Overview: March 2021
March has spent most its time jumping between woodstove weather and lovely spring days. Not too much longer until the weather here goes so hot we’ll be running to hide from the sun, instead of basking in it!
outdoors
The first flush of spring flowers has hit, and the earliest of them are already starting to fade- spicebush and forsythia are on their way out for the shrubs, and the hyacinths are gone entirely while the first daffodils are on their way out- but in the beginning and middle of March, they were lovely while they were here!
Right now the pear and peach trees are covered in flowers, the tulips are starting to get into the swing of blooming, and purple deadnettle is everywhere. Violets are blooming, dandelions are spotting the yard, chickweed is thick underfoot, and henbit’s bright, almost magenta flowers tangle with the deadnettle for space in the garden. There’s been plenty to forage, and it’s all a feast for the pollinators, too!
The drying trays are getting steadily filled, bit by bit. Mostly with purple deadnettle, because we have a lot of it. Chickweed, henbit, forsythia, dandelions, and stinging nettle all got picked and spread out to dry, but the purple deadnettle dwarfs them all in sheer amount- and we haven’t even made a dent in what’s growing out there.
Poking around the woods this month resulted in catching the spicebush flowers in full bloom, and they had such a lovely scent! New growth’s started coming back on a few of the woodland/shade plants that we’ve planted around, too, including a few that we thought had died, so that was a lovely surprise!
Also I tried tasting chickweed for the first time. To me, it tasted like raw pea pods, but in leaf form. Interesting!
garden
Well, we did put the row cover up and planted out all the brassica seedlings. And then we promptly got hit by a wave of warm weather, and effectively cooked them.
I mourn. They were so pretty. š
However, not all of them died! We’ve been a lot more careful with watching the heat, and a fair few have bounced back. They’re going to be set behind a bit, but at least they’re alive!
All of the pansies and violas have been planted out as well, but since they weren’t covered, they didn’t get cooked by the heat. They’re still patiently sitting in the garden, not blooming yet. I might have both started and planted them a little late this year, oops.
All the seeds that can take the cold have been sown! And at this point, a good number of them have germinated, though a few haven’t even started yet. All the peas, radishes, and salad greens have germinated, but no signs of the beets, parsnips, hollyhocks, or poppies yet.
We also decided to give growing potatoes in buckets a try- it’ll be interesting to see how it goes!
ebook
I’ve managed to get a bit stuck, and I’m not sure how long it will take me to unravel myself here. Ebooks… are hard. But I’m determined to get it out this year! Hopefully well before then, but, well, we’ll see.
Crafting/creating
I might not have actually gotten myself to paint anything, but at least I picked up a pencil and sketched some pages again for the first time in… maybe half a year? I’m not putting up a picture of it because you can very much tell that I haven’t drawn in a while. Not great.
I did finish weaving my practice scarf, however! And then I didn’t end up starting another one, because I got distracted by spinning again instead. And ended up spinning 3/4 lb of fiber. Oof.
Other
I do have quite the chain of blog posts stacked up, and a large one I’ve been working on that’s been chewing up a good bit of my time. On top of that, I’ve been trying to brainstorm projects, just to have an ongoing list I can reference for when I get a bit lost, but that list is quickly growing into a monster that I’m having to chop up into bits in order to prevent getting overwhelmed.
Two of the blog posts coming up are two different jelly experiments I played with this month- one failure, one success, both flower-based jellies.
I’ve also spent a good amount of time just enjoying the spring weather, walking around outside to look at all the fresh new green things, and snuggling needy cats that want attention right now, immediately.
And that was March!
