It's hard to believe...

I keep a garden journal in a small, but beautiful note book I bought when I was in Costa Rica.  I promise not to digress too much, but that trip was one of the best I've ever had.  I went with my best friend.  I can't remember the airline we flew, but from the moment we met one another in NYC to go to the airport...where did we meet, Penn Station?  I'm trying to remember...anyway, this friend of mine is always good for a few laughs and we were joking the entire time.  Desperate to catch up, when we approached the airline counter, I convinced the gate agent that my friend was very ill...that's the reason he looked the way he did.  I tell you it was murderous fun...insulting my friend like that in front of the ticket agent and my friend unable to respond in kind because he knew that if she bought it, we would be upgraded.  Well it worked. In fact, they damn near brought a wheel chair to collect us.  We were upgraded free of charge and placed in first class where we proceeded to order two glasses of scotch at 6 in the morning.

Anyway...I went to Costa Rica and one evening my friend and his boyfriend (who is Costa Rican and lives there) and I rented ATV's and we drove about 5 miles to this little town in. the. middle. of. nowhere.  And god was it fun and when we arrived, they were selling these really cute books made of some oddly stained wood and impressed with some dried leaves and shalac'd over and bound with a bit of burlap. Really cool.  So I bought one and have been using it to journal my garden experiences here on the farm.

It's really great to look back through it.  I can reread my thoughts on grafting, check the dates of when the redwinged black birds returned, recount the days when the last garden row got put it.

Any-way the whole reason I bring this up is because we had a MOTHER of a snow storm here two days ago.  There are sections of the property where the drifts are nearly 3 feet, yet according to the garden journal, I should be hearing spring peepers any day now and finding evidence of their mating (you know, popper bottles, used condoms, shit covered toilet paper...wait a second, that's Central Park Brambles....sorry)...I should be finding evidence of their mating...the large clumps of eggs and the long rows of trailing ones in the marshes by the last week of March. It seems like we have a long way to go between here and there.

The sun is intense though.  It's like someone hung a hydrogen bomb low in the sky ...I mean, I know that's what the sun is, but...I mean...you know what I mean. Anyway the point is, its fucking intense that sun and it's easy to see that whatever the snow cover, it's no match for that fire ball.

Oh, anyway, let me give you an update on the 'farmer things' that are going on here.  I built two cold frame...frames and covered them with old glass window panes I saved when I redid the lower part of the barn.   I placed the frames, covered with the glass on the south side of the barn...I really should have taken a picture so you could see....placed them on the south side of the barn and dug in their 'beds' with composed manure.  Under one, I tried to make it a 'hot bed' by digging in some half rotten manure and mixing it with pigeon shit and saw dust (you know, you really have to see this mess in operation...I mean, how on god's earth am I going to find a suitable partner when I'm out in the barn scooping up pigeon shit and saw dust...who the hell am I going to end up fucking in my life...?  A Log Cabin Republican?  I don't know) then covering it up with more manure and some compost.  I'm going to seed them with salad greens in a week.

I have to get to work.  I attached a a pic of the great winter wilderness...just a ways down from the house next to the creek.  Enjoy!