January Fun

This time of year, I’ve begun to plan the garden. True, the garden area is an icy, snow-covered waste, but before the snow came in December, I was pacing out possible locations for new raised beds. Getting older has not meant a retreat from gardening, just a strategic redeployment. Creaky knees and an aching back started a change from regular ground beds to thirty-inch-tall beds.

The first of these beds was experimental. Just filling them was an experiment. Having the woods behind me and many cut and trimmed branches meant a lasagna method of building the content by layers of materials. Layers of shredded mulched leaves, wood ash from the stove, branches, and soil from the old garden fill each bed. As the contents decompose, they settle, and you add more goodies on top. The oldest beds are now three years old, and the contents are richer in nutrients than the original glaciated New England soil that was initially there. I counted the experiment as a success and am now expanding it.

Weeding has become a pleasurable duty. No more reaching and cursing on your knees. With everything at waist height, it takes a few minutes every morning. Also, mulching keeps the weeds down and aids in conserving water. With regard to water, the organic content of the beds is so high in water-retaining components that I water much less frequently.

“But Lou, It’s January!” You say. This is true, but gardening is year-round. The activities change depending on the season. Right now, I am planning. Planning includes hours spent by the wood stove in the evening looking at brightly illustrated catalogs for seeds and plants. Planning can be fun, but caution is required. Lots of the stuff you dream about at this stage has a zero survival rate in New England. You are on the verge of ordering it when that tiny voice of reason pipes up and says, “…are you crazy?”

Among the things I am ordering are the latest doodads for seed starting. They are tall, clear domes that sit over the seed trays. The tops have grooves for the LED grow lights, so the lights are the correct height for seed development. I had the lights and trays, so all I bought were two of the domes.

This sort of activity, with its emphasis on planning, is all I can do. It gets me through January, my least favorite month, but I have an activity void when February rolls around. The first several weeks are too early for planting and too late for planning. And my late February activities have not kicked in. All I can do is calculate how my wood pile will stretch based on how cold it is and what my stove’s consumption rate is. This is not what I like to do.
A concensus of opinion here in New England would have it that February is more than the pits. It’s hell.

Valentine’s Day is the earliest average date for “sugaring ” in my area, so I get busy preparing my taps, tubing, and containers. Everything needs to be found and sterilized before use. The countdown to spring and bud break begins as soon as I set taps. Winter has largely lost its power over me.

I enjoy all these activities, but there is a mental health aspect to them all. They keep me moving forward during a time of year when it’s all too easy to become bound in stasis and despair. Yes, there is a good bit of contrivance about them. But I learned from some of the best old Yankees that the old saying about idleness being the devil’s playground was not just quaint.
Or, as a Buddhist saying popular in martial arts, dojos says, “It does not matter how slow you go, as long as you do not stop.”

Stay Warm!