I'm beginning wave 2 planning for spring planting, and adapting to shifting conditions. My husband, who I shall refer to as The Bear from here on, requested that I make some changes to the vegetable garden location, which has set me back a few paces. We have an abundance of beautiful trees on our land, but that does mean that sunny spots on our acre-and-a-half are somewhat limited. Still, I can make it work.
A very awkward Google Sheets mock-up:
There's still a ton of planning to do (and that slope to fill out, additional exterior plants to sort, etc), and I'm trying to get it all done before Imbolc so I have a good idea about which areas need blessing. I'm planning out how long everything will take and planning out chunks of work, but it's going to be a bit rough -- particularly given how cold the soil is, and how strong the urge is to join the trees in dormancy.
The creek that runs alongside the western woodline is a muddy mess, the natural flow having been badly disrupted when the construction companies came through and tried to level out building sites some 20 years ago. There are a few very old trees that held on, but it's largely scrub brush and the invasive plants that tend to take over when an established ecosystem is thrown into chaos. Some part of me is horrified every time I tromp in with my big waterproof swamp boots and start cutting down and ripping out flora, but you have to set a bone before it can heal properly.
All told, I know I won't be replanting with 100% native plants. I'd like to, but I'm disinclined to dig up wild plants and disrupt yet another habitat with meddling. Plant Delights nursery is less than a mile from my home and I'll try to source the more difficult-to-find native plants there, but holy hearth they're expensive.
My backup plan is to determine what purpose different native plants provide to the micro-ecosystem and find suitable, non-invasive alternatives. I'll be skewing heavily toward pollinator support and deer-repelling plants -- we want to keep bees eventually, and the deer have already made off with the loveliest hosta I had planted in the shade bed. There's plenty of space toward the southwest corner near the creek, away from the garden site, that I plan to "give" to the deer -- there's a huge old oak that drops an abundance of acorns, and there are plenty of delicious, resilient plants I can put out that way to tempt them. As much as I have adversarial feelings about them (they consume so much of my work!), they've just as much right to be here as I do and I'm doing my best to compromise.
Speaking of which, Lola the Opossum has been MIA for a little while. She ate the watermelon I put out for her during the last snow, but it's been a while and I worry. The road we live off has been busier lately, and while we're set farther back into the woods, the natural boundaries we've established to keep us secluded don't mean much to wildlife.
While I know "these things happen," there's still a deep gouge in the stone of my heart for the owl that was hit on that same road. The city and surrounding suburbs are expanding; the forest is shrinking. I know my work isn't going to fix the problem, but it's better than doing nothing.
The little lantern of optimism that still shines somewhere inside hopes that if I can make my work attractive enough, my neighbors will follow suit. My tired bones disagree, but here any light is better than none.
As a note for my future self: hold off judgment at the meandering, passive tone of this when you're re-reading it. It's winter and I'm tired. Work is stressful, current events/politics are toxic and destructive, and I've had to be the one sane voice for too many things lately and it's exhausting.
