Re: Spring. Yuck!

HI Claire,

My note about us going into autumn was just an effort to cheer you folks 
up. I often envy your cold, long winters and instant springs. The seasons 
here run into each other so much you often  have to check the calendar to 
get a handle on where you are. However, I wouldn't swap.

As an illustration - I was very concerned about an horizontal elm that was 
yellowing and shedding leaves in early February (just after mid summer 
really), then the willows joined in. It had been very dull for a number of 
weeks. Later in February the sun returned, the yellowed leaves dropped 
and the trees greened up and began putting on leaf again. I've never seen 
this happen before. It was quite surreal

Enjoy your spring

terry


> 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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