There has still been no planting of peas. It was too cold and windy on St Patrick’s Day. The beds were still rock, and I had enough on my plate trying to keep the porch furniture from blowing around as the wind kept shifting and blowing over 30mph. I was not going to plant in that weather.
I didn’t even bother checking the beds on Wednesday because that was the dark moon and I just don’t plant on that day. That’s one superstition I can’t overcome. Mostly because it has often proven true that things begun on the dark moon have often gone awry. Intellectually, I know this statistic is based on what I notice… but still… it happens… In any case, it was also very cold. 8°F in the morning. It did get up to 20°, but temperatures like that aren’t going to thaw the frozen raised beds.
Thursday sort of went by in a blur. I don’t actually remember why I didn’t check for pea planting potential. Probably something to do with doomscrolling… Only, I’ve not been scrolling for doom as much as for a dark sort of hope. Or at least for grounding. I’ve started watching local ecology videos, like the relaxing underwater landscapes filmed by this snorkeling Vermonter and the instructional videos put out by New England Forests, especially those with Tom Wessels, author of Reading the Forested Landscape. I can’t be out in the woods right now, so this is the best substitute.
Then came Friday… and six inches of snow. This is what my garden looks like now…
It had all melted… but the weather gods decreed that the equinox would bring us more winter. It stayed cold on Saturday, though a couple inches melted in the mild sunshine. But then more snow fell Sunday night and kept on falling all day. And it wasn’t just snow. By mid-afternoon, the precipitation was more ice than snow. I turned up the heat so that if the power went out it would take a while to chill the house. Fortunately, the power held in my town. Much of the surrounding countryside was not so lucky, what with falling tree limbs and idiots driving too fast on icy roads taking down power lines and blowing up at least one transformer. I didn’t make it to Sugar on Snow. I was not going to drive in that weather. With my luck, I’d manage to get there and the power would go out…
My poor snowdrop is buried again. But the peaches think that spring is imminent. Look at the buds:
The pussy willows in my nascent “hedge” on the veg garden are covered in fuzzy catkins. The maples have swollen buds though none are opening. Which is a good thing, because once that happens sugar season is over — and we’ve not had a great season yet. And we might have a week with only one day that remains below freezing. So perhaps the peas can go in the ground here soon.
Meanwhile, I did this on Sunday…
I also thinned the chiles and sweet peppers and transplanted a few seedlings from pots that were overfull to pots that hadn’t done much. Everything survived. So… indications are that I’ll have quite a lot of pepper plants this year. Which is good… because food is getting ridiculously expensive. And there aren’t many hot pepper producers within a short drive of my food co-op. So this is how I have chile this year.
©Elizabeth Anker 2026
By My Solitary Hearth 