It’s amazing how uplifting sun and temperatures above freezing can be after days of near and below zero. The goats and chickens tumble out their doors to bask in the sun. Thoughts turn to kids and spring gardening.
Waiting on Kids
My Nubian doe High Reaches Juliette was due about New Year’s. The days passed and she stayed fat and showing signs, but no kids.
When she looked like any time, the temperatures plunged. Anxiety began as wet kids stand no chance in zero degrees even with an experienced mother goat.
The cold seemed to stop all kid preparation. As this cold moves on, the wait begins anew.
Reading Gardening Books
There’s not much to do outside with cold temperatures and a dusting of snow. Reading about gardening, seed sorting and starting along with spring gardening plans pass the days.
Much of the country is having much worse weather than the Ozarks. That’s one of the reasons we moved here thirty years ago. Waist deep snow along with temperatures ten and twenty below for six months didn’t fit our preferred life style.
My current gardening book “The Country Journal Book of Vegetable Gardening” written by Nancy Bubel is set in Pennsylvania. Some of the crops, all of the timing and some of the problems don’t apply here in the Ozarks. So, why is the book helpful?
Universal Gardening Ideas
Some things fit gardening no matter where the garden is. The author prefers setting out rows. I have marked out beds. But planting seeds is the same.
Pennsylvania gardens are set out later than mine. But spring gardening planning entails the same details for succession planting, mulching, cultivating, seed starting and more.
Much of this and other gardening books won’t apply to the Ozarks. Enough of it does to make reading them worthwhile.
Besides, its relaxing to read about spring gardening while waiting for the season to begin. Now is when the planned garden is beautiful and productive. Before reality sets in.