January 23, 2020
I keep hauling my garden trimmings down to the creek instead of burning them. It's much easier to trudge through the mud with the cart than try to burn wet sticks in the rain. I'm a pro active burner and put more calories into a burn pile than I get btu's out of it. I get so hot that I start taking off my outer layers of clothing and then start getting wet. It's much better for the environment to let the sticks decompose naturally than to release all the carbon back into the atmosphere at once..
We all should stop burning to see if the earth can recover from the warming cycle that has been set in motion that feeds itself. The melting of the permafrost is the latest of doomsday scenarios that I've become aware of. It sounds ominously irrevocable..
January 24, 2020
The garden is awfully peaceful this time of year. The plants are dormant and the insects are gone. We don't realize how much the bugs contribute to our gardening pleasure until they're absent for awhile. Their constant movement registers on an unconscious level, and often, like pinpricks in the fabric of time, they interrupt our awareness of the moment. We share life with them, and sometimes companionship, because we are together in this time..
I saw a swarm of gnats that hovered over the same spot, but each one kept flying up and down. We suspect it's a mating ritual but I find it difficult to believe that they should be wasting so much energy to choose a mate. Hey, it's not like they are going to mate for life. It's a one night stand..
January 25, 2020
I found little piles of alfalfa hay stems scattered across the pathway in front of where I used it to mulch. The night crawlers try to take it below ground and fail, leaving mounds of hay sticking up, like hairs on a wart. It looks like they come up at night, slither over to the mulch, and drag back piece after piece, but I'm pretty sure they are just gathering up what blows across the path..
The fact that they have been busy doing this while the paths on the other side of the garden have been waterlogged, makes me realize that this is where spring peas should be planted. I've had to trench in front of my pea trellis every year to get the water to drain away, but where the night crawlers have been working the ground is well drained..
