Signs of Life

The spring sun is warm, the bluebirds are singing, and there are signs of life in the gardens. Walk with me.

Forsythia just starting to bloom.

Crocuses are popping up in unexpected places.

Arugula is first out of the gate for our seed starting. This seed is 10 years old! Don’t give up on your brassicas.

Valerian

Salad burnet, an excellent early, perennial green that tastes like cucumbers!

Lovage

Motherwort

Garlic chives. We can’t get enough of these and have planted many more this year.

Volunteer yarrow, growing in difficult ground.

Violets, another great early salad green.

These beautiful daffodils survived dormant under a spruce tree for 20 years. The tree died two years ago, and the daffodils are thriving again!

Willow Propagation

March is here, and so is the first project of the new growing season: willow propagation! The seed shortages of 2020 and 2021 have got us thinking seriously about seed saving and propagation, so we are giving our dying willow tree new life by cutting off some whips and rooting them in water. When the ground thaws, we will plant them in the earth, so we will have willow trees long after our current tree falls down. Although we don't use willow trees in our products, they are a beautiful addition to our wetland landscape, and an important medicinal tree to have around. Our holistic approach to land management includes all of the life on the land, whether or not we harvest it.

This willow tree has been nearing the end of its life for a few years, dropping main branches while putting out new growth in an attempt to propagate itself.

Willow whips growing from the living trunk of the tree. The best whips to propagate from are green growth about the width of a pencil and 10 inches long.

Five whips from last year’s growth.

Whipe trimmed to 10 inches and placed in water to sprout roots. Willow contains naturally high amounts of rooting hormone, so it will readily root itself in water (or damp soil outside if the ground is thawed).

Stay home, but break the rules.

I’m eating a lot of cookies these days, and that’s okay. They are good for the soul.

It is essential that we follow the rules that will keep ourselves and our communities alive: stay home, wash hands, practice extreme social distancing. We have been flooded with new rules and new worries — our emotional labor is going through the roof. And we must do it, of course. With very few tools to treat COVID-19, preventing the virus from spreading is where our power lies right now. But it is exhausting. 

And that is why, in these trying times, give yourself permission to the break all of the other rules that govern our lives. Bake more cookies. Make more noise. Run in the house. Eat pie for breakfast. Stay up late. Sleep in late. Watch too much television. Play too many video games. Whatever makes you feel good, whatever relieves a little bit of stress, do it. Our normal lives have too many rules, and if we have any hope of following the ones that will protect us from COVID-19 in the next year, we must be allowed to let the rest of the rules fall away. Do whatever you want, as long as you do it from home.