Spring, Seeds, and Shots

We’ve had rain instead of snow this week and all the snow is gone except for a little in the woods. It was quite mild much of the week but got a bit colder yesterday.  We enjoyed several sunny days.  Most years, we get a lot of sun in the winter – one of the first things I noticed when I moved to Boston from Chicago many decades ago.  But not this winter.  We’ve had a lid on.  Cloudy oftener than usual and more than I enjoy this time of year when the sun is so desirable.

We had two different plumbing problems this week. We have a great plumber and  he came quickly both times and fixed both problems, including putting in a new hot water heater.  We’re going to have to find someone to work on the upstairs bathroom floor as soon as we both get our second Covid shots and it’ll be safer to have workmen in the house for longer than a couple of hours.  This will be a big job. Woody will begin looking for someone who can do it.

My poetry group met this Wednesday evening – via ZOOM, of course. It was as always helpful for me and I hope for the other poets in the group.  It’s getting harder to find zines to send my poems to, as so many are charging for submissions via Submittable.  I will never pay anyone to read my work, so all those zines I used to subscribe to that use Submittable are gone for me.  Since I write poems every week, one to three usually, I cannot afford paying.  I am making so much less with readings than I did before ZOOM readings.  I’m doing plenty but each reading pays about 1/3 to 1/4 what I got for live readings in the BC days – Before Covid.

I started the first seeds in the storeroom Thursday.  It has a long sink from the days of my second husband and his photography.  That sink works well for seed starting. I began two kinds of broccoli, two kinds of red cabbage, curly and Italian flat parsley, bok choi, salad bowl lettuce [it’s not as good lettuce as the six kinds I start from direct seeding but it is amenable to starting in peat pots and makes early], cilantro and orange calendula.  When they sprout, all of this batch will go upstairs into the bay window for a few days and then out to the greenhouse.  Woody uses the greenhouse as a shed in the winter, so while I started seeds, he cleaned it out and checked the heating pads and the little heater.

I’ve never had so much trouble getting seeds as this year.  i couldn’t find a 2nd type of broccoli until Woody found a packet at Agway. Everybody was sold out of broccoli. I try to stagger the harvest by growing an earlier and a later type, preferably with side shoots to extend the season --- we both love broccoli.  I have tried eight places and got exactly one package.  Some flower seeds have also been difficult to find.  Woody built me three narrow raised beds along the east side of the main garden, across the path from my herb garden. I want to attract pollinators, bees, butterflies, hummingbirds—especially bees and butterflies.  I used to have extensive flower gardens but I can’t kneel with my titanium knees.  So all those wonderful ornamentals are gone – except for some day lilies that have essentially gone wild, which is fine with me. We find we have not been attracting enough pollinators, thus the new flower beds I can handle because they’re raised. They’re narrower than the vegetable raised beds, because we had to keep a path between the new beds and the herb garden.