anything is planted. I have done some ‘side-dressing’, which is injecting anhydrous nitrogen between the rows when the plant is 18-24” tall, but there’s also more damage to the standing corn when turning at the ends, or not driving straight. And some guys, with the right equipment, can apply liquid nitrogen when the plant is 6’ tall just before it tassels, but that takes tall sprayers, and again, there is crop loss. In my small fields, I’d damage so much turning around on the ends that it would defeat any gains.

 I’m greatly simplifying a lot of this, it’s too much to get into here, but it was all really very interesting.

And much of the data presented yesterday really didn’t show much difference between spring applications and later applications. We just have to know that we are going to have less available for the crop. It was also noted, we see so many new products claiming to save money and time. But if the cost of the new ideas ultimately don’t create much of an improved crop yield, ($$$), then they fall out of favor.

The bathroom! Here is a before photo-

And finally, minus the shower glass yet, the after photo-

It looks really nice. It IS really nice. Kelly has already enjoyed the bathtub several times. I really like the rich color of the cabinets in the laundry room.

The heated floor is nice.

It was hard finding room for towel bars and grab bars, and we probably gave up some storage that we hope we don’t come to regret. But it sure is an improvement.

We had a bidet in the old bathroom, one of those simple ones from Costco that you simply add to the toilet seat. This time around, we ordered an actual bidet seat. It’s quite the deal. Or at least so I’m told. I haven’t used it yet. I haven’t used that function yet.
When you approach the toilet, the lid opens on its own and a nightlight comes on. For us gentlemen, there’s even a light inside, I guess so we can tell what we’re aiming at. Our contractor said he’d seen a lot of toilets, but he didn’t think he’d seen one that fancy before. Lest you think otherwise, it is not gold plated.

Later this summer we’ll start on the downstairs pink bathroom remodel. I do not expect a bidet in that one.

WHAT WOULD YOU ADD TO YOUR BATHROOM? WHAT HAVE YOU SEEN AT NIGHT LATELY?

2025, Automotive, Mysteries, Seasons

Redundancies

30 Comments

The first car that I owned was a 1968 Datsun 510.  I bought it used when I lived in Northfield – in 1977 – for a whooping $400.  It had some rust but ran pretty well.  The owner wouldn’t sell it to me until we test drove it; I don’t think he believed I could drive a stick. 

Back then inexpensive cars didn’t do anything special for you.  No pings to tell you that you haven’t turned off the lights, no messages that your oil life is down to 15%, no back-up cameras, no seat warmers, and certainly no notifications that your tire air pressure is getting low.

Even though my current car is 11 years old, I bought it new from a dealership so I can still take it in when the air pressure light goes on, usually after the first cold snap of each fall/winter. They check the tires and fill any that are low.  No charge for this.  A couple of years ago, a new warning blinked at me, on a cold cold morning in January – a TPMS warning.  I looked it up in the manual and online – Tire Pressure Monitoring System.  Didn’t I already have that?

When I had the car’s check-up in April (right before I drove to Indy for the eclipse), I asked the mechanics to look at it – they said they took care of it.  Unfortunately, when the got cold in December, the light came back on.  I ignored it for a couple of weeks, it warmed up and the light turned off.  When I had the oil changed in January, I asked them to look at it again.  Turns out there are FOUR of these sensors and they not only go wonky fairly often but they run on batteries, so eventually the batteries run down.  They had fixed one of these sensors in April, but now there were two more sensors acting up.  The reality is that they are actually a built-in redundancy, a back-up to the main system, which works just fine.  If the light was bothering me, I could cough up $120 each to have them adjusted and get new batteries for them.  If I wait until the next time I need new tires, it will be a lot less.  So, since the warning isn’t even accurate, I decided to ignore it.  Then when it warmed up… the light went off again.  Sigh. 

Hopefully it won’t come on again until it gets really cold again.

Do you have any “back-ups”, just in case…….

2025, Business, gardening, Seasons, Uncategorized

Hunkered Down for Winter

26 Comments

Bachmans is a fixture in my life.  In addition to the many times I stop by in the spring, summer and fall, it’s also located on my main conduit for when I am out and about.  I go by it five or six times a week.  Last week was the first time I’ve visited the shop in January.

Two things took me there.  I’ve written about the hot sauce bird seed cylinders that I discovered – it turns out they have them at Bachmans.  Also, if you go to visit your mother and forget that you need to mail your Bachmans bill before the trip, you can stop by the store and they will process the payment for you on the spot.  Saves a stamp as well!

I got there right at 10, when they were opening and the gal unlocking the door said she would let me in but that I would need to leave using the gift shop/Patrick’s Bakery door.  As soon as I stepped inside, I saw why.  What I consider the main part of the store was absolutely empty.  No bulbs, no seasonal anything, no shepherd’s hooks, no fertilizers, no merch on the endcaps, nothing.  And looking out the sliding doors towards the back were row after row of empty tables and shelves.  It was the eeriest feeling.

The gal at Customer Service told me they do this every winter; they start to ramp back up towards the end of February.  That’s when people start thinking about seeds and getting started indoors for the eventual return of warm weather. The gift shop is open through the winter – if you need something for Valentine’s (including cut flower bouquets), Bachmans is ready for you.

Luckily the bird seed section on the far wall towards the back is still available.  It’s nice to know I won’t have to drive to St. Paul if I need another hot sauce cylinder before spring!

Do you have any seasonal shops?

2025, animals, Business, Family, Farming Update, Seasons, Uncategorized, Weather

Free Hat!

38 Comments

The weekend Farm Report comes to us from Ben.

I took a couple days off work at the end of the week with the warmer temperatures to finish a couple of outside things in the machine shed. Replaced a tire on one of the trailers and finished the last corner of the shop wall, with the exception of the last piece of steel that the electrician told me to hold off installing until they run conduit.

On Wednesday I went to Meyer’s Seed in Potsdam and ordered seed for this year.Trying a different variety of oats called Rushmore. Oat seed is $16 a bushel, and I got a bit of a discount for ordering early. I ordered 80 bags. Retail price on a bag of corn seed is $360. Again there was several discounts so I am not paying nearly that much, and thankfully I only needed 20 bags. Soybean seed, depending on whether it’s treated or not, is somewhere between $50 and $60 per bag. 

I don’t need to get into all the different weights of the seed bags, and seeding rates, I’ve talked about that every year. When I left Meyers, I turned left on 70th Ave. and took that gravel road for 10 miles straight south until I came to County Road nine, took a right there which brought me right to the college. We had a commencement planning meeting. Couple of months the school year will be over and we’ll be dealing with commencement. Five miles down that 10 mile road, I parked in the middle of an intersection to take these photos. Probably could’ve parked there for an hour and not bothered anybody.

I got a free hat when I ordered seed! 

Although with these cold temperatures I think he’s gonna want the stocking cap back.

About 10 years ago we bought a new washer and dryer. It has an automatic soap dispenser, so every couple of months we fill the reservoir with soap and don’t have to think about it. A few years ago when my mom was still in independent living, we were doing laundry for her and at one point in time one of my siblings made some comment about the detergent and if the rest of us were using the liquid or the powder. Gee, I kind of forgot about detergent, I hadn’t been adding any. I remembered that story this week as I did two loads of laundry at our neighbors house while they’re on vacation and our laundry room is still torn up. Kelly came with me as I swapped the second load from the washer to the dryer and I showed her the detergent I was using. She pointed out it was fabric softener. Well, now that you mention it, it was blue. It sure did smell nice. What I noticed was a big jug on top of the washing machine with a little cup and spout just like the red detergent container has. Once again, the best of intentions tripped up by my lack of attention to details.
Remodeling update: On Friday, the guys started installing sheetrock. The electricians spent three days here, we got three new fans, code requires hardwired smoke detectors in all the bedrooms now, (not just in the hallway outside) so got four new ones to replace two battery ones we had. We also had them run two Cat 6 ethernet lines from the utility room to the TV and office. And a coax (antenna cable), to the TV. That way I can replace the line that’s been running over the roof, down the front of the house, and in our front window for 40 years. Kelly is almost as excited about getting rid of that wire as she is about the new bathtub. 
I’ve been watching some guys working on a cell phone tower along our driveway the last few days. 

I sure hope they finish before it gets any colder.  

IF YOU WERE GOING TO WORK OUTSIDE, IN THE WINTER, AT THIS HEIGHT, WHAT WOULD YOU NEED TO GET FOR FREE? 

2025, Art, Mysteries, Seasons

Winter Lights

26 Comments

Normally I don’t consider myself dull or boring but every now and then I wonder.

  • Midsommer Murders – I’ve seen every episode repeatedly – but every afternoon if I am at home and have the television on, that’s what I settle on.
  • State Fair. I’m not suggesting that the State Fair is boring but seriously, five or six trips every year?  Clearly the repetitiveness has to be a bit of the appeal.
  • A Christmas Carol. Read it every year and watch various versions repeatedly throughout the holiday season.
  • Death on the Nile. Two versions that I like… I don’t want to even guess how many times I’ve watched one or the other of them.  Ditto for Murder on the Orient Express (although only one acceptable version of this).

I joined the Arboretum four years ago during Pandemic – it was one place where it was easy to spend time without worrying about social distancing as well as being comforting.  Since then I have gone often, including every year for the Winter Lights display.  I love walking through the Arb when it’s brisk and chilly, seeing the lovely lights in shapes of flowers, snowflakes, butterflies.  YA won’t come every year because the displays don’t change much.

This year, I ended up parking in the last parking lot near what I’ve always thought of as the “end” of the light tour, several little houses, all lit up and that are a magnet for kids of all ages.  For some reason I decided that instead of heading up to the main building I would do the little houses first and then do the lights backwards.  There were hundreds of visitors at the Arb that night and I was absolutely the only one going in that direction.  A couple of times it was a little funny as I had to step aside on a path to let a glut of people pass in the opposite way.

It was a fun experience and I may do it backwards again next year… since I’m sure I’ll go again.

What’s something you can do/see over and over again?

2025, Automotive, Family, Farming Update, Seasons

NOVUS INITIUM

82 Comments

A NEW OR FRESH BEGINNING

The weekend farm report comes to us from Ben.

Asking Google for a Latin translation for a “new beginning” turned into more questions than answers, so it’s something like the title. Or maybe not. One of you will have a better idea. I just didn’t want to give this a tired or cliched heading. I thought of PT Barnum and “This way to the Egress!” but Ingress wasn’t what I wanted. 

I went around on Wednesday morning and recorded the mileage and hours on the cars, truck, tractors, gator, lawn mower, and the pump on the diesel barrel. 

Everything was pretty average. Kelly drives a lot less miles now that she’s working at home of course. We spent 34 hours cutting grass. 140 hours between the two tractors, slightly less than normal for me. No snow to move last winter, and less weeds mowed last summer. I moved 488 dozen eggs, which is pretty impressive. That’s 5856 eggs! Jeepers! Well done girls. Other than December when I got maybe 5 dozen, they were over 40 dozen / month with May being the highest at 63 dozen. 

We are starting 2025 with the bathroom and laundry room remodeling project. Our contractor, Joe, called on Tuesday afternoon and said he could start Thursday if we wanted. Well, with my family Christmas at our house on Saturday, January 4th, and already having the theme of “A YMCA Construction Christmas! Dress as your favorite Village Person”, we figured ‘why not!’ and also, then we don’t need to clean so much. I’ll put a sign on the front door: “Pardon our mess”. 

We spent New Years Day cleaning out the laundry room and bathroom, taking pictures off the walls, and doing laundry. We delivered several boxes to Goodwill, and created a couple bags of trash, and it felt good to purge.

Everything is in disarray and is going to be a pain in the butt for a couple of weeks. They have been starting in the mornings before daughter is awake. We’ve warned them she’ll probably come out and yell at them and slam her door at least a few times. Sure hope it’s worth it. Kelly has been planning this for about a year and she’s still going through the catalogs and watching home remodeling shows. Pretty soon it will be too late to change her mind. SO MANY DETAILS! Tile, finish, walls, flooring, knobs, door styles, lights, hooks, towel racks, shower door, should this be here or here, oh my goodness. It makes my head spin. She’s enjoying herself.  

My 2024 To do list: It’s fun to put it in Excel just to count it up. I had 212 listed items. And some were pretty mundane, such as ‘haul in garbage’ or ‘cut the grass’, but that’s what I needed to do that week, and it’s always satisfying to cross something off. There were 58 items I carried over to 2025. Like having the septic tank emptied (carried over from 2023) and shingling the feed room. Plus, a few more shop things. My big project for 2025 is to build a lean-too off the back of the shed to make up for what I’ve lost in storage space inside with the shop project. I’d love more concrete inside the shed, but I need to pay down what I’ve spent the last two years. 

 Honestly, I think the best thing we did was add the hot and cold faucets in the garage. That is just so handy. The point was to be able to wash the dogs, which we’ve only done about once, but filling their water buckets just makes that Worth it. And all the buckthorn that Kelly cleaned out the last two summers! That makes me happy every day! The view that it has brought back, both from the road above, and from below looking up. Even the neighbors commented on that. So many of the things on the list was just work that had to be done. Kelly and I were talking one day about so much of the last 30 years we can’t even remember. As the phrase goes, ‘Life is F-ing Relentless’. it’s so hard to remember every-day special moments because you’re so busy just existing. Milk the cows, go to work, do chores, feed the kids, repeat. It’s hard to remember all the little day to day stuff.

WHAT’S YOUR FAVORITE LATIN PHRASE?

2024, holidays, Seasons, Travel, Uncategorized, Weather

Halfway Weather

27 Comments

I hope that as this post is read, I am on the road to Brookings, SD. We have had days of “halfway weather” lately, a phrase I coined to mean weather that is nasty, but not nasty enough to make you stay home.

Last week there was an ice storm that closed the interstate 20 miles west of here after 27 semis couldn’t make it up the hills. There was freezing drizzle predicted northwest and north central here yesterday, and by Sunday afternoon there was no travel advised on the the roads to the north of us. The two counties just east of us that we need to drive through today were also expecting a “wintery mix” last night. We may slip and slide to Bismarck, but after that we should be ok all the way to Brookings. Driving on icy roads are my worst nightmare. Being the anxious person that I am, I also have been obsessively looking at the long range forecasts for next Sunday, when we are slated to drive home. Like my mother, I worry about the weather and many other things that are totally out of my control. I don’t imagine I am going to stop any time soon, though. Old habits die hard.

What bad habits would you like to stop? What bad habit did you stop, and how did you do it ? Ever slid into the ditch?

2024, animals, Family, Farming Update, Nature, Seasons, Uncategorized

Winter Chores

33 Comments

Today’s Farming Update comes from Ben.

Only getting about three to five eggs a day lately. Not sure what’s up with that. Might be because I ordered roosters this spring, I’m not sure.
I’ve got the chickens heated water bucket going, I’ve got the tank heater going down by the barn, and I’ve got the heat running in the shop, the wellhouse heater is on for the really cold nights, plus a heat lamp over a water bucket for Bailey. And I plugged a tractor in. This time of the year I go out and do chicken chores before I go to work, rather than doing them in the afternoon when I come home. I give the chickens fresh water, (I don’t know how many chickens we have these days. Maybe 40 or 50 and they drink about two gallons a day). I throw out a bucket of corn in the morning. If I throw it out in the afternoon or evening, the deer eat it overnight before the chickens ever get to it. Coming down our driveway at dusk, there are deer all over! One night when it was fairly pleasant out, I bet I counted 35 deer in different spots- and that’s all in a mile just on our property! And most of those are does. Stupid deer.

 
A lot of years, the weekend after Thanksgiving, Kelly and I put up the snow fence. This year the weather wasn’t conducive to that so our plan is to do it this weekend as it’s supposed to be in the 40s. It will be complicated a little bit by the tall grass in there, because my cow people never ran their cattle in this pasture and I didn’t have the brush mower. I tried mowing it down with the lawnmower, but the grass was just too tall and thick. The brush mower has been repaired now and I’ll pick it up next week. They fixed a lot of extra cracks and honestly it should be better than new. It wasn’t cheap, but it cost less than a new mower.

I’ve started filling our birdfeeders again: an ear of corn, a suet block, a log with the holes drilled in it for the suet pegs, and then one feeder for sunflower seeds, and one feeder for a mix. In the fall after combining, and while I’m chisel plowing, I will pick up ears of corn that I see in the fields and bring them home and put in a bucket and that’s what I use for the birds. This fall as I was picking up corn I was thinking to myself that I thought there was a place on the tractor to I put these 20 or 30 ears so they weren’t rolling around in the cab with me. And then I remembered, under one of the steps there’s a little storage area and when I opened it up, it was full of cobs from last year. Mice had gotten into it and eaten all the kernels. I chuckled to myself as I sort of remember thinking last year to remember to go get that corn, which evidently I never did. This year they were probably in the tractor a week before I remembered  to go get them, and was surprised to discover the mice had already found them and cleaned off a couple ears.

My summer Padawan came out the other night with a friend of his and they wanted to work on a car in the shop.

I told him they couldn’t get into the heated part yet, but they could use the other part of the shed. And it was gonna be cold in there. He was fine with that and said it wouldn’t be a problem. It was Wednesday night when it was 8° out and the wind blowing like crazy. The thermometer in the shed said 20 degrees and here he is in shorts, because that young man does not own a pair of pants. He picked up a different car recently and he’s fixing it up by adding things I don’t understand, but things to improve the performance: custom air filters, something called an air dump, performance spark plugs, and he’s got a chip coming for it to boost engine performance. It’s a pretty slick looking car in the first place (a Kia something) I have to admit, and he is learning a lot, and this is keeping him out of trouble. He certainly had more willpower and stamina than I did at 18, I don’t think I would’ve worked in a 20° shop in shorts. For three hours.  I offered him sweatpants but he wouldn’t take them. He did ask for gloves once, but I didn’t have any that fit, and I gave him some of the nitril work gloves that I wear, and they keep your hands very warm, but the next time I went out he didn’t have those on either. He said they had gotten in the way. I offered help as needed, and I helped them find the right tools, and really, he was focused and determined. His buddy didn’t quite know what they would be doing that night. He thought they were just gonna hang out and at the last minute Padawan said ‘I know a guy with a shed, let’s go work on the car.’  They’d come into the shop area to warm up as needed, and by 10:15 PM they had the car running again and they headed for home.  And again, more power to them I guess. The second kid was a very nice young man. He and his family had lived in the UAE for a couple years because his mom was working over there. He builds computers for people. It was fun talking to him. The next night, Padawan and my other summer helper came out. One still in shorts, and the other without a jacket. But he had just left it somewhere and gladly accepted my jacket. Padawan was back the third night IN SWEATPANTS!

I’m making progress on the shop. Just a couple pieces of steel yet in a corner of the inside, and all the steel on the outside wall. But that will go quick.

PHOTO

Just got AC installed, mostly to help with humidity in the summer. It’s not a ‘Man-cave’ I keep telling Kelly!

PHOTO

This was a used unit I brought home from one of the theaters and I didn’t want it sitting open all winter.

Kelly, daughter, and I saw ‘Les Mis’ at the Orpheum last week and that was as good as I remembered.

Next week is ‘Book of Mormon’, but we decided daughter didn’t need to see that one. Too many things I didn’t want to explain yet.

WHAT’S IN YOUR SHE SHED / MAN CAVE? 

ARE  YOU BIRD OR A BEE?

2024, Farming Update, gardening, Nature, Seasons, Uncategorized

TELL THEM WHAT THEY’VE WON, DON!

58 Comments

The weekend Farm Report comes to us from Ben.

This blog was going to be all about the practice burn the fire department did at our old Haverhill Townhall. But then I looked at the weather forecast and my farming priorities changed. Talking snow in the 10 day and some cooler temps and I rearranged things. I’m still not sure if it’s snow to stay, but I decided I better get some outdoor things done and suddenly the blog turns into all this other stuff.

When I’m working in the machine shed, because we already have spotty cell phone service down in the valley, and then inside a metal building, I can’t get cell phone or Wi-Fi in there. 30 years ago it was a big deal when I ran a phone line out to the machine shed. I could call John Deere right from the shop while I was working on something and that was a big ass deal. It wasn’t long after we all had cell phones and the wall phone became irrelevant but still, I thought having a phone in the shop made me pretty hot stuff.  It’s along those lines that I need to have, well I feel like I need to have, well I WANT internet out there. It’s not like I’m installing a TV and turning it into a man cave, but texting is a major line of communication for us and I’m always looking up something or other, so it’s a need more than a want. Therefore I am installing a Wi-Fi bridge to send the Internet from the house wirelessly over to the machine shed. A cable from our basement modem through the garage  and to a device on the side of the garage, and another device at the peak of the machine shed and a cable that will plug into a router in there. It’s good that I have friends that know this stuff and could point me in the right direction, and it’s good to have YouTube to show you how to do it. The one on the garage is done and working and Wednesday morning I was mounting the one on the machine shed when I got a phone call that my second garage door would be installed the next day. Well crap, I thought that was coming next week and while I’m mostly ready for it, I wasn’t completely ready. So I spent two hours putting a couple supports in place and getting flashing installed where the tracks will be. I had to work an event Wednesday evening and then another hour Wednesday night to finish the door up before the gentlemen arrived Thursday morning and installed the door. 

Kelly said it best: “It’s like ‘Let’s Make a Deal!’ Do I want Door #1 or Door #2??” This is called vertical lift garage door. It all came about because I bought a used garage door and opener at an auction for this location. My thought is this will be a good place to park the lawnmowers or the gator or the small tractors while leaving the big door and opening for the big tractor. But then the loft hasn’t materialized and regular garage door tracks would be in the way, which led me to a vertical door. Which also means of course, the door that I bought cheap at auction doesn’t work.  Well heck, it’s only money. 

I’m heading out to chisel some more, want to try and get that done before the temps get too cold and I should be able to finish that before the weekend.

I’ve also had a contractor out to look at moving some dirt and fixing a waterway. A spot that’s always wet in the spring and the last several years the water runs down the edge of the field rather than staying in this grassy area. That area has overgrown with Willow trees and Box Elder and really, to fix it right, we need to tear out about 200 yards of trees. The contractor is hoping to get too that early December.

I think I have this weekend open, so I shall work on picking up hoses and taking off the outdoor faucet, and until they predict a snowfall amount, I’m not gonna worry about picking up the buckets and such for the chickens yet. I suppose I might have to move a water bucket inside if the temps stay cool. I did put the back on the chicken coop this week.

I’ve seen the three ducks flying overhead. I’m not sure where they’re hanging out, but I’m glad they’re still around.

Next week I need to start lighting another show. And it’s a Christmas show of all things. Knowing my love of Christmas music should make me a joy to live with. And then the second week of December I will have holiday concerts at the college. I should start stocking up on alcohol now.

NEXT week I’ll get to the burning of the townhall.

Sneak Peak Photo!

What game show do/did you enjoy watching?

2024, Family, gardening, Mysteries, Nature, Seasons, Uncategorized

Leaf Me Be!

42 Comments

My gardening juju goes away in September.  Gardening in May and June really gets me going but by fall, I’m so done.  I think it’s because the stuff that needs doing in the fall is just clean up – nothing is going to leaf out or flower or even green up due to my work and attention.  And I detest the leaf situation the most.

My house and yard are in the middle of a weird neighborhood vortex; for some reason, even though most of the neighbors have the same number of trees as I do, way more leaves end up in my yard than the others.  I’ve documented this over the years. So so many leaves.  I’m not rabid about cleaning up leaves; I understand about leaving some leaves and plants for pollinators.  However if I don’t clean up some of the leaves, then I end up with masses of wet and sometimes moldy mess in the spring. 

But I hate raking and bagging leaves.  I’ve always hated it.  In high school, I was part of a church group that did chores for seniors and even then, I told everybody I would do any odd job but raking.  Once YA was old enough I bought her a child-sized rake and I co-opted her into helping — some years I even paid her. 

Now at the ripe old age of 29 she has decided that dealing with leaves is something important to her.  She adores our electric lawn mower and she’s been out several times now, mowing, mulching and bagging.  After a session over the weekend, she informed me that she will probably do at least one more pass in the backyard and once more out front. I haven’t asked her even once to do any of this and she hasn’t even hinted at any money crossing her palm.  It’s just amazing.

And don’t worry, believe me when I say all this activity does not denude our yard of leaves.  Plenty left for the pollinators!

Do you have anything you like to do in fall (or NOT like to do) to get ready for winter?