Planting Trees & The Longest Winter
“False spring” by Marge Piercy
The other day I flipped to a random page Marge Piercy’s poetry book Stone, Paper, Knife and of course it landed on the poem “False spring.” Now that we’re here on the homestead full time, and have experience a long long winter, this poem hits differently.
It’s April 2nd and we’re finally starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel, or should I say, the sun peek through the blanket of grey clouds. We’re in for some springtime sun on Friday and this porcelain skin of mine couldn’t be more ready. It’s been a long winter. Non-stop cold for about 5 months, which is very unusual for this area. Actually, all of California was hit hard this year, so we’re hopeful that next year won’t be so intense.
Even though the end is near, I still find myself losing my mindfulness and falling into irritability as the drizzling rain continues. The rain is a gift and much needed, but this growing belly of mine (I’m currently 29 weeks along) NEEDS sun dresses and Vitamin D. So soon, so soon, I keep reminding myself.
As winter finally winds down, I think back to what we managed to accomplish a couple months ago. Amidst the rains, freezing temps, and snow, Miles and I managed to squeeze in a couple days of planting our bare root fruit trees. Of course, it was not without obstacles. This was our first time ever planting trees so naturally, we had to adapt along the way as we made decisions.
As I said, we planted these trees during the very few days of sun we got in February, and here are a few of our learnings.
Our soil is very clay heavy, so if it rains, it will surely fill with water… aaand you’ll have to bail it out since it likely won’t drain naturally.
It was a bit ambitious of us to plant 9 trees for our very first time. In hindsight, maybe we would have done just 4 or 5, but hey, we did it!
Planting companion seeds around each fruit tree is more time consuming than you’d think, and there’s no guarantee they’ll germinate. Next time, we would try to plant more seedlings versus direct sowing seeds.
Here is the journey of our trees, we’re praying that they thrive, and from the last photo included (from end of March) it looks like they may just be okay. :)
Perhaps, we did something right!