A Common Life
Welcome to A Common Life where Morgan and Taylor offer month-by-month gardening advice to help your garden thrive. We also share our personal journey in seasonal living, aiming to foster a deeper connection with others, nature, and our Creator. Our hope is to encourage and equip others who are on a similar journey and to provide a space for community around these ideals.
A Common Life
Embracing Spring's Delights: First Morels, Blooming Dogwoods, and Dreams of the Future Orchard!
In this episode we look back on March '24. Here is what Jenkins ahd to say about the episode:
"Spring has unfurled its green fingers in our backyard, and we're buzzing to bring you the latest from our slice of paradise! Morgan and Taylor here, with a big hello to our friends from far-flung places as we celebrate the season’s enchanting firsts. Imagine stumbling upon the year's first morel mushroom during a hike, or witnessing Huntsville's dogwoods bursting into bloom – these are just a few of the joys we're sharing. From the robust growth of our potatoes and peas to safeguarding our tender tomato plants from the last of the frost's sting, our garden is a microcosm of life's little victories and the resilience we've cultivated along with our veggies.
As the chatter of birds fills the air, we can't help but dream out loud about our future orchard, a slice of Eden we're mapping out with a cottage-like charm. It's an orchard that's a little wild, a little planned, and every bit as enchanting as a childhood memory – speaking of which, we've got to tell you about Wilder's first popsicle! It's the simple pleasures, like crafting homemade strawberry lemonade popsicles, that add a dash of sweetness to our days. We navigate the whimsy of DIY treats and revel in the frugality of making our own, proving that the best things in life aren't just free – sometimes, they're homegrown. Join us on this journey, and let's sow the seeds of joy together!"
Thanks Jenkins!
Mentioned:
Parsley is a biennial
Field and Forage Instagram
Holistic Orchard - Michael Phillips
Find us Elsewhere:
Instagram - @_ACommonLife - Morgan
Community Newsletter - The Common
Twitter (X) - @_ACommonLife
Twitter - @Taylor__Myers
LinkedIn - Taylor Myers
DM us on the Socials or email us at Taylor@acommonlife.co
Music on the podcast was composed by Kevin Dailey. The artist is Garden Friend. The track is the instrumental version of “On a Cloud”
Hey everybody, welcome to a common life podcast. I'm your host, morgan, and I'm here with my husband, taylor.
Speaker 2:You cracked me up what that was not planned.
Speaker 1:Well, we've got to get this show on the road. I'm tired.
Speaker 2:I know I want to go to sleep, but we have podcasts to do. Yes, we do. We have people and I haven't gotten the latest update yet, but yeah, how's like.
Speaker 1:What was the place that was listening?
Speaker 2:It was like Germany, Canada, Spain. Yeah, we need some Central and South America representation up in here. I don't know how the German people found it, what?
Speaker 1:From the gift, the one we did on the gifts.
Speaker 2:Yeah, what about it?
Speaker 1:It was a long time ago. You should see if they're still listening.
Speaker 2:I'm sure they are. What's up Germany?
Speaker 1:Taylor, oh my gosh. Okay, guys, today we are looking back over March. Yes, and Taylor, what were your favorite things in March? Or what really around the garden?
Speaker 2:Well, let me just say I'm falling in love with spring. I've never considered spring my favorite season, but it's creeping up there.
Speaker 1:Well, we've always loved fall. I've always loved fall, and I said yesterday I think it was spring might be my new favorite. I wonder if it was just because this year we were so ready for winter to be over. But it's something about just the fresh green.
Speaker 2:The fresh green, but also there's so many firsts that are happening and all of the wildflowers that come up and the morels and the trees budding out Like the dogwoods right now are just so spectacular.
Speaker 1:Everywhere, they're everywhere, they're everywhere.
Speaker 2:They're white and we have pink ones here in. Huntsville and you know, south Alabama used to have a bunch, but there's this disease or something that's knocking them back. Not here, baby. We got some. We got the strong dogwoods.
Speaker 1:You need to drive through, like Jones Valley. I did that today.
Speaker 2:It's just gorgeous.
Speaker 1:Oh my goodness. There's one street, that's just every single. Everywhere you look is a dogwood. Yeah.
Speaker 2:I don't think that's ever going to get old, because it goes away and then you have to wait for it and then it's like it welcomes you after the.
Speaker 1:Well, this year in particularly felt like like in narnia the white witch just had winter. It felt like winter was gonna last forever, and then aslan comes yeah, dogwoods, yeah, so I've really been enjoying that.
Speaker 2:Just the the flowers. It all started in march for us. Um, as far as the garden goes, yeah, we got started in late february planting potatoes and peas, but we continued planting into march and, yeah, the garden looks really good right now.
Speaker 2:I'm really happy with the garden. It's it's pretty full, but we have some space that we're gonna plant and you know we typically do like kale and broccoli and cabbage in the fall, but I wanted to try it in the spring and as it warms up it gets more buggy and harder to to grow yeah but we started them and I think it was like late january.
Speaker 2:We started the kale and broccoli indoors and then we see that we put them out in march and they're looking great, they're growing. And then we seed, we put them out in March and they're looking great, they're growing. And yeah, the potatoes are growing great.
Speaker 1:Parsley.
Speaker 2:Parsley's crushing it. I think it's going to seed. Yeah it is. I mean I could just quickly look this up, but I don't know. I don't think parsley is a perennial. I think it's a biennial, meaning it goes like two years and it goes to seed on the second year, which would be like now. I'm pretty sure it's starting to bolt. It looks like it or go to seed and the peas I hope we get some peas.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Alaskan peas, sweet peas, yep, garlic onions, lettuce. We cut a head of lettuce and y'all that lettuce was so good. Only had one leaf because we took it down the road to Nana, but it was not bitter at all yeah so good we need to have some. Uh, I think that's pretty much it in the garden right now.
Speaker 1:Mmm, yeah, yeah, you just potted the tomatoes up.
Speaker 2:You didn't put them out yet I did, and I think in the last podcast I talked about how I was tired of babying them. And here we are. Today is April 8th.
Speaker 2:Really glad you didn't put them out, because this week has been freezing Well yeah, we got a couple of days with frost and I think the tomatoes would have made it. I could have covered them up, but the soil is just. It's still been pretty cold. They would just sit out there because the soil is so cold. They wouldn't grow. Yeah, I don't think they would be hurt, but I've decided to wait a little bit longer and I think we are going to be getting into the 80s soon. And oh, the other thing is in our garden, the area that I'm going to plant them. I did not pull the mulch back and so the soil was extra cool. So I've pulled the mulch back, it's getting some sun and we'll plant the tomatoes like late this week or next week. It'll probably end up being next week.
Speaker 2:So I don't remember exactly what we talked about, but I think in the last podcast we talked about the frost date and I know we did because it was frost date is in April and, guys, april 15th is generally like when you should wait if you're in North Alabama and especially if you're north of us. Um, I think the almanac said March 31st this year was the last frost. They missed it. April 1st, nope. Um, we had a frost just a couple days ago, so april 15th is still what we're waiting for. Um, we had a couple really good times in the garden with the family, where we were all out there. I enjoyed that yeah, that was.
Speaker 1:It's been good we've kind of gone out there just to sit in the afternoon because the sun's hitting it and the mosquitoes aren't out yet yeah yeah, it's nice, we have them really bad.
Speaker 2:We live in town and I think a ton of our neighbors spray.
Speaker 1:I think people just spray so we're the only yard that they like to come to is that why we're like the mosquito oasis? But really I mean, we have a little boy who comes over to play with Wheeler and I mean he'll leave with like 35 bug bites on his face, on his face. He gets them on his face. I know, oh gosh, we've got to do something about it. Is it bug bites or mosquitoes?
Speaker 2:It's mosquitoes, yeah, because they play back there in the corner because they play back there in the corner.
Speaker 1:You don't call mosquito, you call them mosquito bites.
Speaker 2:Yeah you said well, but when you say bug bites, that just I'm thinking, I just usually oh no mosquitoes, yeah, and like man, I don't want to spray that's, I know, I know, I know, but it's not killing just mosquitoes.
Speaker 1:I know, I don't, I know, but it's not killing just mosquitoes, I know.
Speaker 2:I don't want to do it either, but we need a couple bat houses. Taylor, we've already brought roosters to town. We can't bring bats to town.
Speaker 1:They're here, I know, but like you can't get a bat house, why Don't you think people would not be happy about that? They just wouldn't, though. And don't bats carry all kinds of diseases. We don't want like bats hanging out.
Speaker 2:No, we definitely do. Bats are really good. You don't want an infestation in your house. Like our friend had Y'all our friend, they had like hundreds of bats in their house. Like our friend had y'all our friend, they had like hundreds of bats in their house. We would go over there and we'd always go over there for like a birthday party. We'd go over there, they host the best parties, but we would go over there and y'all, literally it's like dusk, the sun starts going down and for like 30 minutes straight, non, nonstop, out of their attic, just like these bats would just pour out. And finally he had somebody come over and board up the bats, but they did it at the wrong time so they trapped the bats in the house and these bats, y'all.
Speaker 2:So, they all died in there? No, they started going through the insulation and got into the duck work and duck work and started coming out in the house no, yes, I missed all of this and so then they like nobody deals with bats. Like if you call cook's pest control, they're like no, we don't deal with bats Because they're either endangered or there's something to it. I don't know. They're not endangered, but you can't just kill them, or something.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So they don't deal with it. So somehow our friend called the state of Alabama and they gave him a contact of the person they use and he's like the Batman, and I'm not kidding. And so this was the one guy he calls him up and he's like hey, I heard, you know, you deal with bats. I've got this really bad situation. And he was like oh, yep, that's me, you came to the right person. So then this guy came out to his house and he was telling me that this guy was just in Mississippi and he said this one house had thousands upon thousands of bats. Up in the house it was totally infested with thousands of bats. And he came to the house and he put this little contraption where the bats could come out but they couldn't go back in and they all left. And now he's good. So we don't want that many bats, but having a couple bats around would help.
Speaker 1:Well, don't we have a couple in our attic? Now that I think about, it no we don't Okay.
Speaker 2:No, we don't. We don't have them in our attic. They're on the edge. They're on the edge. They're not in the attic.
Speaker 1:Okay, so we do have a couple bats.
Speaker 2:They need to start eating the mosquitoes no, we don't have a couple. Okay, I'm gonna move on um. You gotta stop touching your mic.
Speaker 1:Listen, baby, I'm not comfortable. Okay, all right, I'm gonna stop moving, starting no okay, um, what's on your list?
Speaker 2:yeah, we taught our first workshop at field and forge.
Speaker 1:That was pretty fun well, you taught it and it was amazing it was amazing it was so. It was so fun for me to watch you just operate in your gifting. I feel like you are very gifted at teaching and you know you had your notes and you were up there. You liked it. Yeah, I liked it. I was just with Wilder trying to keep him from harassing another baby and eating ants, so that's what I was doing.
Speaker 2:Well, I had a great time. It was a lot of fun and I think people enjoyed it. I think people came away learning some things and and Terry taught on soil blocking, which was awesome.
Speaker 1:I really want to try that.
Speaker 2:If you don't know, what soil blocking is.
Speaker 1:she has a quick reel on it. That's really helpful. Okay, if you just go to her Field and Forage Instagram. Okay, if you just go to her Field and Forage Instagram. Do you go through and type whenever we say that, whenever?
Speaker 2:we're like, oh yeah, we'll put that in the show notes. So I edit the podcast. And when I edit the podcast, I have to go back through and listen to it. And it's funny because I put it on 1.55x. It goes fast and so we sound like chipmunks yeah, and so I listen to us and we sound like chipmunks because we're talking super fast and sometimes I yeah, I've thought like how cool would it be to put out a podcast of like chipmunks?
Speaker 1:no, you've mentioned that to me before.
Speaker 2:Yeah, sometimes I think we sound better as chipmunks, no, so yeah, and then when I listen to it, I just make sure to add it into the show notes. Okay, yep. So the workshop was awesome. I hope to do more of those, excuse me. And we also in March march the orchard I got some manure from the farmer that's on the farm doing sheep and I talk about this in the newsletter. But you know, you have your plans. I'm thinking like man, I'm able to accomplish all these things that I wanted to do at the farm and I forget how it came about that day. But I was like I should see if Wheeler wants to go with me, and I was torn because I really wanted him to come. I knew it would be fun, but it was kind of just like this. I didn't really think it through.
Speaker 1:I think it was that he'd been sick Cause when I was looking back at pictures for the month, he was sick for a solid two and a half weeks of March and I think I was probably done.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And you were like he needs to be outside. I'll just bring him with me.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I asked him if he wanted to go and he was like, yeah, so we had a good time together. It was fun, and it's one of those things where you know it's one of those things where you know he's ready to be done.
Speaker 1:His patience is that of a four-year-old.
Speaker 2:Yeah, he was ready to be done, doing what we were doing a lot quicker than what it was actually going to take, you know, and so I kind of had to speed some things up and ended up just dumping manure by the trees. I didn't really spread it out or anything, but I went back after we did it and it looks great up and ended up just dumping manure by the trees. I didn't really spread it out or anything, but I went back after we did it and it looks great. It's going to be doing good, doing well.
Speaker 2:So I spread manure around all of the trees and I, you know, I, I don't know, I'm not, I'm not an orchardist, I'm not an arborist. I want to be, I want the dopest orchard ever. But I want it to be like this guy that wrote the book the Holistic Orchard. I can't remember his name, I'll put it in the show notes. This dude is cool. He's like who I want to be when I grow up. But I want my orchard to be a little like cottage-like, not all put together, like. I want it to be kind of weedy, with some piles of romuel wood chips over here and some piles of something else over here and some dandelions and kind of just like this eclectic ordered chaos with beautiful fruit trees, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I don't want it to be like straight rows and it's going to be beautiful, for sure it's going to be beautiful.
Speaker 1:I want it to be beautiful, but I just don't want it to be like manicured, so will we always have to have that fence around it, or is that just?
Speaker 2:until they get bigger the fence? Yeah, you mean the protector. Yeah, yeah, the protection around each tree. Well, I'm just thinking well, the trees are in like tree tubes.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no I'm talking about like the fence the fence is the fence right now really, oh, it's keeping deer and.
Speaker 2:It's keeping the sheep out, which they don't have to stay out, because I have the tree tubes and the tree tubes are really protecting from the sheep, I mean from the deer. So the fence, no, it doesn't really.
Speaker 1:I'm just thinking the look you're going for.
Speaker 2:The fence doesn't take away from that. Look, right now it doesn't look like what I want. First of all, I need to grow and I need to overseed. I need to overseed some clover and some other underneath it underneath it as part of the management and get the look I'm going for. But it's going to take years, decades. Catch me 25, 30 years from now. Orchards are going to be like paradise. Okay, let's see man guys.
Speaker 1:I was going to say what are you? Going to say Wilder had his first popsicle in march wow, he loved it he loved it. You know, I think I've documented every one of our kids first popsicle because it's such a fun. First, yeah, because they just like love it and then. But then I remember one of ours getting a really bad brain freeze and just screaming. He did not.
Speaker 2:He was like he has a mouth of steel.
Speaker 1:Seriously, he was just chomping it down and you know, it's kind of like I try to get him to hold the stick but he wants to hold on to the Popsicle, which I'm like bro, your hands are going to freeze. But he just screams at me.
Speaker 2:So I'm like okay, okay, do it your way. Did he get too cold? No, I didn't think so. I remember that. Yeah, he loved it, just holding on to that ice, doesn't faze him he has had a couple popsicles since then and he loves him.
Speaker 1:Who doesn't love a popsicle? Popsicles are pretty awesome yeah, but here's the deal you should make your own popsicles, people tell us about it well, I try to make. This is something. If I ever like make a smoothie and then I accidentally make too much, I'll put it in a popsicle mold. If you put, like, kale in your smoothie and then I accidentally make too much, I'll put it in a popsicle mold If you put like kale in your smoothie and stuff.
Speaker 2:the popsicle tastes disgusting, don't?
Speaker 1:don't make it. Don't make a kale strawberry popsicle, no. But I've tried, I've done that before and then thought like, oh, the kids will have this cause it's, it's a popsicle, it looks like a popsicle, it doesn't pull a window.
Speaker 1:Oh my goodness um, but I mean at market those popsicles are going for five bucks six if you get the ones that are. They call them lushy, with like alcohol in them where you can well, one, you can buy a box of six at the grocery store for like a good popsicle. So that's a whole lot cheaper getting them at the store. But then if you make your own one you know you're everything that's in it good ingredients. Two, it's so much cheaper but it also takes work also, we need to be supporting our artisan popsicle makers.
Speaker 1:Right, right yeah I mean, yeah, that's part. That's. The only reason our kids want to go to market is to get a popsicle, right, yeah, yeah, and make your, make your mass popsicles at home, because kids ask for them every single day, you know what would be good Strawberry lemonade popsicles. Yeah, I knew you were going to say something with strawberry, or like creamy strawberry, strawberries and cream Popsicle. Sounds good cream, mmm Popsicle, that sounds good, yeah, anyway.
Speaker 2:Anyways.
Speaker 1:Wilder First popsicle Is that it.
Speaker 2:I think. So you started us all on this thing, so you gotta wrap this up.
Speaker 1:Alright, everybody. Thanks for listening. Until next time. Happy gardening, thank you.