What a difference a day makes. I wrote Sunday’s post mostly on Friday evening, in the middle of the long, cold rain. At that point, few of my jungle trees had mature leaves. On Saturday, the clouds cleared off for most of the day and the temperature warmed to about 70°F. Then on Sunday, it nearly hit 80° for a while with mostly clear skies. Well, that was all the prompting the maples needed. They burst into full leaf! I’ve never seen that happen so fast. But I guess the trees saw an opportunity to drink up the sunlight and made a herculean effort to take advantage of that to the fullest. Spring is the season of rapid changes, after all.
However, some changes are ending. For starters, day length becomes notably less changeful around now. Just a month ago, each day brought about three more minutes of sunlight. That adds up quickly! April gains about ninety minutes of day length. But May adds less than an hour to that total, and most of that is added early in the month. We are slowing down to solstice time, when not much happens.
This stable period of long days stimulates summer plant growth. But it also means weather will be less changeable for a while. The solstices are usually a slack time in the weather. In the winter, it’s normally cold and often cloudy for weeks. There may be a few storms — and these tend to dump a lot of snow because they last so long — but mostly it’s monotonously cold and grey. In the summer, the winds calm, the rains dry up, and the air becomes hot and sticky. Late May to early July is the hottest time of the year for New England. It is also a time of drought. Though there are many cloudy days in my weather journal, the moisture never seems to fall from the sky. But again, if it does start raining, it will last for forty days and forty nights. At least. The first year I lived in New England — a very strong El Niño year — it started raining in early June and never really stopped until after Fourth of July. At which point it quickly reverted to drought…
With the current El Niño predicted to be the strongest ever, I wonder what this summer will bring.
Whatever comes, I think the garden will deal with it. Not sure how the basement will do. But this is the summer that I will be hiring someone to seal the walls. Hopefully, that will translate into less flooding, along with less mold (which is my primary concern). I’m not doing the floors, so it still might seep up through the concrete, especially where the old well was dug — and filled in with a crappy concrete plug. I have a groundwater stream that runs under my house. There will probably always be moisture down there. But I want to knock out the mold that grows in the walls, so… sealant. There’s a swimming pool paint that can be slathered on to the crumbling concrete and brick. It won’t be perfect, but it will be a vast improvement over what’s happening down there now…
Not sure what I’m going to do with the cat while that is happening. Her litter box and food bowls will likely need to stay in the kitchen… which will not be pleasant…
I also broke down and hired someone to clear the rest of the jungle. I just don’t have the time. Nor the hand strength to confidently wield a chain saw any more. So there’s a young guy out there chopping up dead trees and slashing his way through all the blackthorn. He’s making huge piles that I will turn into hügelkultur mounds along the base of the property. Eventually, I’d like to plant these mounds with more well-behaved bushes like hydrangea, serviceberry, viburnum and pussy willow. For now, I plan to just cover it all up with mulch and leave it like that. Truthfully, it might just stay that way… because who knows how expensive it will be to buy shrubs in the future…
The clearing is about half done and already I’m thinking that I’ll be planting the pumpkins and winter squash in there. On the far side of the maples, the ground is fairly level and gets plenty of sunshine. The winter cucurbits would finally have room to roam. And, as a significant side-benefit, the broad leaves of these vines will go a long way to shading the ground and inhibiting regrowth. I know I will be cutting down blackthorn several times a year for the rest of my life, but from here on out the plants will be thin saplings, knee high or less. I might be able to use my weed-whacker on them (if I can figure out the string-loading thing…). But it will never again be a quarter acre wall of impenetrable thorns.
I am also thinking of buying one of those cheap greenhouses and putting it in the sunniest and most level space down there. I’d like a place to grow flat-leafed parsley, rosemary and santolina. These are all hardy in the next hardiness zone from the one I garden under, so they don’t need much protection. But I haven’t been able to grow them with just fabric row cover, perhaps because they don’t appreciate being covered. But row cover also doesn’t do much to protect the roots, and winter’s hard freeze does spread into the covered beds. So I figure some large planters, a lot of sun, and glass walls might do the trick.
I really hope so anyway, because I use a lot of parsley and rosemary and prefer it fresh. Well… dried parsley is nearly useless. No flavor, no texture. It’s like paper confetti… But even frozen parsley is sort of nondescript. It seems to need to have those plant oils actively flowing through the leaves to taste its best. Also, as parsley is biennial and doesn’t produce seed in its first year, I have had no luck getting viable seeds out of the plants. So I’ve had to buy fresh plants each year. I’m tired of that. I want to let them propagate themselves — as they readily do if happy.
I had a potted rosemary for many years, but it died this past winter. I think it got too cold on my back porch while I was down in Brooklyn for Thanksgiving. Or it may be that it was just done. I don’t know how long they live in pots. I know that they start to get woody and less resinous after 8-10 years outdoors in ideal conditions. This one was not in ideal conditions. The pot had no drainage and was too small. It was supposed to be temporary… well… I guess it was…
I haven’t had santolina since leaving New Mexico, which is a shame… Santolina is a great insect repellant. Put a sachet of it in a blanket chest, and you’ll never have moth problems. It also keeps the bugs out of the garden when planted as a barrier hedge, though I’ll not be able to do that here in New England. It makes fantastic dried flowers, little golden buttons that perfectly complement lavender and limonium in wreaths and dried arrangements. A wreath of limonium, yarrow, lavender and santolina quite effectively keeps the bugs away from the doorway — and it looks wonderfully autumnal. But the real reason I want santolina is that rodents hate it, even more so than the bugs. A swag of it hanging in the garden shed kept the mice out all winter. This was a real concern in New Mexico, as rodent-infested sheds result in a half dozen cases of hantavirus every year, with up to half of the infected dying. I think it may be time to start taking virus precautions again. I don’t think the virus has made it to Vermont yet, but you never know what a rat might bring in…
This week…
If you have clear skies, look toward the sunset tonight at about 8:30pm. The Moon and Venus are in fairly tight conjunction. Tomorrow, St Dunstan’s Day, the crescent Moon sits between Venus and Jupiter at about the same time. Then, same time on Wednesday, the Moon hangs just above Jupiter. This is about the full extent of night sky viewing for the Flower Moon, so don’t miss it.
This weekend there are a few holidays… In the US, this is Memorial Day weekend, the official beginning of the grilling season. In some communities, this is still a day to honor fallen soldiers with parades, speeches and visits to gravesites with fresh flowers. That is mostly true in Vermont, which has an aging population. Vermonters are visiting the graves of their loved ones lost to wars they remember. But in much of the rest of the country, there is less focus on memory than on enjoying the present moment. There are no federal holidays between President’s Day in February and Memorial Day at the end of May, so this is, I think understandably, a day to crash in the sunshine. Or garden… Which is how I spend the day.
Sunday is Whitsunday, or Pentecost. In the Christian liturgical year, this is when the Holy Spirit inspired evangelism in those left behind after their Savior returned to heaven on Easter Sunday. But the holiday in practice is not obviously related to this origin story. Whitsunday is a period of fairs and festivals, and this has been true since at least the time of Chrétien de Troyes who described Whitsuntide in Arthur’s Camelot as a week of feasting and merriment.
The Saturday before Whitsunday is a day of well dressing, when people decorate springs and village wells with elaborate arrangements of flowers, shells and ribbons. In many fishing communities, the village gathers for the blessing of the boats, ensuring a good catch and a safe return throughout the summer months. There are also boat races and, of course, trade fairs — because wherever boat owners gather, there will be boat sales.
Whitsunday itself has been a day of fairs and festival markets for centuries. Called Whitsun fairs or ales, these were community parties with Morris dancing, plays and music, games, livestock competitions and trading, and often copious drinking. Whitsun fairs were also traditional hiring days for agricultural labor and for domestic servants, though the week after Whitsunday was one of the few weeks that peasants were released from manor work — a sort of spring break for farm laborers.
One of the most outlandish traditions of Whitsunday is the Cooper’s Hill Cheese Roll at Brockworth, near Gloucester, England. This is a competition to chase a round of double-Gloucester cheese down a 200-yard hillside. The cheese is sent rolling down the steep slope, and then competitors chase after, trying to catch it. It’s harder than it sounds. The cheese picks up speed quickly and packs enough momentum to knock a person down. The cheese remains uncaught most years. In any case, the first person to cross the finish line at the bottom of the hill wins the cheese. It is thought that this race has been held for centuries, though the first written account does not appear until 1826. These days, the Roll takes place on the Monday after Whitsunday. While Americans are grilling cheeseburgers, the English are chasing a round of cheese down a grassy hillside. But I guess it’s not just the Brits. Recent race winners come from all around the globe, so this is truly an international spectacle.
You can’t make this stuff up…
Garden advice…
This is the first week of the Flower Moon, so plant annual flowers and herbs. Cold-tolerant flowers like nasturtiums, calendula, borage and violets can be seeded outdoors this week. Dill and cilantro can be planted in pots that can be moved all around the garden in the coming months. Both of these strong-smelling herbs attract pollinators, especially butterflies which love the umbels of florets that serve as comfortable landing pads. Both also repel all sorts of pests. I’ve even found that deer will leave the peas alone if interplanted with a hedge of dill and cilantro and borage.
But to keep the rodents — and birds — out of the sunflower seeds, start these indoors. Plant them in paper pots that can be buried, pot and all, in the garden soil once the plants are established and the temperatures are reliably above 50°F.
If you haven’t planted potatoes yet, it’s time to get that done. Even in Vermont, the dandelions are running to seed and soil temperatures are warming to the point that the seed potatoes might just rot.
©Elizabeth Anker 2026
By My Solitary Hearth 