Strawberries, strawberries, strawberries

Allstar strawberries ... pan after pan after pan

When it rains, you raise your umbrella.  When your strawberries ripen, you pick and pick and pick.

I had feared the “Polar Vortex” inspired deep freeze of winter 2013-2014 had damaged our strawberry patch, but the Allstar plant variety I planted two years is producing well this spring, and Ellen and I this week have picked more berries than we can possibly eat.

Wednesday morning, for example, in about 15 minutes we filled our aluminum garden pan with the bright red fruit.  Curious, I got out our kitchen scale and the needle pointed to just under four pounds (1.8 kg).  We had picked almost that many Tuesday.  And Friday morning I picked even more—heaping the garden pan and a smaller plastic container.

We’ve been eating fresh strawberries on our cereal every morning for more than a week.  Our daughter has volunteered to eat some—and did some picking herself one evening.  I’ve recycled tomato clamshell packages to gift two neighbors with prime berries.  Our resident catbird couple has been enjoying some of the sweet fruit too.

And still we have too many strawberries.  Wednesday night we got panicky and baked some shortcake on which we heaped berries, berries, and more berries.  Love that panic!  And we enjoyed leftover shortcake with strawberries again Thursday evening.  And every morning we heap berries on our morning cereal.  What next—freezer jam?

Panic supper for Ancient and Mrs. Gardener

I figure our strawberry harvest is peaking this week and that we’ve picked more than 15 pounds of berries.  Say we pick another eight pounds.  That would be 23 pounds of fruit from the original 25 plants of 2012 and their offspring, called “daughters” in berry ads.  A local farm charges U-pickers $2.75 a pound. A pound clamshell of berries at our local Giant Foods supermarket recently have averaged $2.99, so our $26.50 investment in the plants in 2012 this year yielded fruit worth nearly $60.00  Not bad—or more appropriately—how sweet.  This Frugal Gardener wishes our bank paid interest at that rate.

I followed directions that came with the plants from the Indiana Berry & Plant Co. and kept my two small beds narrow to maximize yield.  In addition to producing beautiful fruit, the two narrow strawberries beds serve as borders of two small vegetable gardens.

This Ancient Gardener sees only one downside to growing strawberries.  It seems that over the years strawberry plants are growing shorter.  Or maybe my legs are growing longer and my arms are getting shorter.  Oh, my Aching Back.  I need to start working in the price of a bottle of acetaminophen tablets into my strawberry cost analysis.  But certainly the harvest is worth a few aches and pains.

In about five years, when it’s time to plant a new bed of strawberries and I’ll be zeroing in on 80 (age, not miles per hour), perhaps I’ll have to start planting only “tall” varieties of our favorite fruits and vegetables, ones that don’t require me to stoop and stand and stoop and stand.  Or maybe by then some genius will have invented a portable garden elevator so I can just hop on, push “up,” and won’t have to struggle to stand upright after berry picking.

Life is good in the gardens at Meadow Glenn.  And that’s the real lowdown.  Really.

Strawberry shortcake--again?
Yes!

Deer Country Extra: Why Bambits Don’t Jump the Fence

Time to cut back sweet autumn clematis

Yes, I’ll admit I have a love/hate relationship with our local bambits, the affectionate term I give our large, local deer herd. I don’t like it one bit when they browse on my trees, shrubs, and flowers. But they are beautiful, and I have a soft spot for them when snow cover prevents them ready access to food.


That’s why I don’t cut back the sweet autumn clematis that covers about 50 feet of our backyard fence after its fall flowers go to seed and frosts turn its dark-green leaves brown. Even though the bambits don’t browse on the clematis while it’s growing, I noticed several years ago that when there’s snow cover, they come to our fence and eat some of the dried leaves.


They browsed on the dried leaves again in January when we had the 9-inch snow that covered the ground for several weeks. For some reason the deer preferred the brown leaves on one section of the fence, perhaps because it was easier for them to access, though they had to trample a line of fountain grass plants outside the fence to get to the clematis. Every day I noticed more hoof prints leading to the clematis. After a few days, I could see light through the thick vines because the deer had eaten so many leaves.

March 1: New leaves already growing

The sunny, cool weather on Tuesday beckoned me to cut back the clematis. I had checked a few days earlier and noticed that some of the stems were bright green and preparing to put out new leaves. I celebrated the arrival of March by getting out my best pair of pruners and cutting the vines from the outside of about 50 feet of the fence.

Job's 'more than half' done

You might think I’m half done, but I’m probably three-quarters done because years ago I planted the clematis on the outside of the fence in front of the split-rail posts, and that's where my heavy cutting takes place. The vines on the inside of the fence just have to be pulled off the wire and tossed over the fence.


Why didn’t I do the whole job?

Wall of sweet autumn clematis blooming in September

I really wanted to finish, but my two regular helpers had other ideas. After what seemed about an hour, my left hand said it was going to stop grabbing the vines and pulling them away from the fence so my right hand could cut them easily and cleanly. A half hour later my right hand announced it was going to get a blister on its thumb if I worked much longer, even though I wore leather gloves.


So when I finished the “bigger half” of the job, I called it an afternoon. I didn’t even work up a sweat in the sun and 45°F. temperature. I surveyed what I had accomplished and declared it good for the 60 minutes invested. When I glanced at the wall clock when I went inside, I saw that I had worked nearly two hours. No wonder my old hands were threatening to go on strike or call 9-1-1.


The clematis serves several purposes when it makes a green wall out of the fence each summer. It screens our swimming pool, though I really don’t care if the bambits watch me swim. A second reason has to do with the deer—but not to provide them dried leaves in winter. When the clematis covers the fence, the deer cannot see inside without periscopes or step ladders, so they are not tempted by flowers or veggies growing inside the fence. Deer also tend not to jump into places they’re unfamiliar with and which don’t look like safe spots to land—so the clematis again discourages them.


The long row of fountain grass outside the fence helps make the fence a challenge for deer too. Deer like to make short, up-and-over jumps, not long, broad jumps. Normally, they could walk up to our backyard fence, which has 4-foot wire fencing attached to the outside of the split rails, and just hop over without significant effort. But the clematis obscures what’s on the other side of the fence and the fountain grass makes the jump a long one, so in nearly 15 years the deer haven’t jumped the fence.


Of course, there are other uncertainties in the backyard too—the swimming pool with a filter running all summer, white gravel as part of the pool landscaping, raised veggie and flower beds, and the hillside location itself. All may be factors keeping our bambits out, but the clematis and fountain grass, I believe, are important factors.


Another day soon I’ve got to finish the job by tossing the remaining vines on the inside of the fence over the fence so I can cart them to a compost pile at the edge of our woods. And then I’ve got to use my electric trimmers to cut back the fountain grass.  The plantings along the backyard fence then will be ready for Summer 2011.


Something new: If you want to read earlier "Deer Country" postings, an easy way to find them is to go the end of the text of any "Deer Country" posting.  Just below the posting you'll see "Labels," one of which is "DeerCountry."  Click on "Deer Country," and you'll see all the series in a chronological list.

Three Helpful Guys

Jeff & Kevin

Three helpful guys—Kevin, Jeff, and Kenny—recently cleaned up winter damage at Meadow Glenn, and they did it in half a morning.


After surveying all the winter storm damage of our trees and shrubs, I wondered how many weeks, months, or years it would take me to get all the work done. In addition, I wanted to remove nearly 20 Hollywood junipers from my living snow fence because they just didn’t look right among their shorter relatives, Sea Green junipers.


But then our grandson Kevin suggested that he and his dad, Kenny, could come over and help. When the appointed day came, Kevin drove in with friend Jeff, and Kenny drove up a few minutes later.


In about two hours the three younger sets of muscles—with Jeff’s two Stihl chain saws—pruned damaged limbs from flowering plums, our ancient red maple, pines, and a wild cherry or two, plus cutting out the Hollywood junipers. They also cut the biggest limbs into sections and used Kenny’s Ford pickup to stack the cuttings on two compost piles in our woods.


They did all that in about two hours.


Two hours? If I worked on the heavy stuff just two hours a day by myself, the work might have taken weeks, months, perhaps into next year and given me plenty of back, joint, and muscle pain. It’s hard to admit, but I’m not 20, 30, 40, 50, or 60 anymore.


Thank you, Kevin, Jeff, and Kenny. Thank you very much.

The Pain of Spring

I posted on Monday about pruning our storm-damaged flowering plum. On Tuesday I posted about cutting back our fountain grass. Total time spent on those two projects: about four hours. Total hours of back, hip, shoulder, ankle, foot, and “other” pain: about 24 hours.


As I mentioned near the end of the second posting, by the end of the fourth hour “this Ancient Gardener was aching here, there, and just about everywhere.”


Yes, an acetaminophen tablet helped. The pain was gone in about 24 hours, though some stiff muscles remained a few more days.


What’s with the pain of spring these days? It seems to be getting worse. Is spring so much different than it was 30 or 40 years ago, when I worked eight hours a day in the yard and hardly thought about it?


Why more pain now?


Global warming? Hardly.


Are plants growing closer to the ground so I have to bend more? Hardly.


Am I 40 years older now?


Well, yes, that’s likely the reason. I bend easily—but then don’t stand again so quickly. I stoop easily—but sometimes have to use a shovel handle to gain the perpendicular stance I’d like. If Weed A and Weed B are four feet apart, sometimes I find that a crawl between the two is more efficient and less time consuming than standing and walking the two steps.


Ok, age is a factor we all face. As children, we dreamed of being “old”—or at least “older.” In our 20s and 30s age seemed all but irrelevant. In our 40s and 50s we watched our parents age but didn’t take it too seriously ourselves. In our 60s and 70s, well, we graying adults bought back braces and bottles of pain-killing tablets and learned to crawl again, at least from weed to weed.


To state the obvious, age, like weeds, comes naturally. No one is exempt. We exercise regularly. We watch our diets—at least keep an eye on the chocolate-covered almonds. We keep a bottle of acetaminophens in the kitchen cabinet. We try to remember to wear our back braces. We learn to use our hoes more efficiently, rather than bending low to snatch a weed from under a tomato plant. We do the heavy stuff just an hour or so, rather than all day.


And we seriously begin thinking of the time when we should perhaps hire a landscaper to do some of the heavy work. We decide to let the deer take over a stand of viburnum shrubs, rather than our building a fence to protect them.


Age. It’s coming to a body near you—to somebody you know—in fact, to you.


As I’ve started living in my eighth decade, I’m tuning in more to the realism in the Old Testament book of Ecclesiastes. From time to time I use Chapter 3 as a springboard to create paraphrases that speak directly to me:


There is a time for everything:
A time to be born,
And a time to die;
A time to plant,
And a time to mulch;
A time to harvest,
And a time to uproot;
A time for back pain,
And a time for an aspirin or two;
A time to hire out the work,
And supervise from the porch
With peace of mind, muscle, and soul.

Snowy Landscape: Beyond the Beauty

Japanese maple

Wednesday night’s “thundersnow”—it started with lightning and thunder—dumped just over nine inches of fluffy but wet snow here at Meadow Glenn. The fluff was beautiful at first look Thursday, but it damaged many of our trees and shrubs.


The Japanese maple on the north side of our house was beautiful—the spaces between its reddish branches almost filled in with the white stuff.

Flowering plum

Our flowering plum trees looked like fluff balls in Thursday’s morning light, but many of their branches, which I keep trimmed so the lowest is about seven feet above ground so I can mow under them with my Kubota tractor, touched the ground. They may spring back a little over the next few months, but I fear I’ll have lots of pruning to do in the spring.


Butterfly bushes—about four feet high before the storm—lie smashed to the ground. They bloom only on new growth, so I was planning to prune them to about one foot next month, but I fear I’ll find lots of split branches that will call for more drastic pruning than I had planned.

Where's the food?

As I looked out our front windows early Thursday morning, I saw that our bird feeders were encrusted with snow, and put that at the top of my “must do” list. As I looked at the strange sight, juncos arrived for an early breakfast of nyjer and sunflower seeds and tried to figure out how to reach the seed through the white crust.


After a fast breakfast of oatmeal on fresh, sliced strawberries, I put on my boots and winter work clothes and went to work.

Job 1: Brush off the feeders and refill them. As soon as I moved off, three pairs of cardinals jockeyed with juncos for breakfast. Song and white-throated sparrows soon arrived, along with chickadees and titmice. A female downy woodpecker pecked away at the block of suet.


Job 2: Snowblow the driveway. Thursday was one of those days that it’s great having a snowblower. The snow was heavy, so this Ancient Gardener could have “overdone” it quite easily.


As I leave the house to do jobs that are labor intensive, Ellen usually says, “Now don’t overdo it.” That’s not a cliché. She means it. I have overdone it in the past.


“Of course not, dear.”


The problem with overdoing it is that you often don’t know you’ve overdone it until you’ve already overdone it.


But I am getting more realistic about such things. In my 20s, 30s, 40s, and 50s I thought nothing of working until I could work no more. In my 60s I began to wise up a bit, to keep track of time and, well, not to overdo it.

And in my 70s, I often spread a job over several days—a half hour today, a half hour tomorrow. Snowblowing, of course, isn’t really a job that you can spread over several days, as the snow might turn to slush and then ice. So I’ve traded my snow shovel for my snowblower, and I let the snowblower do the work. I don’t wrestle with it, don’t try to force it to do something a little bit faster. I don’t push and pull. I let the gears do the work.


Snowblowing today took about three hours. I cleared our 600-foot driveway and more in about three hours.  The “more” was at the end of our driveway, where the county road crews had stacked about four feet of snow and ice.


Yes, I let the snowblower chew and spit and throw at its leisure. A neighbor used his shovel to help break it up. And then I helped that neighbor clear his driveway. And then a third neighbor needed help clearing his stack of snow and ice. Working together—with two snowblowers and one snow shovel—we got the job done in reasonable time.


This week’s “thundersnow” soon will be but a memory. Believe me, I slept well last night.

Old Brain, New Challenge

It’s lonely out here in blogland, even though I know lots of you are reading my postings. I check on Ancient Gardener’s statistics from time to time. Several hundred of you checked out the two holiday greetings. Between 70 and 80 of you are following “Deer Country” postings. But near zero of you have posted a Comment.


Now I’ve gone through much pain and agony and added a “Reactions” line under each of the postings. You can now just click on “Like” or “Dislike.” In addition to the general “page views” statistics, I’ll get some feedback about what kind of postings you appreciate.


It sounds so simple—that I added the “Reactions” line. But it took me about a month to work that out, not because of the complexity of how to do it but because of my kindergarten-level computer abilities. I speak various professional jargons, but not “computerlingua.”


I first noticed the problem when I discovered that you were commenting about specific blogs on my Facebook page scores of more times than you were on my blog. Why? The obvious answer, to me anyway, is that Blogger makes it “uneasy” to post a comment. Blogger continues to improve, so maybe there’s hope the software someday will make it as easy to comment on my blog as it is to post a comment on Facebook.


But over time I tried to figure out how you can post an opinion on my blog without using words, something like Facebook’s “Like” button. Well, it took me a while to discover on the Blogger “Help” pages that there is a Blogger “Reactions” widget that works like the Facebook “Like” button.


I carefully studied the directions and followed them—and saved the changes on my template—just like the instructions said. “Reactions” refused to appear. After a few days I reread and redid—nothing. After another week I reread and redid—nothing.


Then I went back to the “Help” pages and discovered lots of Blogger users have had that problem—for several years. I looked in awe at the suggestions posted by users. Go to the HTML and delete this and add that after this but before that. No, no, no—not this Ancient Gardener. As far as I knew, HTML means His Template Made Lethal.


Tonight I went back and reread all the “Help” postings on the problem and noticed that one is labeled “Best Advice.” All I had to do was to backup the blog and reset the defaults.


Backup the blog?


Reset the defaults?


Is that English? Well, for lack of a technical translator, I had to research each of those directions. I’d never backed up a blog before—but I did it. I’d never reset defaults before—but I did it.


I held my breath and hit the preview button.


There it was, the “Reactions” line—and where I wanted it.


Heavy sighing. Deep breathing.


Did I really do that?


Yes, I did it. And it only took four weeks.


Smile, you young-uns who grew up with computers.


But please do me a favor when you read one of my postings and don’t want to post a Comment. Just hit “Like” or “Dislike” on the “Reactions” line below the posting.


I’ll like that—even if you dislike the posting.

Mapping Life's Journey

Benjamin Franklin supposedly said that nothing in this world is certain except death and taxes. Most of us ante up in due course to pay our taxes, but few of us seem comfortable discussing death and about how we’d like to get from today to our last minute.


Part of that discussion, of course, would be how we want to be cared for and who will make our financial and healthcare decisions when we are no longer able to do so. Wise seniors think through those issues, discuss them with family, and sign off on legal documents—called advanced directives—to guide family members and care-givers as they help us through our final days.


Yes, Ellen and I each have advance directives—a medical directive and a power of attorney. We took copies of our powers of attorney to our bank more than 10 years ago. Last week I stopped by the bank and asked if they still have the photocopies they made and filed. “We’re 10 years older now, and we just want to make sure everything is in order,” I said.


Click, click went the assistant branch manager’s computer keys. “Hmm,” she said. “We don’t have any indication of POAs for you and your wife in our computer system.” Somehow the contents of that old manila folder didn’t make it into the computerized system.

This week I took our current POAs to the bank and the assistant explained how the bank would relate to us and our designated representative in the future as circumstances change.


Even though we have advance directives, I find it still helpful to read current articles about them and occasionally to review my documents to make sure they’re still what I want. The most recent article I’ve read is “Life-or-death decisions call for advance planning,” by Michelle Andrews, published recently by the Washington Post in collaboration with Kaiser Health News.


Most articles about advance directives seem to me to be pep talks to encourage people to make sure they have them, but this article went beyond the rah-rah-rah and discussed issues that I found meaningful, and you may too.


For instance, what kind of person would make the most effective surrogate decision-maker? What could happen if your scenario doesn’t fit the words of your advance directive?


The article also points out something important to Internet readers: Names of advance directives sometimes vary from state to state, and state laws about advance directives vary, so you should get local legal advice.


Regardless of your age, if you don’t have advance directives, read the article to find out what they are, and, really, isn’t it about time you start a discussion that ends with your signing off on your own documents?


If you have advance directives, great. But do read this article—and review your documents.


To read the Post/Kaiser Health News article, CLICK HERE.

Confidential: Brian & Lynn, Read This

Some subjects are so sensitive and potentially painful that we tend to shy from discussing them.  For anyone approaching age 70 or beyond—or has a parent in that category—the subject of “senior freedom” can be about as welcome as finding a landmine in the rose bed.

Everyone seems to agree that higher decades of life bring changes and challenges. Not everyone is comfortable discussing the implications of decreasing physical abilities or increasing mental disabilities.


I remember that when my folks moved here years ago, they kept little “secrets” from us about their increasing challenges, secrets that we sometimes didn’t find out about for weeks or months.


“You dad fell down again in the yard today,” my mother once said at supper.


“Again?” I was shocked. “What happened?”


“Oh, it wasn’t anything,” my dad explained. “I know how to fall without getting hurt.” An excellent athlete in high-school years, he probably did “know how to fall” then—but in his 80s?


Questions abound. When is it time to surrender a senior’s prime symbol of freedom—the driver’s license? You may know someone 90 who is a sane and safe driver, but you may also know someone 73 who is a driver straight out of hell and a menace to himself or herself and everyone else on the road.


Are bills getting paid on time and prescription medicines taken on time? When is it time to get a little extra help for lawn and housework or even the daily routines of life?

What would you add to this list?


Everyone wants to be the “good guy,” not the “bad guy,” in such situations. So we sometimes think about such issues but stop short of having serious, two-way conversations about them.


The front page of the Washington Post yesterday featured a story about an older couple and their family’s grappling with such problems. The story is tragic. Could something like it happen to you—or one you love?


Ellen and I both have read the story. It’s sparked an interesting discussion about how we grapple with life in our 70s. We both thought I should post a link to the Post article.


A daughter of the couple in the Post story commented, “We didn’t realize it was time to do more. We didn’t realize it was time…. Oh, the second-guessing that is running through our minds.”


If you’re approaching 70 or are already beyond, read the story and ask your children to read it too. Take note, Brian and Lynn.


Better to think and talk now than to second-guess later.


To read the Post article, CLICK HERE.