Hay, Hula Hoops & Corn Hijackers

Today we made a new friend, Gus, the roly-poly field mouse.  We found Gus gorging himself in our corn bin which accidentally got left open a crack.  He was so fat by the time we found him, he did not even try to run.  He just sat there lethargically while we scooped him up and released him in the garden. I use the word "release" loosely because instead of fleeing, Gus just lazed in the scoop and continued to eat for a long time before finally deciding to trudge his way home.  He might be a thief, but he is a cute little corn hijacker.

Based on the optimist (delusional?) premise that spring will come sooner rather than later, we loaded what is hopefully our last shipment of hay into the hay loft.  We do not have enough barn space to store an entire winter's worth of hay, nor a pick up truck to transport bales.  Instead, we are very lucky to have a friendly neighbourhood dairy farmer, Farmer Bruce, who kindly drops off 25 bales at a time for us throughout the winter.  This should be our last load until fall since the animals will soon have fresh grass and leaves to eat and we will only need to use the hay for their bedding.

This afternoon was devoted to a bit of handyman (handy-person? handy-toddler?) work on the gardens.  I had a bit of a heart attack earlier this week when I consulted my seed planting chart and noticed that we are scheduled for our first direct planting on Wednesday.  Yes, three days from now we are supposed to be sowing peas and spinach into the ground - outside.  The very frozen ground.  This was all the motivation I needed to get cold frames constructed over top of our box gardens.  We need to get that soil warmed up asap.  I had lots of help.

We used hula hoops held into the ground on each side of the box garden with sections of rebar.  Tomorrow Grandpa is bringing us some left over plastic sheeting from his building materials collection at the cottage.  We will stretch the plastic over top of the hula frames and secure it to the ground on all sides to make mini greenhouses.  

We had happy gardeners today.  It was cold but at least the sun was shining.  The boys are very proud of our new blue and purple hoop gardens.  Hopefully there is some sunny, warm weather in our future.  At this point I am too scared to check the weather forecast and have instead resorted to wishful thinking.