Independence Days: The Blooming Trees Edition

Apricots blossoms against a glamorous background of suburbia.

It’s officially spring. Trees are having shameless, lusty sex in my air. I’m a huge supporter of lust, but tree-sex makes me sneeze and wheeze.  Still, it’s an exciting thing. When my asthma inhaler and I are getting better acquainted, I know spring truly is “in the air”. So, I’m short of breath occasionally; it’s so worth it.

Especially when the naughty trees include my fruit trees. I have only two, an apricot and an extra-dwarf peach. They’re only a few years old. This spring, in fact, marks the apricot’s first blossoming. I’m hoping that we’ll get fruit on both trees this summer, and more to the point, that we’ll be able to harvest said fruit. Last year we got one peach–normal for a baby tree–and something ATE it.

This past weekend I was at the New England Chapter RWA Conference–I still owe an update on that! I came back fired up, and since then I’ve been writing new words, dealing with edits, doing marketing for my next release (Thrill-Kinky) on May 12 and generally being immersed in the author side of life. Not a lot of gardening has been done, and a lot of what has happened has been things like moving seedlings outside and in to harden off, pulling weeds, filling in the asparagus trenches, and trying to plan the next thing. But I do have a bit of a garden update for you.

Plant something: More lettuce and arugula

Harvest something: Mesclun, chives, dandelion greens, arugula, purple mustard, pea shoots. The last three were due to thinning seedlings, but they were big enough to eat so they count.

Preserve something: Nothing lately.

Waste not: We made a point of using up some older frozen beef before it got freezer burned. Otherwise, it’s composting and remembering to eat leftovers as usual.

Want not: Nothing new and different

Eat the food: Eating freezer fare and canned foods regularly. Baking bread again.

Build community food systems: Nothing, though we plan on getting to the farmer’s market this weekend.

Skill up: Nothing new. Mea culpa. I’ve been dealing with the writerly side of life, which is good hasn’t left me much time for being the homesteader.