Springtime in Michigan is a busy time.
After another winter that has seemed colder, longer, and windier than the last (despite the warnings of global warming), the temperatures at last rise over the freezing mark, and the people of the Tundra celebrate. The snow melts; the grass greens and things begin to poke their heads out of the dirt. Suddenly the sidewalks in town are lined with market umbrellas, and those swimsuit displays at the mall don’t look so out of place.
This is my time, when I wake from the hibernation of winter and take in the sun. You haven’t seen me anywhere because I’ve been outside in the yard.
April and May are key months of the year for me. Although I live in an urban setting in a house on a city lot, I garden, and spring is my prime time. Grass is uninteresting to me. It’s green and living, sure, but I’m allergic to it and besides, you can’t eat it. If I’m going to spend money on watering, I want something beautiful to look at or something on my dinner plate.
Since moving to this house, I’ve devoted early spring to carving out more and more garden space from backyard grass. This year’s projects include expansion of the Asian garden. There are weeds to pull and bushes to trim. There is the yearly assessment of winter damage. Did the bamboo survive? Did the azalea? There are plants and trees to purchase, some for new space and others as replacements for the ones that didn’t make it. Every year I am amazed at how many bags of mulch and rocks can be hauled in the back of a Prius.
I’ve been stymied by the lack of decent gravel available for my dry garden. Either the pebbles are too big, the sand too fine, or the slag too gray.
Move over, Michelle Obama; I’ve been an urban gardener for years. I’ve inserted fruit trees into my landscape and have a bank of wine grapes. There’s a strawberry and raspberry patch. My vegetable garden includes tomatoes, peppers, squash, and pumpkins. My container gardens house cucumbers, lettuce, and chard along with geraniums and pansies. (Rabbits are fooled. They either haven’t noticed the lettuce or are too short to jump into the pots.) I thought last winter might have felled my herb garden, but it takes more than our ice and snow to kill thyme and oregano, and the lovage appears each year seemingly stronger and larger than the year before.
Spring has been temperate, not too warm. In fact, some days it’s downright chilly, sweatshirt weather. Spring mornings are the perfect time to get down to the dirt and weed.
Article comments