Shirt-sleeve weather

It's time (early this year, I know, but the ladybugs have hatched and the peach trees are budding) to close out the ducks for a bit and spread the compost. First I open the bins and fork out the contents into the wheelbarrow and dump around the garden.

Then, knock down the heaps with the potato fork ...

... and spread them around even further with the leaf rake.

A quick look with the thermometer tells me it's 43F in the lower garden and 44F in the upper one. Iffy for peas, so I think I will put them in flats for now and set them out later.

The Young Man is visiting and after helping me clear away prunings, cleaned out the barn. The bedding forms the base of the new compost heap. Grass clippings will be added in the next week or so.

We use humanure, by the way, but it spends a month in the composting privy, then ten months in the composting barrel. It's not combined with the open heap until January and reaches the garden in February, a year after "deposit." Red worms have doubled in the resulting mix over what we have seen in pre-humanure days.

The little white dots there are bird poo; a towhee got into the greehouse while I was away and panicked, tearing up my flats of greens and pooing everywhere. Then a week later it happened again. Same one?

Putting up the flats in the sun and watering them in. High hopes for a productive year but concerned. We have been having this shirt-sleeve weather since December.