Spring Photo Tour

May Photo Tour

May is most certainly a scruffy time of year. I love walking around the property and seeing all the perennials coming to life in earnest now. Some are almost full grown, having sent out their earliest leaves in late March. Many herbs are fully greened up, especially in the perennial Tiny Food Forest.

Looking a little scruffy, but there’s so much life in there: Orach, oregano, sage, thyme, lemon balm, peppermint, elderberries, strawberries…

The grass has certainly greened up as well. Some of the grass is in places where I don't want it. So May is the time of year when we do something called “weed mitigation sheet mulching”. This is pretty simple. It just means I lay cardboard down on top of patches that have gotten a little too grassy, and either cover that with mulch (if it's supposed to be a pathway through the food forest), or cover it with straw (if it's actually in one of the growing beds).

Mitigating a weedy patch in the middle of the Tiny Food Forest.

This type of smother-mulching is a quick and easy way to control unwanted grass and weeds in the springtime. It smothers the grass and, by the end of the season, it's added some fresh bulk and carbon to the soil as well, since all that cardboard and straw breaks down into more soil.

This is also the time of year for fruit tree blooms. The crab apple is an ornamental tree, but boy is it pretty. Our heritage apple tree is also in bloom. Even though the crab apple doesn't provide us an edible food crop, it attracts the bees to our property. It is quite the beacon! The bees are attracted to its dense blooms. Then they notice the regular apple and they seem to go back to their hive, let their friends know about both trees. Then, based on whatever material the bees need for their hive’s health, various workers come back and work each tree individually.

Both trees become serious “bee magnets” at the start of the season. I've watched bees work on a fruit tree, and then they seem to kind of scout out the rest of the property—maybe memorizing the other plants that are here and remembering that they can come back when those other plants come into bloom.

Here was a fun little surprise. Shortly after the peak bloom in the crab apple, we had some waxwings stop by, eating last year's dried, shriveled crab apples still clinging to the tree. If you look closely, you can see the waxwing right in the middle of this photo. Spring has most certainly sprung!