Happy New Year

Happy New Year gardeners, bloggers, and friends!   My how this last year flew by.   I was hoping that 2012 would make for a fresh start in the garden, but sadly on the first day I found one of my dwarf apples dug up and partially girdled.  I just about wept.  We stood the tree up and filled in the hole, but there is so much damage I think the tree is not likely to survive the winter.  It occurred to me then as I was outside in New England on the first day of January in a long sleeve t-shirt that THAT was part of the problem.  Normally the ground would be frozen and a rabbit could not dig up a small tree to get to the tender bark.  The creatures are certainly desperate this winter!  This destruction brought reflection on our recent study of the pilgrims landing in Plymouth.  We went to see the Mayflower II just after Thanksgiving, and it was brutally cold.  One can appreciate the struggles of finding/building shelter and trying to get some fertile land and a source of nourishment growing all the more when brutal winter is at your back.  I am thankful for not going hungry this past year because other things ate what we sowed.

In other news I ordered something I had been considering since last winter-  an indoor light set-up that would enable me to grow micro-greens.  Indoors.  Where rodents won't eat them first.  I googled the topic and happily came across an article in Organic Gardening (click here) mentioning particular seeds as being good for this application.  Well I just happen to have multiple packets of said seeds and I took that for a sign that I should go for it!  I will post more once the greens nursery is up and running.

I hope you all have been enjoying perusing the seed catalogs that have been rolling in since November.  I am just now finding time to sit down and look through the growing pile.  Dreaming up the garden plans over seed catalogs next to a warm fire......winter life just does not get any better than that for us gardeners, does it?

(P.S.- Somebody send us some snow!!)