Wednesday night we had a freak windstorm blow up for about five minutes. The strong gusts knocked out our power for about seven hours (which always makes us nervous with so many freezers of meat), and we spent an evening by lamplight and flashlight. Puppies didn't appear to notice the outage.
When I went outside today, I noticed the leaves on the redbuds had broken out.
I went out to water my little greenhouse sprouts today. So few of the seeds have taken, and so few that have sprouted are growing well, that I almost despaired of continuing. But one of my jujube seeds had popped this morning. One-hundredth of my seeds is up! Even one is infinitely more than yesterday, and I watered with renewed good hope.
I am doing my best to keep up with the weeds this year. I picked one variety that the sheep won't touch. It's just forming seeds now, so I think I caught it in time. And as I notice Johnson grass poking up, I go and dig until I get all the massive roots out. Will this actually stem the tide? We'll see. (One lecturer, Malcolm Beck, said that the only ways to get rid of Johnson grass are Round-Up or two years of sheep. Neither sounds great to me. For now, I'll dig.)
Phil commented at dinner that he probably needs to start rotating the sheep through the orchard. When I expressed disbelief, he urged me to look at the orchard. Where he had spread compost last fall, the clover has taken off.
I was shocked. The variance between the composted row and the untouched row was as stark as if a knife had cut the clover off (Abraham is standing at the boundary).
A few sections of clover and grass were thigh-high on Phil. Then, a few feet away, the grass would be only inches tall.
Three years ago, what is now the orchard was abandoned land, with wild blackberries, staghorn sumac, and poison ivy. We're pleased to see the riot of clover and grass, amidst flowering fruit trees.
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