Notes From Zone 4

Another busy day. I finally removed the old pond pump. This entailed cutting it’s cord at both ends and leaving the middle section in the ground. It was buried more than a foot deep in places, under rocks. It wasn’t worth fighting with. If I can fix the pump, I can get it a new

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After striking out at two hardware stores close to us, we made a flying visit to Concord yesterday to go to Home Depot, where a nice guy scratched his head for a while and finally stuck together three pieces to make the adapter we needed for the pump. While we were there, I picked up

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It rained most of the day, but I got out for an hour or so in the middle of the afternoon. The compost pile we turned has sprouted some sort of mushrooms. Meanwhile, the temperature is holding steady at 110. (This was a mostly done pile that Valerie had dumped a bunch of new weeds

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Really just a quick run through the garden with the camera. Lisa’s away, and the blackflies are horrid. I can only go out without a bugsuit between 10 and 2. They’ve also found their way up to the balcony which they usually don’t do. The new pond pump is here. Of course it has a one inch outflow instead of two. And so far two hardware stores don’t have 2 inch black poly crap. The lamer landscapers shop at Home Depot, it seems, as I now have to match the pump output to what Skip put into the pond. So if Hamshaw’s doesn’t have it, it’s a trip to Concord. I know it’s unfashionable to say so, but Home Depot is a pretty darn good store. We continue to have tulips galore. The Queen of Night tulips are blooming, and seem darker in the photos than they are in person, where they have much more of a purple tint.

The stuff we ordered last month from Waterplants online from Colorado finally got here today. Though I’d ordered everything they had for zone 4, they were out of some stuff, so my $160 order turned into $98.25 with shipping. Everything came bare root, but I had some left over pots from previous attempts at water

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The pond is frozen over again, and I pulled the plug on the pump this morning since the flow was getting pretty scanty in the stream. I didn’t slog through the snow to pull the pump, because I really don’t expect the sump to freeze under its blanket of snow, I was just afraid it

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Oh, the weather outside is frightful … I know, I shouldn’t be humming carols, but with a winter storm raging during the first week of April, I have to sing, or I’ll cry. We got six inches or so overnight last night, it spat sleet and freezing rain for most of the morning, then turned

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There seemed to be enough open water to start the pond pump today, so I did. Unfortunately, the water smelled of decay, and as the ice melted I saw two dead frogs. This does not bode well for the fish. Unfortunately we really don’t know what we might have done wrong. Too many dead leaves?

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We could only work out there for a couple of hours in these temps, and with the low stamina that we both have, post-surgery. We’ve waited too long to put the garden to bed, of course. Pulling glads while there is snow on the ground? I haven’t a clue if they’ll come back for me

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We rushed around madly last night but did everything we could think of to prepare for the snow that’s coming. We had to haul the rest of the window boxes off of the decks. There were still many left out there, but at least they’re all now in the house, at least. We covered the

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