Your Favorite Smell, Garden Surprises, Desert SNOW in March and Printable Spring Tags!

Well dearies, here we have some free digital speckled spring tags to download and print out. I was thinking of speckled eggs, and flowers, and decided to combine the two. As always, please use the link, because Blogger compresses and resizes images posted and then they don't print properly. TO GET A GOOD LOOK at the tags to see if you want to download them, RIGHT CLICK and choose "Open link in new tab" and that will make the little magnifier appear.

You can download from Google Drive (safe) from this LINK <-----

Amazingly, it snowed today here in the desert -- on our mountaintops. It sprinkled some cold rain on the foothills and in our valley, the Mesilla Valley, where the Rio Grande is and where the chiles, onions, cotton, and pecans grow.

 

The mountains are the Organ Mountains, so called because the tall granite outcroppings (locally called "the needles") looked like organ pipes to some, probably homesick settlers who had left such heavy instruments behind. I can't really imagine the grit that the people had who moved here, the ganas, as they say in Mexico. All these g-words, basically meaning the desert pioneers had guts.

Update on my community garden plot: Whoever had this plot before was a blue-ribbon gardener. I thought I was going to have to amend the soil and dig a lot to prepare the bed. But no! My very first shovelful of soil showed that not only was it already amended, but it was PLANTED! With strange bulbs, pushing up to the surface! And the bed has different mints including apple mint, big mounds of what turned out to be the best-smelling lemongrass ever, other herbs yet to be figured out, and I don't even know what-all. Some heirloom tomatoes, too.

I gingerly poked in a few seeds of sunflowers along the western side of the plot, for shade. And put in a few pumpkin seeds (bush pumpkins) and some Korean Melon seeds that were given to me by a fantastic gardener in a seed club we're in. But I didn't dare dig anything. I just made little holes with a stick.

Those with mint-phobia, don't worry. In the desert, mint cannot take over your beds. They are limited by the extreme dryness and easy to keep in bounds with watering methods.

I am most excited about the lemongrass. I haven't grown it before. I gave it a good haircut and the little blades are already coming up from the roots. I think it's one of my new favorite smells!

What is your favorite smell? Does it vary by season, as mine do? 

Kind regards,

Olde Dame Holly

"Set Awhile" by this Animated Olde Stove

Ah, I am late posting today. When my schedule gets cattywampus, I have a very hard time righting it. It takes great effort. I envy those who with more flexibility of will and mind than I seem to have. Between having a room tiled and the Presidential election, my days (and nights) are awry. What I need to do is settle down, maybe in front of the fireplace.

I have a fireplace that is part traditional fireplace, and part kiva, in my kitchen area, and while I'm grateful to have it, I really want to get an old potbellied stove for the corner of our living area. To me, nothing says "cozy" like a wood-burning stove.

Then again, a coal-burning stove has its own charm. I happen to like the smell of coal burning, but not as much as I love a wood fire. But a cold coal stove -- that smell is so lonely.

Thank'ee for stopping by! To save the animation below, right-click on it and choose Save or Save As. Then it will download to your own computer.

    Kind regards,

    The Merry Olde Dame

As Predicted, An Early Snowfall

You may recall an earlier post where I said the nature signs I read showed that we would have an early snowfall, with winter buffeting its way in before autumn had her turn. And that is what has happened, with the earliest and heaviest snowfall on record in my area, and much of the U.S. with unseasonably cold and snowy days.

My seed gleaning has come to a complete stop until the snow melts, and sadly, many of the seeds I've had my eye on will not be able to ripen for next year. I'm glad I gathered as much as I could before this snowy snap.

 

My lovely fiesta-colored lantana was blooming so beautifully in one of the fire rings I use as planters in my front courtyard. Lantanas love warmth, so it will die to the ground now. I hope the roots survive. I have pine straw from our front pines as a mulch over much of my courtyard. 

Stay warm, wherever you be!

Using Early Snowfalls in the Garden

I feel we may have early snows this year. If your area gets a snowfall before the ground freezes, be sure to till in the snow in your vegetable patch, if you have a tiller. If you don't, drag a rake up and down the soil, trying to stir the soil and mix in the snow. Autumn snows tilled into soil are called "poor man's fertilizer," and will give you bountiful yields next year.

For your house plants, gather up clean snow and fill buckets with it. Put inside the house to melt, and pour into old water jugs, and cap. This snow-water will act as an elixir for your indoor plants. Dole it out like medicine. 

It's not fun, but try to keep your garden beds and under trees leaf-free so that you are ready to take advantage of a snowfall, and to take away the shelter for destructive insects. The good insects will find hiding places in your compost pile, along with the bad ones. The bad ones won't be right by their preferred food source any longer, which is very helpful come spring. 

If the snowfalls are heavy enough this autumn, heap up snow around bushes and trees. Knock it off the branches as much as you can by shaking them or hitting them with a fishing pole, but don't be afraid of the snow being heaped up around the plant. It will not freeze it "more;" it will actually insulate it and provide a very long "drink" for the plants as it melts. 

If you can, use good plain sand on your walks and stepping stones. The salts used to melt snow are not good for plants. But most of all, do what you need to in order to stay safe and not fall. Plants can be replaced; so can hips, but what a cost to health and pocketbook!

Here's hoping for one or two early snows for our garden darlings. 

    Kind regards,

    Olde Dame Holly Rose

Will It Be A Harsh Winter? The Signs Say...

I was taught this little rhyme many years ago:

Man is but a mortal fool:

When it's hot, he wants it cool.

When it's cool, he wants it hot.

He only wants what he has not.

Very true! I have seen a slightly different version of that poem credited to Benjamin Disraeli, who probably had had it up to THERE with people's complaints.

There's also this saying, pithy and still true: "The wealthy get their ice in summer; the poor theirs in winter." It sounds like something from the 1920s.

Besides mooning for something, anything, we don't have, humans also like to know what is going to happen, weatherwise. Thus, there is a tremendous, and most probably worthless, lot of lore about whether there will be a harsh or a mild winter coming our way.

 

I have been examining several weather signs, and so far, they all agree: Harsh winter.  

The onions have a thick, insulating layer this year, and corn husks are thick

The leaves have begun turning early

Thick clustering of pinecones, far more than usual

Owls calling and hunting heavily

Doves bedding down earlier

Tiny ants running in a line

Big ants tugging too-big seeds backwards

However, mice behavior isn't indicating a harsh winter. They are going about their mouse business as usual.

2020 was bound to try to end strangely! But remember this: A hard winter brings a lucky spring.

    Kind regards,

    Olde Dame Holly Rose