North Wind

Sunny, mid 40s today but still windy.

I finally got out there even though it is still cold and blustery, and I cut back the grasses.  The Panicun 'Northwind' (ha! how appropriate for the weather today) are tall and narrow and easier to get at, but this is the season I dislike grasses.  The cut-back is always a chore (sharp stalks hurt, the fronds blow all over even if I tie them, the semi-woody stalks are very hard to cut efficiently, it's a nasty effort).  There is no good place to dispose of the straw colored grasses... sitting on top of the compost pile or dumped in the meadow they are a bright beacon and they blow about.

Then, when the chore is over, you have a stunted blob of nothing in the garden.  But all is forgiven when they grow to screen the AC units and when they are so wavy and elegant in a breeze and when they stand through the winter.

ok, this is when I love grasses: August.  Not so much in March

A job that can be done in cold wind is the heavy duty task of turning the compost.  Our windrow of large garden brush and grass clippings really isn't compost...it's too bulky, but I did go out there and do some kind of job turning some of the layers.  Hard work, and I worked up a sweat in the cold wind.

 

Up on the back hill a large, 9 foot tall oak keeled over.  It was one of the earliest I had planted back in 2006 or 2007, and it was part of the screening that was filling in along the top to hide the road.  Gone, just knocked over.  On inspection, there were no roots:

It was similar to a pin oak that keeled over out by the road cut.  It also had no roots, and just died and fell over.