Finally able to get to yard work!

After this past weekend, I can now put my snow blower into the back of the garage and move my lawn mower forward.
By this time last year, my lawn already had two cuttings. The tulips were pushing themselves out of the ground. My Day lilies had bright green shoots sprouting through the tangled brown leaves of the previous year. The lawn had been raked at the first part of April.
Now jumping ahead to this year, I hadn’t expected the snow to disappear as fast as it did this past weekend. The cleanup is just beginning. Six months of dust, garbage twigs and branches have left my yard in a state of total disrepair.
Marnie was able to walk up and remove the Christmas wreath from in front of our home. Much of the snow had melted away from the shrubbery and the white lights that were on the shrubbery were removed. Long extension cords reappeared on the ground. They connected the lights between the trees melted out from under the ice of early January. They have been all rolled up waiting for next November. Our yard is not totally snow free yet, but we have begun the cleanup.
Every year I am amazed at the number of branches and twigs that fall from the trees over winter. Probably there are no more than in any month, but the accumulation of six months branches does make for a substantial pile.
One of the surprises this year is that we have lost one major branch on our lilac tree and two major branches on our flowering crab both located on the south side of the house. Both have had their bark stripped away. The trees will require pruning. I am hoping that the rot from the one branch of the flowering crab has not spread elsewhere on the tree.
The flowering crab tree is over thirty years old and we enjoy its brilliant pink blossoms in June. The deer often come by and nip the apples off in September.
Around the yard, the cedar hedge that was planted three years ago has risen from the snow and seems to have wintered well. The deer have already begun inspecting those tender green leaves and have begun pruning them back. As they nip at those morsels, the deer are leaving piles of mementos in the grass. John Pierce was telling me Monday morning that the tulips that had shot up through the earth at his home had been consumed overnight by the deer in his neighborhood.
Our gardening guru Melanie Matheson has written columns on the best time to rake your lawn. Her take is that you should wait until it is well dried so that you don’t tear out those young grass shoots. I am not sure that I have that patience. I would like to have all the raking completed by Fort Frances’ free dump day. It is set for May 11.
Spring clean up always seems tedious, but being out of doors, raking, bagging and clearing up the flower beds sure beats the cabin fever we have been suffering.

–Jim Cumming,
Publisher