Yesterday was Earth Day, and, judging by all the sale emails I received, it’s apparently now a shopping holiday for “green” goods. But even if the item is “Earth Friendly” it’s still consumption of (very likely) something people don’t actually need. And if you don’t need it and buy it anyway, you are not being Earth Friendly, you are just being a capitalist consumer trying to assuage your guilt by buying something “green” that will harm the Earth a little less than the item’s non-green counterpart. Is there something capitalism hasn’t co-opted? Grrr.

Spring is still taking her time. This last week we whiplashed from our mini heatwave the previous week to temperatures and weather that felt like the end of October rather than the end of April—cold, gray skies, biting wind, thunder, heavy rain, hail, sleet, and a little snow. Today the temperature has managed to make it up to 42F/5C and might manage to eek out another degree or two before sunset. Warmest day all week. We are 10-15 degrees below average for this time of year.

I’ve been managing to endure it all, but this last week has been too much and my mood and state of mind have taken a dive. My energy is low, little things that go wrong that generally wouldn’t matter at all make me want to cry or yell, and it’s hard to muster up excitement even when the melon seeds I started indoors poked their heads up out of the soil.

I’m being kind to myself. When I fall asleep over my book at 8:30 p.m. I go to bed. I let the dawn chorus as I bike to work cheer me—the robins, chickadees, cardinals, redwing blackbirds, sparrows, gobbling turkeys—tell me everything is going to be alright. Then I shut myself up in a fluorescent lit HVAC controlled building all day and by the time I leave I am drained. But when I make it home by bike through the horrendous car traffic I can’t spend time in the garden because it’s too cold or wet. 

I look at the trees, my teachers of endurance, and feel their strength and it helps. They have all decided it’s time for spring even if the weather says otherwise. Buds are swelling, and on some, tiny leaves are beginning to unfurl. Just a little longer, I can do this!

Except for a few snow flurries, today has been dry. Things need to be done in the garden even though it is cold and gray and windy outside. Being out and doing stuff has helped a little. Writing about it is helping too, and I can feel a little squiggle of excitement as I gather my thoughts.

Several years ago I made a second black raspberry patch in an area I didn’t know what else to do with. Over the last couple of years I’ve been adding other plants—stinging nettles, horseradish, goldenrod, Professor Plum, a clove currant and a honeyberry. Having a second raspberry patch is no longer needed. So earlier in the week I posted a give of raspberry canes to my Buy Nothing group. I offered seven canes, thinking maybe a couple people would be interested. I got 35 people who wanted one! I used a random number picker to choose seven people for one cane each. We dug them up today and they are sitting in a bucket of water on my front porch waiting for the recipients to come and get them.

Into the space cleared of raspberries, we moved the serviceberry from the chicken garden that is crowded by the elderberry. When James was digging her up he got some help from the chickens. He had to keep nudging Elinor out of the way because she would stand right where the shovel went in and start scratching. She wanted to dig too! As soon as we set the serviceberry in the ground at her new location and filled in the soil around her roots and gave her a good drink of water, I felt her happiness. I would have hugged her if I could, it’s hard to hug a shrub, so I gently caressed one of her twigs and told her I am glad she is happy.

Then we planted a new cherry tree! Earlier we ventured out on our bikes—I took the e-cargo bike—to Mother Earth Gardens to find our tree. They had just gotten their trees in on Wednesday and there were so many to choose from. I knew I wanted a North Star Cherry. It’s a sour cherry, self-fertlie, and only gets about 8-10 feet tall. Perfect for a small garden. I stood in front of all the North Star trees and asked who would like to come home with me? There was one right in front, beautifully shaped with buds all over who said they would like to come home with me. 

We paid for Cherry, carefully wrapped their pot and trunk in a big bag, and then put them into my cargo bike pannier. We had an old sheet that we stuffed into the pannier around the tree’s pot to keep things stable, then closed up the pannier’s straps with the tree coming out of the top, held nice and snug. Away home we went!

Cherry tree has been planted a couple feet away from where Walter Crabapple grew. I think Cherry likes the location and is glad to be in a new home. They are a bit disoriented at the moment, as we all are when moving to a new place. But hopefully Cherry likes all the new neighbors.

After all that I went and checked in with Professor Plum. Professor is alive! There are several teeny tiny buds all around the trunk. I squeed! I cooed! I congratulated and encouraged. And of course now I am terrified something will happen to those little buds.

Indoors this afternoon I planted more seeds in starter pots. I have the hardest time getting nasturtium to grow when I direct sow outdoors. I soaked the seeds overnight and tucked them into pots today. I also seeded a few calendula, Dickinson pumpkin, Turtle Moon winter squash, pie pumpkin, Sweet Meat winter squash, and Hopi black dye sunflowers. I used to be able to direct sow the squashes and sunflowers but in the past few years I’ve had trouble with squirrels digging up the seeds and eating them. This is the first year I am starting them indoors and I hope it solves the squirrel problem. 

Also, I’m hoping the sunflowers will have a good enough head start so I can plant beans to climb up them. I have tried this before and the beans didn’t do well. I read after that sunflowers are slightly allelopathic and I figured that was the problem. But I have since heard from a number of gardeners that they grow beans on their sunflowers all the time. My mistake, I believe, was planting the beans too close to the sunflower where their roots had nowhere to go. I’ll see what happens this year.

Suddenly I’m feeling much better!

Reading

• Book: Sacred Nature: restoring our sacred bond with the natural world by Karen Armstrong. In this slim book, Armstrong suggests in order to solve climate change and a host of related issues, we need to re-sacralize nature. She takes a somewhat whirlwind tour through the world’s major religions highlighting their original, and sometimes forgotten, teachings and beliefs on the sacredness of nature. Her point being that nothing new needs to be incorporated into Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, etc., because it is already there, we just need to bring those teachings to the foreground. It’s a great idea, but I have difficulty believing any of these religions in the capitalist world will make the effort.
• Article: The Secret Lives of Grey Squirrels. And I thought I had squirrel trouble. At least they haven’t burgled my house!