Thinking of planting
19/03/14 05:20
Tomorrow is the spring equinox. It is the day that we usually name as the official beginning of Spring. I remain a bit confused on how we know whether spring begins on the 20th or 21st, but since the Old Farmer’s Almanac is online - a rather curious use of the word “Old” actually - I check it from time to time for such matters. The equinox is the day when the dividing line between day and night becomes nearly vertical. Because the axis of the earth is tilted, the southern hemisphere is a bit closer to the sun in the season we call winter and the northern a bit closer during our summer.Twice a year, the tilt aligns with the sun in such a manner that we all get roughly the same amount of day as night. OK, it doesn’t technically come out to be exactly 12 hours of light and 12 hours of dark, but it is as close as we get. Sunrise tomorrow will be 6:54 am and sunset at 7:07, so we actually get a few minutes more day than night. The earth is constantly in motion so the vertical axis relative to the sun doesn’t hold for the entire day.
In Costa Rica, closer to the equator, the effect of the difference between day and night is much less dramatic. 12 hours of day and 12 hours of night is the norm. The sun rises and sets at the same time each day. When you are in Costa Rica you learn to expect sunrise at 6 a.m. and sunset at 6 p.m. It isn’t exactly on the hour. Today’s sunrise is 5:40 and sunset is 5:47. They get 6 minutes and 36 seconds extra day today.
Now if you want to confuse yourself a bit more, Costa Rica is on Central Standard Time. Which is the same as Mountain Daylight Time. So it is the same time on the clock here as in Costa Rica, but they get their sunrise first because they really are a bit farther east than we are here in the black hills. That is pretty much trivia unless you are planning frequent travel between the two places.
I pay attention to Costa Rica because we have a sister church there and I think about the people there in my prayers each day.
So we are at the turning point of the seasons. From here until the autumn equinox, on September 22, our days are longer than our nights. That extra sunlight translates into extra warmth and it won’t be long before snow becomes a memory for a while. I don’t go by the calendar or the official days of the seasons, but for me the beginning of spring is marked by the day when the snow blower and the lawn mower trade places in my shed. You always want to have the tool you need closest to the door.
Of course there are other tools for spring. The garden needs to be tilled. The compost pile needs to be stirred. I’ve got some firewood that needs to be hauled and a bit more tree clean up from the October blizzard that remains unfinished in my yard.
We have decided that this spring is a good time to focus a bit of our attention on planting trees. The October blizzard was especially hard on the trees in our lawn. We lost two, one of which was the largest tree in the yard. And the storm got us to thinking about the one tree that leans toward the house. It probably needs to come out before it falls on the roof and does a bunch of damage. So spring 2014 needs to be a season of planting new trees for us.
There are some challenges for new trees in our yard. We need to be especially attentive to watering the trees as we live in an area where the natural moisture is a bit short. And we have discovered that we need to fence off new trees to protect them from the deer. The deer rub and munch on trees and the young ones need a bit of protection to get going.
The place where our house sits was originally forested with Ponderosa Pine trees. Before the land was subdivided for homes it was pasture and there were ample areas of open grassland around the trees. Some of our neighbors’ homes are really set in the trees, but our place has quite a bit of open space with just a few trees. We had to have some of our trees cut down when the co-op ran a new power line through the neighborhood, so we’ve planted a few trees. We planted Black Hills Spruce, thinking that it would be good to have some diversity in the trees in our yard. If you look around the hills you’ll notice that the spruce prefer low-lying areas where the snow drifts deep and the runoff is generous. We live on the top of a hill, not the most natural habitat for spruce trees, so ours need a little help with the water.
I love apples and eat them nearly every day, so it is natural for me to think about planting a few apple trees. But I know that if I were to get any of the apples, the trees would have to be fenced off completely from the deer and that means an 8’ fence in this country. Our yard is open and more fences don’t exactly enhance the landscape plan.
Another tree that I like that grows in the hills is birch. We won’t be producing any trees big enough to skin a canoe, but the smaller birch trees that grow naturally in the hills are beautiful and add that bright yellow color to the autumns around here. The birch also like a bit more water and they tend to propagate from the roots so clumps and groups of trees are the best way for them to grow. And the birch really break hard in the heavy autumn blizzards. There are a lot of broken birch trees all throughout the hills right now. That doesn’t really recommend them for landscaping around a home.
So I haven’t made up my mind just what to plant. It is still a bit early to get spring fever around here anyway. I can wait a bit before digging up the yard.
Time to dream and plan is a good thing anyway.
In Costa Rica, closer to the equator, the effect of the difference between day and night is much less dramatic. 12 hours of day and 12 hours of night is the norm. The sun rises and sets at the same time each day. When you are in Costa Rica you learn to expect sunrise at 6 a.m. and sunset at 6 p.m. It isn’t exactly on the hour. Today’s sunrise is 5:40 and sunset is 5:47. They get 6 minutes and 36 seconds extra day today.
Now if you want to confuse yourself a bit more, Costa Rica is on Central Standard Time. Which is the same as Mountain Daylight Time. So it is the same time on the clock here as in Costa Rica, but they get their sunrise first because they really are a bit farther east than we are here in the black hills. That is pretty much trivia unless you are planning frequent travel between the two places.
I pay attention to Costa Rica because we have a sister church there and I think about the people there in my prayers each day.
So we are at the turning point of the seasons. From here until the autumn equinox, on September 22, our days are longer than our nights. That extra sunlight translates into extra warmth and it won’t be long before snow becomes a memory for a while. I don’t go by the calendar or the official days of the seasons, but for me the beginning of spring is marked by the day when the snow blower and the lawn mower trade places in my shed. You always want to have the tool you need closest to the door.
Of course there are other tools for spring. The garden needs to be tilled. The compost pile needs to be stirred. I’ve got some firewood that needs to be hauled and a bit more tree clean up from the October blizzard that remains unfinished in my yard.
We have decided that this spring is a good time to focus a bit of our attention on planting trees. The October blizzard was especially hard on the trees in our lawn. We lost two, one of which was the largest tree in the yard. And the storm got us to thinking about the one tree that leans toward the house. It probably needs to come out before it falls on the roof and does a bunch of damage. So spring 2014 needs to be a season of planting new trees for us.
There are some challenges for new trees in our yard. We need to be especially attentive to watering the trees as we live in an area where the natural moisture is a bit short. And we have discovered that we need to fence off new trees to protect them from the deer. The deer rub and munch on trees and the young ones need a bit of protection to get going.
The place where our house sits was originally forested with Ponderosa Pine trees. Before the land was subdivided for homes it was pasture and there were ample areas of open grassland around the trees. Some of our neighbors’ homes are really set in the trees, but our place has quite a bit of open space with just a few trees. We had to have some of our trees cut down when the co-op ran a new power line through the neighborhood, so we’ve planted a few trees. We planted Black Hills Spruce, thinking that it would be good to have some diversity in the trees in our yard. If you look around the hills you’ll notice that the spruce prefer low-lying areas where the snow drifts deep and the runoff is generous. We live on the top of a hill, not the most natural habitat for spruce trees, so ours need a little help with the water.
I love apples and eat them nearly every day, so it is natural for me to think about planting a few apple trees. But I know that if I were to get any of the apples, the trees would have to be fenced off completely from the deer and that means an 8’ fence in this country. Our yard is open and more fences don’t exactly enhance the landscape plan.
Another tree that I like that grows in the hills is birch. We won’t be producing any trees big enough to skin a canoe, but the smaller birch trees that grow naturally in the hills are beautiful and add that bright yellow color to the autumns around here. The birch also like a bit more water and they tend to propagate from the roots so clumps and groups of trees are the best way for them to grow. And the birch really break hard in the heavy autumn blizzards. There are a lot of broken birch trees all throughout the hills right now. That doesn’t really recommend them for landscaping around a home.
So I haven’t made up my mind just what to plant. It is still a bit early to get spring fever around here anyway. I can wait a bit before digging up the yard.
Time to dream and plan is a good thing anyway.