A garden journal

I love my piles of gardening books. I have a wide variety of references, and I mix and match strategies to suit what I’m growing and where. Given our steady supply of composted manure and ready access to waste straw, hay and wool for mulch, we are fortunate to have the full set of gardening strategies available to us – we aren’t reliant on chemical fertilizers to keep our garden beds in good shape, we just add manure every year, and we have plenty of it. It’s taken quite awhile to get the entire garden area ready to come under cultivation, but I think, finally, this year we are there.

I use Mel Bartholemew’s Square Foot Gardening for most of my root vegetables, and I do love planting my carrots and beets in little squares inside the big one foot squares marked off by yarn in my wood-sided raised beds. However, I also follow the advice of Steve Solomon’s Gardening When it Counts, which is pretty much the antithesis of the intensive strategies of the square foot method, for other things. Solomon’s strategies work really well for larger plants like potatoes, corn, and tomatoes, and this year I’ll be attempting the wide short row strategy he recommends for some of my other plants. I also hope to incorporate some of the season extension strategies described by Eliot Coleman in the Four Season Harvest, a lovely gift from Theresa at Pondering the Myriad Things. In addition to these major resources are the books on the medicinal uses of herbs, books on natural plant dyes, and assorted general garden reference books.

Trying to find the information I need among all these amazing resources can be a real challenge sometimes, so I decided to create my very own garden journal, combining all the key points I needed in one spot.

I sat down at the kitchen table with my piles of books and a new, untouched journal (a gift from my wonderful husband a few years back, which I’d been saving for something special: this is it). I also dug up a calendar (this one is the STARS fundraising calendar – The Reluctant Farmer has helped load people into the STARS rescue helicopter more than once in his role as volunteer firefighter), and my stash of seeds.

First, let’s talk about the seed stash. Normally, the seeds live in a lovely binder that The Boy got me from Lee Valley (where else?) that protects the seeds from moisture and keeps them nicely organized. However, come planting time, I need them out where I can quickly rifle through them to get to the ones I am after – so, I took a regular cardboard box, chopped off the lid flaps, and sliced them so that they fit into one another to divide the interior into seed-packet-sized sections. The seeds are sorted into the sections based on when I need to deal with them – the ones that are going to need stratification and indoor starting are in the first sections, those that need to go out early (as soon as the soil can be worked) are up next, and the sensitive ones that need the frost well behind us are at the very back.

This also got me started on the journal itself.

Each plant is listed at the top of a page, which is cross-referenced on a table of contents at the beginning. The herbs are all at the beginning of the journal, vegetables and fruit plants are at the back. All plants have information about where and how they need to be planted, if they need stratification and indoor starting or if they go straight outside, what kind of watering requirements they have, how much sun they want, and so forth. Then, herbs have additional information about their medicinal properties and which parts are harvested, and any plant that is useful as a dye plant has the colours and any instructions for use listed as well. The information is gathered from all the relevant sources – so, if this is a plant I put in square foot blocks, I wrote down the density per block, if it’s one that I plan to follow Solomon’s spacing guidelines, I wrote those in. I make a note in the margin to indicate which book the information came from, so I can go there for more detail if I wish.

The journal still isn’t quite complete, but I have basic information for just about every seed I have in the collection, plus the few I have still coming on order. As time passes, I can update it with specifics about what works well here, in our specific microclimate, which is why it is called the Apple Jack Creek Garden Journal. It’s specific to here. There’s no need for me to write down that carrots can be stored in the ground over the winter if you mulch well with straw … that is true in some places, I am sure, but not here, not by a long shot (even under a layer of straw, the ground is quite thoroughly frozen all winter: you’d be chipping out frozen carrots with a pick-axe if you tried that here). Most of the information about “a second planting for a fall harvest” is not relevant either – our growing season is too short. however, that might change, with climate change and season extension, so I’ll leave some blank space and add to the book as I learn.

The calendar is the piece that is most specific to this year’s plans. The ‘official last frost date’ is marked, as is the date we actually had our last frost last year (which I know because I wrote it on my garden calendar from last year, and it was a whole month after we thought we were in the clear … not a good spring, 2009). Using those dates (and the dates of the full and new moon) I work backwards to figure out when things need to be started indoors, or when we should be planting things outside. Family tradition says you don’t plant outside until the first full moon after the May long weekend, and this year, for the tender plants, I’m extending the target to the first new moon after the first full moon in May – we’ll see how that goes, and if it works, it may be incorporated into the family lore.

As each seed is documented and it’s needs are determined, that information goes onto the calendar. Several of the herbs, for instance, require stratification, some for six weeks, some for four, some for one or two. The calendar makes it easy to determine when I want to have “seed starting day for herbs” – knowing that they take about 2 weeks to poke their heads out of the dirt and need a few weeks indoors to grow and turn into actual plants before being set outside. Given a starting date for seeds, it’s a simple matter to work backwards to list which varieties need to go into the freezer when. I wrote that detail on the seed packets, too, for those that didn’t mention it, as well as making sure it’s in the journal.

The calendar is the best way to track what really happened, which will, of course, help for next year. For instance, I remember that last year that late frost killed a whole lot of things I’d put out too early (all my tomatoes, for instance) although I wasn’t careful about documenting when each thing was planted, and I want to do that this year. I also remember that I had too many seedlings indoors for too long – I started them too early, and they outgrew their little pots before I could get them in the ground – so this year, I’m trying to time things a little better. I do still have the ‘optimistic planting’ dates marked – hey, you can put a few seeds in early, and if they grow, well, awesome, and if not, well, not a huge loss. Same for the started plants – I finally put a few tomato seedlings in dirt yesterday, because I just couldn’t stand the wait any longer, but the bulk of the tomato plants won’t be started for several more weeks.

Planning the garden is a great thing to do in late winter – it makes you feel like spring really is coming, and it saves a lot of headache later on if you take the time to do the research before hand (I now know why a bunch of my herbs didn’t do anything last year – that whole stratification thing matters!)

Maybe a garden journal is just what you need, too.

Planning the garden

Oh my, I have a lot of seeds. And I’ve ordered more. And I don’t think my garden is quite big enough. :)

This is a good problem to have, really.

The past two years have seen the garden space slowly expanding … well, the fences haven’t moved, but the area within the fences has been gradually brought into shape for planting. The original two 16x4 foot raised beds are still there and serving well, and the strawberry bed that was added last year will hopefully start producing this summer. This past fall, the sheep were sent in to eat down the remaining grass (which grew to knee height over the summer), so with luck, the almost indestructible pasture grasses will finally be in a state that they can be controlled.

This spring, more compost will be hauled in, rows for planting peas and corn and beans and tomatoes will be marked out and piled high with fresh soil, and walkways will be mulched with straw. Three  new herb beds will be laid out (maybe with wooden borders, maybe with rocks, maybe just with marked off boundaries), and a grape arbour will be constructed (yes, I found  a grape that is supposed to be cold hardy … I just had to try it!). There is a spot set aside for the new raspberry bushes, and squash plants will be put in all around the border. Peas will be planted with sunflowers so that their supports grow along side the vines, and if I get really organized, some flowers might even get planted out by the driveway. The garden calendar has all the dates for putting seeds that need stratification into the freezer, when to start the various indoor seedlings, when the last frost date is supposed to be (and when it actually was last year, which was a whole month later than the schedule called for!), and a variety of possible planting dates, all, of course, subject to the weather.

It’s good to think about gardens when winter starts to get really long. It makes spring seem closer. :)

Spaghetti Squash Soup

Spaghetti squash is an odd sort of vegetable. This sturdy, almost-impossible-to-cut-open yellow squash cooks up to reveal stringy insides that can substitute directly for pasta. It just isn’t at all what you expect when you hold one in your hand.

I bought a spaghetti squash at the grocery store a year or two ago and cooked it up for dinner (as I recall, we had a vegetable pasta sauce thing to go over top of it, and we ate it as though it were actual spaghetti). Everyone liked it, and I saved the seeds and planted them in the garden.

This year, we got quite a few squash from the plants that grew from the saved seeds – and this is not a small thing, given how generally awful our garden season was this summer. The squash are now piled in a cool spot in the house, and I peek in on them every so often to make sure none have gone soft or started to mould. So far, all is well in the squash pile. :)

Today I had a craving for a nice warm soup for supper, and so I took 2 of the larger squash, cut them in half (with a really big knife and some pounding), then set them cut side down in a lasagne pan filled with about an inch of water and baked them until they were soft. (After I started, I read that you can also stab them with a fork, cook them whole, and then slice them after they’ve cooked to a softer state … hadn’t thought of that!)

Madhur Jaffrey’s World Vegetarian cookbook has an excellent recipe for pumpkin soup which basically involves sautéing an onion in oil with some ginger, then adding the cooked squash and a chopped potato or two, topping the pot up with vegetable broth and simmering with pepper and a couple of bay leaves until it’s all cooked. Once the potatoes are soft, the soup is run through the blender, then reheated with a bit of milk. The recipe says you can substitute any yellow-fleshed squash for the original pumpkin, and spaghetti squash worked out just fine.

The resulting soup is delicious – very gentle, not overwhelmingly spiced (although there is another variation with curry which I may try on a cold winter day), and nicely comforting with a loaf of home made bread.

I made sure to set the seeds aside to dry out for next year’s garden: any vegetable that keeps this well and cooks up into a meal perfectly suited to chilly winter days is definitely on my to-grow list!

In the garden

Once again, I spent Sunday afternoon in the garden. A bird came to sing to me from the fencepost several times, so I did indeed have “the song of the birds for mirth”.

I didn’t get all of the mulch down when the garden was first set up, nor did I get all of the walkways and beds delineated … and it’s been several weeks since I spent any time in the garden. Suddenly, the grass is knee high in several places!

Today’s job was to get the grass under control. I attacked it with my mattock, and was amazed at how well the tool worked for the job. (I’ve never had a garden big enough to use a hoe or anything larger than hand tools … it’s hard work, but boy, does it go fast!) Once the forest of grass was cleared away, I could see several pea plants working their way upwards, a few squash plants with big broad leaves soaking up the sunshine, and lots of potato plants.

As I was working the soil near the potatoes, I saw that the partially-composted ‘stuff’ that was put down early in the spring is well on it’s way to becoming humus. I dug the pathway wider and moved the rich brown compost onto one of the raised beds, where I will plant .. umm … something. I’m not sure what yet. :)

The onions are tall and sturdy, the lettuce and spinach are suddenly leafing out, and the beans are starting to look like actual plants. The wheat is knee-high, and I’m really not sure if the green leafy thing I saw is the Jerusalem Artichoke or something else. I can’t remember where I planted it, and I’ve never grown it before, so I’m not sure what it is supposed to look like. :)

The first radishes were harvested today and served to The Reluctant Farmer for a Father’s Day treat (he likes radishes), and the dinner potatoes were seasoned with some green onion from the garden. Harvest time is nearly here!

Next, I need to plant some more radishes, weed the other raised bed, get some tomato plants out there, and put the peppers in. Maybe next weekend I’ll head down to the greenhouse and pick up some seedlings to replace the starts I had that didn’t make it.

I was thinking today that working in the garden feels like a reward – when the other urgent jobs, like fence repairs, are done, then it’s time to go play in the dirt. Ahh. I love my garden.

The compost is steaming!

Yes, you read that correctly.

Last evening, it was pretty chilly outside (around 5 degrees C) and I looked out to see steam coming off the compost heap. I put on my shoes and went outside to hold my hand over the steaming spot, and sure enough, it was very warm!

This is great news - the compost pile is cooking nicely! That means we'll have good quality dirt from our barnyard waste. Way cheaper than getting it in big bales from Canadian Tire, and obviously the mix is richer this year than last - I think the addition of the cow manure has optimized the mix.

We've also started feeding the chickens on the pile - a scoop of grain is scattered along the top of the pile, and they scratch through it adding their own manure while helping to turn the top layer of the pile. And, they get to keep their feet warm while they are doing it!

Potatoes!

The potatoes are coming up!

This is very exciting because, well, growing stuff is always exciting, but you should realize that the new green plants are not from proper seed potatoes, nor are they in proper soil. So it’s even more exciting than usual.

I always have some potatoes in the bin that start growing eyes before I get around to using them. I’ve read that you’re not supposed to use store potatoes for planting because they’ve been treated with sprout inhibitors, but as I’ve rarely had aging potatoes refuse to put out eyes, maybe Canadian potato companies don’t use inhibitors. Maybe it’s a guerilla potato marketing tactic! You know, if we let the potatoes sprout, maybe folks will plant some of their own! The growing season here is short enough, we don’t have to worry about losing market share. A potato in every garden, that’s the way to increase our popularity! Spread the joy of potatoes! 

Anyway, if it’s got eyes growing out of it, it’s a candidate for the garden in my opinion, even if it isn’t a Canadian Potato Growers conspiracy.

Now, about the soil. The edges of the garden are piled deep with not-really-composted waste hay, mostly. All the really loose and still-identifiable bits from the compost pile got heaped around the edge of the garden: it’ll break down eventually, and it might as well break down in the spot it’s intended to stay in once it turns into proper compost. Then, since it wasn’t gonna cost me anything if the experiment didn’t work, I stuck some sprouted potatoes into the piles of not-really-soil-but-definitely-organic-waste, sprayed some water in the general vicinity when I remembered, and pretty much just hoped for the best.

We’ve had a bit of rain over the last few days (finally!) and during a break in the showers The Reluctant Farmer and I took a meander around the garden. “What are these?” he asked, “Potatoes?” Yup! Potato plants, coming up along the edge of the garden, growing right through the yellowed stems of straw and hay!

I counted thirteen plants showing their leaves, which is an encouraging start. There are probably a few more to come up yet, and the moisture will definitely help. I also planted another fifteen or so in a much-closer-to-actual-soil row in the centre of the garden about a week ago, so with luck, we will see their lovely green heads soon as well.

Ah, fresh potatoes from the garden … I can’t wait!

The gift of The Four Season Harvest

The ever-inspiring Theresa, of Pondering the Myraid Things, had a Blogiversary book give-away ... and I won a wonderful book on gardening!

It arrived in the mail on Friday, and I've been poring over it since then. The book is The Four Season Harvest, one that's been recommended to me several times, and now that I've perused it, I can see why! The author's approach to gardening makes so much sense ... don't bust your backside doing things the hard way, and implement what you do in such a way that you extend your harvest well beyond what you might expect.

I've been contemplating making a cold frame for awhile now, to get a jump start on spring ... but it hadn't occurred to me that it might be possible to grow cold-hardy things in a cold frame even in the winter! The author of the book is in Maine, where it's awfully cold in winter, but with a bit of a different flavour from what we get here ... still, it's worth a try. There's a bit of a warm microclimate in front of the house, where a straw bale base with a cover might just work.

I'm inspired!

Thanks, Theresa. :)

Compost ... before it's really compost

The compost we create around here begins it's life in a rather inelegant fashion: it starts out as a big stinky pile of disgustingly mucky hay and straw.

We use deep bedding during the winter - sometimes on purpose (like in the barn and the shelter), and sometimes it just kinda happens (as hay piles up in the feeding areas and such). In the spring, once everything thaws out, we have to dig down through the layers of bedding and waste until we find the dirt beneath, moving the mixture of soaked hay, straw and manure into a big pile so that it can compost into something fit to put on the garden.

Today we used the bobcat to get most of the muck scraped up - the space in front of the barn is almost entirely cleared, and the sheep's winter feed pen is now a foot deeper along one side. There's still a bit more to move, but The Reluctant Farmer was otherwise occupied this afternoon: there was a grass fire in the next county over, and our district was called to help. He's so much better than I am with the bobcat, I'll let him get the remainder of the muck.

I did use the pitchfork to clear out the barn (it has to be done by hand), which was a bigger job than I anticipated. Still, it's better to take a couple of hours in the spring and get it all cleared out at once than try to chip away at frozen chunks of straw and manure every day during the winter.

The barn windows are open to air out the ammonia, and a fresh layer of straw is down in the two main stalls. We'll be keeping the doors closed to keep the chickens out now, as they liked to roost on the stall barriers and they made a mess of things. The two infrequently used stalls still have to be mucked out, but that can wait.

The compost pile is huge - one long windrow just north of the barn. It will sit there until fall, when we'll move it over to a spot nearer the garden to finish cooking. By the end of summer, the pile will be about half the size it is now, and in another year, it'll be ready to go on the garden. The pile gets "turned" when we move it from point A to point B, which helps the composting process along, and we can assess the progress and see how much longer it'll need. With our long winters, we often need a bit more than a year to get nicely finished compost, although this year the ingredients of our pile are a bit richer (thanks to the cows) so it may cook down a little quicker. It'll be interesting to see what it does.

Trees!

I spoke today with our local horticulturalist, and she confirmed that our preferred site for an orchard would likely work well.

Now we just need to find some trees! My mom sent me a link to a place not far from here that has hardy trees raised in our climate, and I definitely plan to check them out.

I knew we could grow apple trees, and some types of cherry, but plums ... grapes, even ... and apricots! I never would've guessed.

I think I just found the next thing to go on my birthday wish list. :)

One is nearer God's heart in a garden than anywhere else on earth

The kiss of the sun for pardon,
The song of the birds for mirth,
One is nearer God's heart in a garden
Than anywhere else on earth.
~Dorothy Frances Gurney, "Garden Thoughts"

I spent Easter Sunday near God's heart, out in the garden.

The local Quaker Meeting is more than an hour's drive away, so we do not attend: it's just impossible to justify the commute. Instead, we 'Isolated Friends' have our own quiet ways here at home. This morning after breakfast I read the Easter story to the kids from one of the Bible story books, and we talked about the various symbols of Easter and what they mean. Then everyone went off hunting for eggs and chocolate.

I did send them outside to hunt for real eggs too - we got eight eggs today! The chickens were definitely feeling the joy of Easter.

The rest of the day I spent out in the garden. The Reluctant Farmer fired up the bobcat and pushed mostly-composted dirt into the dips and gaps of the as-yet-unplanted section of the garden, then drove over it all several times to help level things out (the earth mover had gone through this area when the septic field was laid, and quite a few large divots were left behind). The Boy helped out by getting rid of all the bits of baling twine, fetching cold water, and sitting in the lawn chair supervising the action (his spring allergies are really knocking him for a loop this year).

A few scoops of really nice finished compost were set aside for the tomato beds, but there isn't enough that's properly cooked for us to create all the beds we need. However, the mostly-cooked organic matter we added today will make a good base for the 'lasagna beds' we will be creating in the next few weeks, and it'll finish composting down in place underneath the new garden beds. Even if we need to import a few bales of peat/soil mix for this year, which I think is probably unavoidable at this point, we should (God willing) produce more than enough to make our money back - and all of this infrastructure preparation is an investment for the future. This year, we are once again planting in the soil that was imported *last* year, too. It'll need to be topped up with some good compost, but we have just enough of our own to feed it. It'll be nice when we're caught up with the composting cycle.

The large compost heap from last year has now been fully turned, and it should cook down into beautiful soil by the end of summer, meaning that we'll be able to top up the garden with it come fall if all goes well.

Yes, in the garden we work with the Creator to bring forth good things from the earth. Watching seedlings turn into plants and plants turn into food is one of life's amazing experiences. Eating a meal gathered entirely from your own yard is even more incredible ... I can't wait. :)

A head start on spring

Today is the first of March, and my little notebook says I can start seedlings in March, based on our 'typical last frost' date of May 7. So ... I started!

I have a little wooden gadget that makes pots from newspaper: it is a wonderful device, you buy it once and thereafter you have pots for your seedlings from waste paper! The seedlings grow well in the newspaper and can be planted without having to dump them out of a plastic container, so the roots are not disturbed. And, unlike peat pots with their thick side walls, the roots can very easily break through the disintegrating paper once transplanted.

So, I found some flyers in the burn bin and tore them into strips and started rolling up some pots. Those got filled with a mix of peat moss and vermiculite (some day I want to try using our own topsoil or compost, but we're just not there yet), seeds were tucked in, and then each pot was labelled with a sharpie (another advantage of the newspaper pots - they are really easy to label!).

It can be tricky keeping everything properly watered, but at some point in the past I purchased a felt watering mat, and I have that laid out underneath the little pots to keep them moist.

I have a Seed Keeper from Lee Valley and I've sorted out my seed packets (and the bean and pea seeds I saved from last year) into the little plastic pockets. However, when I went to the shed to retrieve my plant stand, I found a stash of very old seeds of various types! They've not exactly been stored in the preferred environment for seeds, but hey, they might germinate and there's no way of knowing unless they're stuck in some dirt. So ... several of the surprise finds were potted and we'll see what, if anything, sprouts. More of the surprise finds are plants that do best when direct-seeded come spring, so it'll be interesting to see what happens!

There are a few tomato plants started, some cucumbers (we had terrible luck with cucumbers last year), dill, catnip (which is apparently a good tea-like beverage for humans, without the dopey effect it has on kitties), corn (one of the surprise finds), lovage, green onions, and an egg carton full of strawberry seeds that have been around for several years while I got up the nerve to attempt to start them. The instructions said to put the flats in a plastic bag and leave them to sprout ... I couldn't find a clear plastic bag, so I planted them in a clear egg carton instead. I figure it probably has the same effect of keeping in the moisture.

Now I just have to settle on a final plan for where to put all this stuff once spring arrives. I have reworked the garden plan several times and I have the feeling it's up for at least three more revisions before I settle on something. Well, it's easier to change a drawing on paper than it is to move the beds around once they have been dug, so I guess that's a good thing!

Planning the garden

It is the time of year to be thinking about the garden, and what will be planted where and how much of each. My seeds are already in from Salt Spring Seeds, and I have some more to order from Alberta Nurseries.

Today on Sharon Astyk's blog, I found a link to a web page about Lasagna Gardening: now THIS is what I need!

Plans for this year include creating several new square foot beds, a few narrow beds for vertical plants like peas, beans and raspberries, and growing potatoes and tomatoes outside of the raised bed structure in 'piles' along the sides of the garden. The garden area encompasses quite a lot of rather firmly entrenched grasses (this is old pasture land, after all) and I was *really* not looking forward to digging all of that up and trying to extinguish the grass.

Well, here we are: a way to build a new bed *without* having to do all that digging. Yippee!

And we just happen to have a two (or maybe three) year old bale of old moldy hay in there, waiting to serve as mulch and organic matter. Woohoo!

Is it time to start the seedlings yet? It's gotta be almost time ....

The Boy's Experiment, or, the Wonders of Compost

The Boy had an assignment to do for Science class: he had to take two jars, plant seeds in each, and then add compostable materials and a worm (if he could find one) to one jar, and leave the other as a control.


Here are his observations:

(Describe what you smell and see, measure the height of the plant, count the number of leaves and describe their shape and colour.)
Week 1
Jar 1 is the one without compost, jar 2 has compost. Jar 1 has 2 small sprouts and smells like dirt. Its 2 plants are 13mm and 2mm. Jar 2 has 3 small sprouts and smells like apples as I added left over apple skins to it. Jar 2’s plants are 13mm, 2mm, and 1mm. Jar 2 also has a worm.
Week 2
Jar 1 has 1 plant now which is 11mm tall and it still smells like dirt. Jar 2 has 2 plants and they are 30mm and 27mm tall and smells like compost. All of the plants have three leaves that look pretty green (see Jar 2 week 3 for best leaf picture). Jar 2 also now has some eggshells.
Week 3
Jar 1 smells like plain old dirt and now has 6 leaves and grew to 20mm tall. But the other two in jar 1 are far ahead at 60 and 50mm tall with 10 leaves each. It smells like compost still and all the leaves are very green. We also found out we are growing carrots.
Week 4
Jar 1’s sprout grew to 35mm and it still smells like dirt and has 6 leaves. Jar 2’s are 90 and 120mm tall with 13 and 18 leaves. It smells like fresh dirt and plants and the leaves are not purple; they're still green.


The pictures tell an amazing story of their own:

Compost works!

Black Gold

Remember this?

Come and listen to a story about a man named Jed
A poor mountaineer, barely kept his family fed,
Then one day he was shootin at some food,
And up through the ground came a bubblin crude.

Oil that is, black gold, Texas tea.

The Beverly Hillbillies found black gold on their land ... and so have we!

Okay, ours isn't oil. :)

Our black gold is piled up in the most beautiful compost heap you've ever seen, which is right now cooking away beside the garden generating heat and breaking down manure and hay into beautiful organic compost.

The Reluctant Farmer scraped the winter pasture clean a few times last winter and again in the spring, and piled all the manure and waste hay into a big heap. It's been sitting there undisturbed all summer, and today he moved it over near the garden so that we'd have a clear spot to put our hay when it arrives. As he dug into the pile with the bobcat shovel, steam came out and it was clear that we were well into the process of building some nice dirt!

Next year's plans include a greatly expanded garden, but of course, to do that we'll need more soil to plant things in. Looks like there'll be no need to buy bags of peat moss planting soil from Canadian Tire next year ... we've got two big piles of dirt under construction out there, and come spring, they should be in lovely shape.