March should be called “hump month.” It straddles winter and spring. It has a little of everything. Winter’s cold hand is still on our shoulders, but spring’s warm breath is in our nostrils.
But more than that, my kale lets me know that the season is changing over. It’s time to give last season’s crop the heave-ho and get ready for this season’s vegetable garden. All winter my kale provided me with enough leaves for dinner, whenever I wanted it.
Today I noticed that all my plants were starting to go to seed, so, time to pick it all! There was more than I thought. I started to pick the small, tender leaves and quickly realized I would have to make several trips to the kitchen to deposit my haul. I’ll leave the plants standing until I’m ready to till the garden. Perhaps the flowers will please some passing bees.
Monkey puzzle trees live here. The first one I saw after I moved here took me by surprise. I say that because the first monkey puzzle I ever saw was in Florida, decades ago. We were at my late uncle’s house and he pointed out the strange tree with deadly sharp needles and strange seed pods that stood on the side of his house. We didn’t know what it was, but me being an amateur naturalist, I was determined to find out.
I took a sample home to DC and brought it to the National Arboretum to be identified. Soon after, I received a packet in the mail, naming the specimen Araucaria araucana, commonly known as the monkey puzzle tree. I learned that It’s an evergreen native to Chile.
But my uncle’s tree was not nearly as large and grand as the monkey puzzles I’ve seen here in Seattle. What are so many doing here in sight of Puget Sound? As I drive around the city, my eye easily spots them, standing very tall and lovely in front yards. The arrangement of the lance-like needles around the branches gives it a distinct profile, similar to the way a gingko has a unique look. It must have been trendy at one time, to plant these exotic trees in such a place far from their native land.
No squirrel, bird or monkey, for that matter, could possibly perch on a monkey puzzle branch. Not without getting a sharp poke in the butt. And surely no monkey puzzle owner dares go barefoot where the tree grows. It’s not native, provides no shelter or food for wildlife, and is one big prickly hazard. Its only value can be decorative, which is completely acceptable. Seattleites are fierce native plant advocates, but we are also passionate gardeners, susceptible to the sirens of purely decorative specimens.
The monkey puzzles have claimed their place in the land of evergreens. I wonder whether, in turn, Chileans are enjoying exotic Douglas, Grand or Noble firs in their yards?
It is said that the Algonquin tribes gave the March full moon this name. This is the time that the earth warms and softens and worms become active again.
Here in Seattle, this has been the case for some time now! I have seen many worms as I work in my garden. Birds are not the only ones who prize these slithering, wiggly treats. Our moles also live on worms. It’s hard to imagine that they gain much sustenance from creatures that are barely there.
These earthworms are actually non-native and invasive. But like the Eastern Gray Squirrel, they have become part of our landscape.
Eastern Washington has the Giant Palouse Earthworm, a pinkish-white, translucent worm that can grow up to a foot long. It’s rare and lives in the even rarer Palouse bunchgrass prairie ecosystem.
It’s hard to decide what to do on such a splendid day. Take a walk? Garden? Or just sit, bask, and breathe in deeply the warming air.
I decided to first take a walk in the ‘hood. Under a brilliant blue sky, gardens were blooming with purple and white crocuses, golden daffodils and forsythia, purple azaleas, pink cherry trees and an assortment of other early delights.
Then I let one of my cats out and tackled some light yard work. A bumble bee buzzed around and around like it was out of control and then landed on my abelia bush, where it soaked in the sun’s warmth.
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Natural Views 