Rick Nichols's Blog – May 2013 Archive (3)

A four day weekend does give you time enough to get some chores accomplished. Our first round of peas, eggplants, onions and tomatoes are out in the ground. By starting them inside in repurposed 3 gallon tubs, we were able to avoid losing anything to the late snows this year. Nothing looked very perky when I hauled everything outside, and we did lose some pea plants, but it is looking good now. I added four additional wires on to our grape trellis, I should have done that earlier also, but…

Several years ago, my wife and I decided to add a set of terraces going down the slope towards our pond. The terraces are not very large, each of them is a barrier of large rocks from when we built the house, curved to follow the hillside, and then smaller rocks used to fill the cracks. One ended in a large open end that was too regular shaped, so my wife used landscaping brick to close it in. One terrace started well, but it finally decided it was to level to fill with compost, and it…

Although we have had days in the 80○'s, the stop and go of the weather has drastically changed several of our Spring habits. Usually I go looking for Morel Mushrooms as a early April treat, sautéed Morels are one of the rewards for putting up with sudden rains, unexpected turkey hunters, muddy driveways, and the ever-present ticks. This year, by the end of April, I had found exactly 4 Mushrooms, 2 ok sized, 2 kind of small. Fried them up with some fresh eggs, and decided ok that's it for the…