At the end of May and early June, we spent 10 days up at our Meaford farm/swamp home. It was a panoply of contrasts. On day # 2, the temperature was 10 degrees Celsius, with a cold wind. My wife was wearing her winter jacket. It went down to a low of 2 degrees that night. Yet the next day it was warm enough to plant our mid-Spring vegetables in our raised organic gardens – carrots, beets, swiss chard and pole beans (we’d already planted the early-Spring veggies in late April – snap peas, radish, onion, spinach, lettuce, leeks and kale – and we were already harvesting the spinach!). When we came on day # 1, the grass was then long enough to bring in the sheep! I had to use the highest setting on the lawn tractor to do the first cut, without stalling. By mid-week, the temperature had skyrocketed up to 30 degrees! So we planted the late-Spring veggies – tomatoes, cucumbers, hot peppers, sweet peppers – and the herbs in the herb garden – rosemary, basil, coriander, parsley, sage. It also was a mix of unsettled weather – rained 3 days and 2 half-days of the 10 days. So we ended up getting a fair amount of outside work done in the gardens and landscaping. We also got in our long-time handyman to get our old 1952 Allis-Chalmers tractor going, to cut our myriad of walking paths with the rotary mower, pulled behind the tractor. We generally took time “off” when it rained, but inside the farmhouse was a disaster, and we did do some cleaning and straightening while it rained. The morning of day # 10 saw exceptionally strong winds (there have already been 10 confirmed tornadoes in Ontario this year), and it was overcast and seemed ready to storm. The temperature had again dipped to about 13 degrees. Then the wind died down to a gentle breeze, the sun came out, and it went up to about 20 degrees. It then rained a bit off and on in the afternoon. When we headed out, it was already back down to 15 degrees. Nevertheless, all in all, it was a pleasant and productive time at our country home. We consider ourselves pretty lucky.
Posted on: Thu, 06 Jun 2013 03:04:19 +0000
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