False Spring

Feb 26, 2025

lamb

I am so glad to see the start of slightly longer days. Our sheep are back, crocuses are popping their little purple heads up, and some of the fruit trees have started to get a little green again. This morning we woke up very early so that db could drive to town and run some errands, both of us in that half asleep pre sunrise state, muttering the odd phrase and murmuring in agreement. We were most of the way awake, and almost considering getting up, when a little lamb went ‘baaaa!’ and skipped down the field. Absolutely magic.

Like most mornings, db made me a coffee. This is one of my favourite things that happens in a given day, it’s like a little mood buff: Coffee made by beloved! +5 focus! +10 loved! +3 cozy! I snuggled in bed with my coffee, listening to the birds and watching the lambs, waiting for the sun to rise. My Nana told me a story about twenty years ago about how she used to have to drive 30 miles to get to work, and back. As you can imagine she had to get up very early. But she said she would sit in bed at 5:30, and give herself a few minutes to just lie there and listen to the birds. I didn’t really get it at the time so it’s funny to think that two decades later, here I am emulating her, likely around the same age she would have been at the time.

We have had a few sunny spells recently with a little rain dotted in between them, and this is enough to convince me I cannot put off starting seeds any longer. We are a little lower on space than usual due to the collapsed polytunnel and both mini greenhouse covers blowing away in the storm, but I managed to find most of the shelves from the mini greenhouse, and during an errand day last week, I found a plastic growbag cover heavily reduced in a budget shop.

I planted around 200 sugarsnap peas, three trays of basic daily vegetables (broccoli, cauliflower, beets) and three trays of our flowers. I do some seasonal work as a florist, and was hoping to learn a lot more about ethically and sustainably growing flowers this year, since I focused everything on food last year. Most of the commercial flowers here are transported from Holland, which is far enough away that I’d like an alternative when gifting flowers to loved ones.

Along with beautiful ornamental flowers: sweet pea, stock, phlox, I also started all the complementary flowers: nasturtium, alyssum, marigold, yarrow. As a rule I don’t like red, and rolled my eyes at starting nasturtium and marigolds last year, hunting for yellow, orange, purple and every variety other than red, but something has shifted where I now associate the red of marigolds and nasturtia with healthy soil and happy vegetables. Db’s favourite last year was the Naughty Marietta Marigold, they reminded him of little lions. They quickly became my favourite too, so much so that I made a few of them into last minute boutonnières for a friend’s elopement party.

Like many other gardeners and organic farmers, I am growing concerned about the lack of pollinators. There was a noticeably lower number of them last year along with a handful of other issues. During the summer we found all of our white cauliflowers (but interestingly not our romanesco cauliflowers) had been ravaged by caterpillars. We couldn’t even be annoyed, we were just relieved to see them. In the future I think we would like to keep bees, but I have also been trying to research how to keep (and release) native butterflies.

Finally we had a date at our local garden centre at the weekend, and bought a number of new fruit frees, bushes and flowers. I am feeling very ready to start this year of growing, and hope to make at least as many new mistakes as last year. There is still a lot to do, but planting the first 500 seeds feels like a start.

(aj)