AN UPDATE, OF SORTS

The world of fellow bloggers keeps reminding me how far behind the curve our northern New England calendar can be when it comes to springtime. We still have snow in parts of the yard, for one thing. Yet since we’re near the ocean, our weather is a week ahead of places only a few miles inland, meaning to our west or our north.

Still, there’s been a definite change in the air. A very welcome change. And even a few signs of green, in addition to the final gray puffing of the pussy willow stalks.

Let’s not neglect those gardening bloggers in the Southern Hemisphere, either, reminding us of their approaching autumn.

For many of us, then, it never lets up. Plug on as we will!

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Although I’ve posted in previous seasons on our use of seaweed as a mulch for our garden, I don’t think I reported on the results. Yes, many things get lost in the cracks of daily living.

The short answer is that I’ve been returning to the beach lately to load up on more. A lot more. Since the master gardener in our household can’t seem to get enough of this magical mixture, I fill black plastic bags and tote them home in the trunk as I can. So far, that’s been five trips.

While last year’s weather wasn’t exactly typical, meaning we can’t factor out its impact cleanly, we can say that we had our best garden yet – and the seaweed appeared to play a big role.

Since our soil is largely clay-based, we’re usually plagued with garden slugs, but last year they were at a minimum. Apparently, the slugs don’t like the salty mineral nature of the mulch when it’s fresh, and they don’t like its prickly nature when it’s dry. On top of it all, the plants love the mineral nutrients. And so I’m trying to load up between the end of the frozen weather and mid-May, when the town down the road in Maine closes its beach parking to non-residents like me.

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While I’m still thinking about the snowfall, I can say our seasonal total unofficially came to a hair under 80 inches. (Yes, we can still get more, but it will melt quickly.) We’ve had more, but this just felt onerous. At least we didn’t get any storms that dropped two or three feet in one swoop to push the season’s total into three figures.

Where we live, harsh winters come in one of two varieties: either unusually cold and dry or else with a heavier than normal snow total. This year we had both rolled into one. Four months of snow cover and all those near-zero lows (or below) have taken a toll on even the heartiest among us.

And, yes, the black flies and weeds are already appearing. Mud season is upon us, after all.