Wisdom from the Neighbors

We have an older couple living next door to us. They've been here 40 years, which is long enough to have seen this town go from a wide spot in the road to...well, a wider spot in the road. But it's on its way to becoming a fairly large town in its own right, and if the City Council has its way, it'll be down right urban. (I suspect if the locals have their way, it won't. People don't move here for the Night Life and the urban amenities, they move here for the elbow room and the scenery.)

At any rate, I got to talking to the lady, Pat, over the fence this morning. She was watching my husband and I put out ground cloth for the base of our soon-to-be giant garden plot, and commenting that it reminded her of what she and her husband did 40 years ago. We talked about the wildlife she sees in their yard at night (mainly opossums and racoons, with other occasional visitors), and about my chickens, and about the Mason Bees I'm hoping to raise to pollinate the garden.

She then asked me, "Well, you know what the old timers will tell you, right?" Well, no...what will they tell me? "Don't plant your garden while there's still snow on Silver Star." First off, I didn't even know that mountain over to our East had a name. Well, the one directly to our east is more of a large hill, and it's Tukes Mountain, which I knew. But the one a little farther south and then east, which is often covered with snow, is apparently Silver Star Mountain. I looked it up on Google maps. Learn something new every day!

Pat told me that when she first moved out here, she got that advice, and didn't heed it. She'd never had problems with a garden before, so she just did her thing. And she didn't have much of a yield that summer, though nothing actually died. She thinks it's because it got so cold in the spring that the plants just got sapped of energy and never really recovered. I've had similar experiences with tomatoes, only in reverse; I was extremely busy and didn't get mine planted until mid June one year, and my mother in law had planted hers about 2 months before, yet by mid August my plants were outproducing hers. Every year I have to remind myself not to get too gung-ho about planting early or as soon as the weather seems nice, because we almost invariably have some late frosts and cold evenings through mid-April at least, and often through the end of April. Our last "frost danger" day isn't until almost the end of May!

The other thing Pat told me was that until the Oak and Walnut trees bud out, we're still in winter and in danger of frost. She said she has neighbors who don't have walnut trees who come over and take a look at hers to see if it's budded yet. I might have to do the same thing!