5 posts tagged “spring”

One thing I've learned to do since moving to northeast Iowa is to really.....really....appreciate spring.  After a hellish winter of brutal cold, endless inches (feet) of snow and wind that'll rip the skin off your face, a 60 degree day seems like a day in paradise. 

Yesterday was amazing.  The sun was shining, just a light breeze and really warm.  Birds were everywhere - most seemed to like the small brush piles in our year and kept busy taking small twigs for their nests.  A few robins waited by the edge of our vegetable garden plot and grabbed at worms and grubs.

About the garden plot - Mark and I decided that it was now or never to get our vegetable garden plot prepared.  Being folks with few garden tools and even less money to buy them, I supervised while Mark dug the sod up from a 12 x 20 foot plot in our backyard.  It took all day but now we have the beginnings of what I hope to be a productive source of healthy food. 

I've made some serious changes in how I shop and what we eat.  I've done this before but this time I feel very committed to making a lifelong change.  I've had several high school classmates die in the last year and it's made me very aware of my age and my health and the need to control what I can to stay healthy. 

I took a look at what we were eating and began to eliminate what wasn't nutritious, like white flour, sugar and chemicals.  I'm trying to limit our intake of starches like white rice, potatoes and pasta and concentrating on cooking lots of fresh vegetables.  Meat has become a side dish and I try to buy only lean meat and fish.  It's a little difficult because our meat department is made up of predominantly pork, but that's what happens in the #1 state for pork production.

I've found that now I rarely shop in the "middle" of the store - the place where the processed food is kept.  No more mac & cheese, Tuna Helper,  Rice-a-Roni", thing I'd cook when I was too lazy to put thought into what I was feeding my family.  My grocery list is full of fruits and vegetables and we're eating fantastic salads.  The best thing that's happened so far is that we're losing weight.  I'm down almost a full size and have lost 12 pounds.  I'm amazed at how easy weight loss has been when I don't "diet" but eat healthy food.  

So, back to spring.  We'll be outside again today, finishing up the veggie garden and digging some new flower beds.  I'm going to get out the Weber and cook some Beer Can Chicken for dinner.  It  should be a good day.

Serves 6.

Chicken sits on a can of beer for 2 hours in this dish from barbecue expert Steven Raichlen. (BBQ University)

1 whole chicken (4 to 5 pounds)

3 tablespoons of dry barbecue rub

1 can (12 ounces) beer, with 6 holes punched in the top of the can

1. Remove the pockets of fat inside the chicken cavity. Rinse and dry the chicken. Sprinkle 1 tablespoon of rub inside the bird, 1 tablespoon rub all over the skin. Use half the remaining rub to sprinkle between the skin and flesh.

2. Light a charcoal fire using the indirect cooking method: Set the charcoal around the sides of the grill. Set a foil .

Woke up this morning to a beautiful blue sky and the sound of thawing ice dripping coming from the gutters.  The ice in the driveway (all 6 inches of it) was turning into mush.  Mr. Weather Dude was forecasting a balmy day in Northeast Iowa! 

The temperature got up to 41 degrees and after days of minus 30, it felt like summer.  No winter coat for me, just my fleece jacket.  No Thinsulate gloves...I drove the car bare-handed.  I opened all the windows just enough to let a little fresh air in and get rid of that stale winter air.  It was a glorious day!t

I've gotten a little sick of hearing the crunch of snow and ice under my feet and navigating through icy parking lots with a shopping cart.  (Try it sometime...it isn't easy.)  I'm already being seduced by the flower and seed catalogs and their promise of sunflowers and herb gardens.  This is the teaser, the warm few days that make us think about spring and warm dirt under our feet.  I've even begun planning the World's Biggest Vegetable Garden.

But it's only February 1st and there can still be plenty of winter to come. Husband said today that the worst snowstorm in Iowa that he can remember happened in mid-April.  I'm trying not to worry about that.  I just want to think about Spring.

If winter is slumber and spring is birth, and summer is life, then autumn rounds out to be reflection.  It's a time of year when the leaves are down and the harvest i sin and the perennials are gone.  Mother Earth just closed up the drapes on another year and it's time to reflect on what's come before. ~Mitchell Burgess, Northern Exposure, Thanksgiving 1992.

Iowa weather - it's fairly predictable. There are four seasons and they don't spend much time overlapping each other.

Winter (mid-November - March) is damn cold, plain and simple.  You know it's going to snow a lot and it's going to stay put on the ground for months.  Forget about seeing anything resembling grass, green or otherwise, until the spring thaw.  There's going to be a blizzard or two where the words "white out" are taken quite literally.  If you go out on the road during a storm, the white of the snowy sky and the white of the snow on the ground meld into one and there's no horizon to orient you.  It's all one big white mess.  Best to stay inside for the duration of the winter, brew some spicy chai tea and peruse garden catalogs.

White Out

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Spring (Late March - late May) is like a big exhale.  It starts when you notice it hadn't snowed in a week and there's some water dripping off the gutters.  The snow level in the front yard gradually drops below 3 feet and it's safe to send the kids outside to begin chipping away at the 8 inches of ice covering the driveway.  The temperatures start to inch up and up, sometimes feeling positively balmy when it hits 20 degrees.  Time to shed that parka!

swing that hammer

Actually, there's two parts to spring, the thawing out and then the greening.  Part two is my favorite time, when the snow has completely disappeared and the yard has turned into a muddy, sloppy pile of muck.  In fact, we're so happy to see the ground that I really don't mind that it gets tracked throughout the house and across all the carpets.  It's a small price to pay for seeing winter weather leave for the next 6 months. 

Siberian Iris

Summer (June - mid-September) is perfection.  Oh, there are about two weeks of gawdawful heat and humidity, predictably during the county fair in mid-July, but the rest of the summer is glorious.  Summer only lasts about 12 weeks max, so the growing season is short and intense.  Nothing goes into the ground until the end of May, and even that can be chancey, but once the plants are established, there's an endless burst of color.  It's kind of like gardening on speed - do it quick, enjoy the rush, dread the crash.  But it's great while it lasts.

pretty closeup

Fall is my favorite season (mid-September - mid-November) with days like today - mid-70's, slight breeze, little white puffy clouds, not cool/not hot/just perfect. The weather forecast calls for this to continue for at least another week. The garden beds are looking a little scruffy with the plants putting out the last few blooms.  The evenings start getting cooler, down into the 30's at times, and the heat gets turned on to rid the house of a chill as early as September.  The farm fields are transformed into a patchwork of colors - the soybeans are bright yellow and brown, cornstalks pale yellow and green.  I want to savor this season because I know that the bitter winter isn't far off.

field

Some pretty wild weather here the past week or so.  Spring arrived with a fury - after a couple of gorgeous 70 degree days,the rains came and  we had almost 5inches.  Downtown Manchester flooded and a few streets were closed. My neighborhood has had to deal with water seepage into basements and the sump pumps can't keep up.  We use the shop vac every night and probably will have to continue for the rest of the week.

On theup side - my plants are coming up!!!  

Geranium

Garden

I spent Saturday at a wonderful Winter Gardening Fair which was a respite from our long, cold winter.  Really, I managed last year to find ways to live with lots of snow and cold, but this year's winter has been almost oppressive.  The snow has been constant, the cold has been bone-chilling, and there have been way to many gray and foggy days.  Even turning on the lights and reading gardening books and catalogs has been of little solace.

I was surprised about 20 miles from home by a ferocious snowstorm that completely covered with road with slushy, slippery snow.  I was about equal distance from home and the fair and made the choice to forge on.  It was a white knuckles trip and I did a good deal of sliding even though I was trying to be cautious.  Two miles from the event site, the driver's side windshield wiper came off and I drove to a parking lot to fix the thing while leaning to look out the other side of the windshield.  I was a little stressed out by the time I finally arrived!

I really enjoyed the seminars yesterday and learned a lot about cold climate gardening.  The four sessions I attended were on prairie gardens, design, perennials and gardens for birds and butterflies.  While listening to the speakers I sketched out plans for my front yard garden space.

I also had fun meeting Genie, a fellow blogger. She's also a transplant from the DC area and I enjoy reading her tales of adapting to life in Iowa and her adventures with gardening.  I highly recommend you check it out her blog, The Inadvertent Gardener, at  www.inadvertentgardener.wordpress.com

I have a huge expanse of grass and more grass in my front and large side yard that I'd like to fill with garden beds.  My two major projects this year will be a fairly big vegetable garden in my south facing side yard and a butterfly garden in the front yard that will run from the street to the house.  I have high (and possible unrealistic) dreams of vine ripened tomatoes and fresh green beans and cucumbers that I'll can.  Oh yes, I plan to reserve at least one or two tomato plants for my favorite fried green tomatoes!

The soil in my yard is perfectly rich and loamy and completely rock free.  Even with my arthritic hands I can dig up the sod with little effort.  I'm anxious for the snow to melt so I can start the work.