Re: Spring. Yuck!

In a message dated 4/15/02 3:30:14 PM Eastern Daylight Time, 
dowdeswell@delphinium.co.nz writes:

<< stay on the plastic roof until the wind gets up (it stayed calm all day 
 yesterday) and fingers will be too stiff for de anthering or pricking out 
for a 
 couple of hours or so too.>>>>

Terry sweetie, 

This is winter in the US Northeast and assume the Northern Mid-West for as 
long as eight months of the year.  It could be better as there is a year now 
and then with a longer spring or fall.
 
<<<<Growth is slowing right up now and I see the cattle are chewing the 
 paddock down after a summer of much rain and lank growth. Soon they 
 will be churning up the mud as they seek out the last juicy feed in the 
 boggy parts of the field>>>>

Can't comment on cattle but my parents doing some war effort thing once 
raised several hundred chickens.  I hated those chickens and still do.  
Chickens=open gate=no lawn or grass for entire summer.  Cows seem to do the 
same thing only faster.

<<<<<We have trouble with leaves too as they fall and 
 block gutters and are swirled into piles by driving rain and fierce wind - 
on 
 the days that aren't dead calm and foggy.>>>>

The leaves that really cause all this aggravation do not decompose (black 
oaks) and fall around two or three at a time all winter so no cleanup can be 
made should you want to deal with cold weather.

<<<<This is the time when car 
 batteries decide to remind us that they needed replacing last winter too, 
 but we didn't did we? Because summer was close. Summer. What 
 summer? >>>>>

I am taking time with this as we do not know a great deal about New Zealand 
so it would be nice if now then you would tell us some of these things.  
Would you believe wired heaters in oil in cars here to insure their starting 
in winter months.  Are you familiar with battery jump cables which are in 
every northern US car.  Some cars left running all night and some with light 
bulbs burning under the bonnets all night.

<<<<At least double the normal rainfall and days so dull we could 
 hardly see the book we had no time to read because it was spend digging 
 drains for all that rain. Of course the rain had it's good points. Plants 
grew 
 tremendously. Trees were especially rampant and produced possibly 
 double their normal leaf count to add to the autumn trash which falls to the 
 ground to hide the large, fat, slow bumble bee queens. You know, the ones 
 that don't take too kindly to being squeezed by the unwary gardener 
 cleaning up the litter.>>>>

I expect that was depressing, I know it is here when the sun disappears for 
most of November, December, January and half of February.  Long rainy periods 
are alway news and nobody likes them except the gardener and even he can have 
a surfeit.  I have experience digging drains on clay soils, do hope you put 
in plenty.
 
 <<<Oh, and there's wood to chop and stack, and lawns to mow. You should 
 see how lawns grow over here in the fall. In fact, just about all the year 
 they will grow to tickle your knees inside a week. The mice are making 
 mad suicidal dashes to hide in the house now the cooler weather is here 
 too and the dogs just love to do likewise - and paddle mud all over the 
 carpet.


Have no sympathy for you and the lawn.  You English invented the lawn and 
plagued the rest of the western world with it.  I don't like my lawn and 
don't care one bit about it or it's state of affairs.  There would a lot less 
of it if I operated the big machines that cut it.  But since you have 
convinced all that a garden is not a garden unless framed with a collar of 
perfect grass, you guys can keep on mowing.  The US of A wastes more time, 
water and fertilizer plus pesticides and herbicides than any country in the 
world.  Someone must like lawns.  I think that lawns sap the energy of a 
gardener and take from him the time he could use truly gardening - get 
someone else to mow your lawn.
 
 <<But boy, it must be tough to have spring! >>

We are coming to visit your spring one of these days and be heartened to know 
we have the same words here when the winter is threatening.  However, the 
winter in the northern half of the US is longer, more devastating to plants 
and animals and grayer and more depressing than in the Southern Hemisphere.  
This a large country and parts of it do not experience what northern state 
gardeners do, hence the comments on the five minutes we had between real 
winter conditions and apparent summer.  This truly happens, not by any means 
an exaggeration.

Claire Peplowski
NYS z4

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