Planning & Pruning

How to spend a muddy spring break

The First Snow of the Season

(Spring, that is)

Ok, so that was a little dramatic. The snow melted pretty quickly.

The kids’ Spring Break is this week, and I took time off work to catch up on my YouTube watch list do the Spring cleaning and get some seeds started. As a certifiable introvert and pandemic-confirmed homebody, these staycations are my favorite. I get to sleep in, spend leisure time with family, and vastly overestimate the tasks I could get done in 1 week. There’s sleet and ice today, but yesterday’s sun had a bit of warmth in it so I took a little turn about the yard to check for signs of spring.

…which was slightly more refreshing than a turn about the room. (Pride & Prejudice 1995 film)

This is what I found:

Tulips popping up:

Purple deadnettle, which will soon be all over the yard:

Called red deadnettle in the U.K. Looks very similar to horehound, but has different medicinal uses.

Thankfully, no buds yet on the fruit trees, so we’re still able to prune and do some cloning:

Crooked peach tree that we bought last year on seasonal clearance.

I was hopeful that these were potato plants, but on closer inspection they’re likely just basil-imitating weeds:

Will continue to observe. My plant ID apps are stumped.

Potted thyme that survived outdoors all winter:

Plotting the Garden

This is the main backyard garden plot:

A wee bit of flooding in a couple areas.

And this is the first rough draft for this year’s garden layout:

Not shown: succession planting & flowers all through the garden

We’ll hold off on tidying the garden and raking the yard, since there are insects and other critters currently dependent on the dead leaves & debris for shelter yet over the next month. The next goal will be seed sorting and indoor planting. We use a grow light and heat pad set-up in the basement, so the other spring break task is decluttering part of the basement to make room for seedlings.

Thanks for reading, friends! I figured I’d keep this post short to balance out the length of the last one. How is your Spring so far? Do you travel or take time off? Do you do spring cleaning or decluttering? Have you got seedlings popping up? Let me know in the comments or by responding to this email. As always, I’d love to hear from you!

—Erin, in Michigan