It seems the 6th
season is the charm. This marks my 6th
spring here and I think I finally know what to expect. First, and always most shockingly, is that
“spring” really begins in February. By
Valentines Day, a number of garden chores MUST be done. Pruning for instance. Prune your roses, prune your Esperanza’s, be
done pruning the oaks or you risk the dreaded Oak wilt.
If you want to plant new
things; bushes or trees, better do it now so their roots have a chance to grow
before the heat arrives, as early as April. Actually, it comes even sooner than
that for it can be 80 in almost any month in Texas, it just isn’t constantly
that temperature.
In March you ought to attempt
to get tomatoes in. There is a risk in
this though, it may get cold, and curtains for them, but I have found to wait,
is to have it get too hot in June and curtains for them again. This year I am
trying for March, praying that they do, as the tag says, come to fruition in
60-75 days because on the 76th day I hope to be headed North.
I have had little luck so
far, for that matter, last years “harvest” fit in the palm of my hand, 3 cherry
tomatoes! Not exactly making the cover of
any Burpee catalogue! I have raccoons
who must favor fried green tomatoes for they eat them well before the time to
pick, plus the mockingbirds just like to peck at things and then say, “Yuck, not ready yet”. They did that with peaches one year. Every
green peach pecked, followed by a “yuck”, and then, left to fester.
March is the time to get out
there with a hoe and huge leaf bags for every weed that boasts a thousand
stickers each will be coming up as though fed by atomic fertilizer! They made Tuck’s life a misery, coating his
fur and then making their transfer to our rug, to our clothes to
everything! With Dakota, my rescue
Brittany, I will try having her clipped and see if that lessens the cling-ons:
Burr clover, Hedge parsley, Malta thistle, Velcro plant, they cover the
landscape and, like so many other things, must be dealt with in March. 
The icing on the “break-you-back-cake”
is that March is when all the live oak trees, of which we have a large number,
drop their leaves with a vengeance over about a 2-week period. Annoying that they didn’t get the memo that
leaves were meant to fall in the Fall
when other gardening tasks are done. So add endless raking to your March list.
But, thank you God, the
weather is beautiful, most days it’s in the 60’s and 70’s so I leave the indoor
chores and head outside happily. For
that matter, this needs to end here for in an hour I will be hosting some
neighboring dogs to come and romp while I prune trees and pull weeds. It is
Spring Break this week so some volunteering tasks are on hold. Only some, consequently if you note that spring is light on blogging
that is because there are only so many hours in a day. And we just lost one!
When time permits, I must
write of getting a better sense for who is flying over when. Hawks are migrating and spring is the times
to gather the puffs of feathers for my simulated crime scenes as bird eating
hawks have our house on their fast food list.
Flocks of cedar waxwings visit the many Ash junipers in the yard, and
robins do their best to ferret out worms, which are not exactly abundant
here. But again, that’s another blog for
another day. Need to unbury the deck
from the latest leaf dump before people and their dogs arrive.
So, to you Northern friends
who might be shoveling out and envying me my lack of winter, think again, there
is more than one way to break a back!
