Pinch of Salt: Spring heat wave means early planting, extra chores

I know the calendar says Spring doesn't begin until tomorrow, March 20, with the Spring Equinox. But it has been spring for a while now at the old homestead.

It started some time in February. The daytime temperature topped 80 pretty regularly, and even nighttime lows were in the mid-50s.

Thank goodness global warming is a myth. I could start to get worried.

At the urging of the lovely Maria, I've given up waiting for the calendar to start with the spring chores. Notice I said chores and not spring cleaning – that usually waits for July!

I managed to complete the fence around our little patch of garden earlier this year, so spring chores consisted of clearing out the weeds, adding the annual soil amendment (fertilizer to the farmers among you) and putting the tomato plant in the ground.

We're starting with a single plant this year. Results have been decidedly mixed when I try to raise other vegetables, but the tomato harvest has consistently been a bumper crop.

When we started, I planted three different varieties of tomatoes. The lovely Maria got a kick out of making homemade spaghetti sauce and tomato soup. We even tried to make ketchup one year.

But skinning tomatoes got old quickly, and our neighbors started closing their blinds when they saw us coming with sacks in our hands. So we cut back to two plants – and it was still too much to handle.

We'll see what happens with one.

More bounty is expected from the backyard apple tree. Blossoms started showing up in late January. That happened a couple of years ago, but then it got cold and windy, knocking most of the pre-apple blooms off.

Not this year. Expect to hear about us opening a roadside stand with applesauce, apple butter, apple crisp, apple pie… by early summer.

Since all that food plant stuff got done early, the lovely Maria determined that it was time to start a landscaping project we've been talking about for a year or two. It involves an 8×15 plot in the back yard where the dastardly dog Pluto has a penchant for digging.

I've written about Pluto's excavations before. He somehow manages to go down three or four feet, like some burrowing fiend. I fill the holes up – he digs them out again. I cover them with wood – he moves over a foot or two and starts again.

Maria tried to help out by creating what she called a fairy garden featuring a half-dozen half barrels of spider plants, each about 3 feet in diameter. There were solar fairy lights, fairy houses, etc.

But we just put the stuff on the ground. It's amazing how deep a hole you can dig with a foot or two between planters.

The answer we came up with is a fairy rock garden. I'm in the midst of tearing out what remains of the turf and prepping the space to be covered with 2 or 3 inches of river rock – stones big enough that Pluto will think twice about getting through them to find dirt to dig.

As you no doubt know by now, my little projects turn into huge jobs more often than not. This is no exception.

I have my very own personal-sized roto-tiller (of course he does). So last weekend I started the removal process. It was more than 80 degrees when I fired the roto-tiller up, and I estimate it was about 140 two hours later, when I started moving the first wheelbarrows of dirt. When the first weekend was done, I had made half of the second pass of roto-tilling and I was physically out of gas. (Not really. I use electric yard tools. It was my body that wouldn't move anymore.)

I'll get back to it this weekend, with the goal of finishing the dirt work and doing the prep to make sure the weeds I call grass don't come back. Then it will be time to spread that rock.

Do you know how much rock it takes to cover 120 square feet (8×15) of dirt? Let's just say a lot.

The lovely Maria has been a trooper, helping me schlep rock from the alley to the back yard, prepping the planters and other fairy furniture, etc. I've really tried to avoid telling her that there's another heat advisory on tap for this weekend.

That makes sense though. Spring has sprung!

Here's hoping I'm still able to type when this adventure is done. If I can, I'll tell you where Pluto decides to dig next.

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This story was originally published March 20, 2026 at 2:04 AM.