{"id":7006,"date":"2013-03-21T13:57:37","date_gmt":"2013-03-21T17:57:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/allandouglas.dougbittinger.com\/blog\/?p=7006"},"modified":"2025-04-21T01:56:40","modified_gmt":"2025-04-21T05:56:40","slug":"first-day-spring","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/first-day-spring\/","title":{"rendered":"First Day of Spring?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Originally published Mar. 21, 2013 by Grit Magazine<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>I arrived at work at 7:30 AM, following a grueling 150 foot commute.\u00a0\u00a0The traffic was terrible.\u00a0\u00a0Normally both dogs march along shoulder to shoulder at the ends of their leashes.\u00a0\u00a0I tell Cochise, \u201cPlay yard,\u201d or \u201cHome\u201d or \u201cMail box\u201d, or (his least favorite) \u201cWork\u201d and he heads off in the right direction.\u00a0\u00a0I tell Blondie, \u201cStay with Cochise\u201d and she obediently strides along beside him wherever he goes.\u00a0\u00a0Normally, but not today.\u00a0\u00a0Today I\u2019d started the pickup truck earlier to warm it up before Marie headed into town and her work. \u00a0Blondie really, really wanted to go for a ride; so when we came down the steps she was intent on going in that direction.\u00a0\u00a0Cochise smelled something fascinating down in the yard and really, really wanted to go that way to check it out.\u00a0\u00a0So they strained in opposite directions, neither one in the direction I needed to go.\u00a0\u00a0We worked it out eventually, but it was a disorganized swirl instead of the usual orderly parade.<\/p>\n

Yesterday was the official first day of spring.\u00a0\u00a0It is cold and foggy this morning.\u00a0\u00a0There is a possibility of snow.\u00a0\u00a0I was wondering what happened, when I remembered something I saw at the Source of All Wisdom (Facebook), \u201cThe first day of spring and the first spring day are not necessarily the same, and can be separated by as much as a month<\/strong>.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0I\u2019m glad now that I didn\u2019t put my potatoes in their garden boxes last weekend, I\u2019ll do that next weekend.\u00a0\u00a0But I had planned on working at opening the garden for summer session this week.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>The winter gardening session was disappointing; it was too wet and cold for much of what I grew.\u00a0 Still, we did get a fair bit of lettuce (until it got crushed by condensation that froze into ice on the inside of the greenhouse) spinach, beet tops, onion greens, garlic greens, carrot tops, as well as the last of the summer\u2019s carrot roots.\u00a0 I got enough Brussels sprouts for one meal \u2013 but that is the best I\u2019ve ever done with these sprouts; normally the looper worms gut the plants and kill them in days.\u00a0 By using a greenhouse vented with window screen I kept the moths away in the fall so the plants had a chance to grow to maturity for once.\u00a0 I had to cover the top vent with plastic after a particularly wet spell practically drowned them out as well.<\/p>\n

The Swiss chard is just now getting any size to it.\u00a0 I\u2019ll get one decent harvest from that when I pull it up to replant the box with something else.<\/p>\n

On the positive side, our local Lowe’s store now carries composted chicken manure.\u00a0 That will help in rejuvenating the soil in my boxes.\u00a0 I used composted cow manure last year with disappointing results.\u00a0 Slowly, very slowly, I\u2019m learning what works.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Originally published Mar. 21, 2013 by Grit Magazine I arrived at work at 7:30 AM, following a grueling 150 foot commute.  The traffic was terrible.  Normally both dogs march along shoulder to shoulder at the ends of their leashes.  I tell Cochise, “Play yard,” or “Home” or “Mail box”, or (his least favorite) “Work” and he heads off … Continue reading “First Day of Spring?”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[59,86,88],"class_list":["post-7006","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life","tag-dogs","tag-gardening","tag-weather"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7006","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7006"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7006\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19232,"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7006\/revisions\/19232"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7006"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7006"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7006"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}