I have had a beautiful weekend on the farm. By chance good weather coincided with my editor quitting her job and the company hasn’t replaced her yet. We are in the middle of author review on my book so that isn’t good, but I had the weekend to just relax and enjoy the weather- well not relax really- I worked on my gardens. Today is a little overcast and cooler than yesterday, but the sun peaks out from time to time and it isn’t that bad. I worked a bit outside and did some overdue house cleaning.
The daffodils are blooming here in Michigan. Its been a long, slow spring and we are supposed to get more cold weather soon. But this beautiful weather spell the last few days helped. The frogs have been really noisy, but I have yet to see a snake. I see plenty of buzzards but haven’t seen a bluebird or my orioles or hummingbirds. I bought grape jelly for the orioles at the store but I hope the hummers are smart and stay south a bit longer.
The birds are nesting though. I watched a grackle picking up huge mouthfuls of dried weeds and try to fly off with them. The little sparrows were getting horse hair from where the horses had rubbed on the fence. The squirrels are probably nesting too. The buggers are eating the buds on the trees right now. I know they are hungry this time of year but they are so destructive.
Its dry enough the farmers are working in the fields. In fact we could use a little rain. I want the grass to grow well in the pasture- it seems to have slowed down. Charlie and Lily seem to be grazing ok, although I have been throwing in a flake of hay from time to time. Charlie is getting to be a real handful. He really needs to be gelded, although that will have to wait until my next advance check now. The hens are getting out nearly every day and getting some of their own food. The turkeys have quit laying for a while and it’s comical to see them outside taking dust baths.
My birthday was this week and I have been thinking about age and its consequences. My dad turns 80 this year. I can’t believe I am this old, how quickly time flies. It seems like yesterday when I was out helping my grandmother in her yard, going to the swamp after school, riding my bike. Then I had that little house in the city, and this time of year I would have been getting my garden ready and dreading working long hours at the Kmart garden shop. Then Steve and I working on that same yard, putting in a pond, going to spring bird shows with our birds. And even the times when we first moved to the country we would be out there chasing steers or pigs probably and making those long commutes back and forth to our city jobs, wasting hours of time each day.
I think of my son graduating, the grandbabies I sat in the room and watched being born and the ones I didn’t get to watch toddling about the farm. I think of family reunions and weddings and funerals. It seems I have had several different lives, different eras of time and different me’s . Ah life, it is so grand and goes so fast. I wonder what’s ahead?
Living the dream
Visiting grandmas farm.
Sunday, April 19, 2009
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
Frogs in the Snow
It’s snowing outside and the frogs have quit singing. On Sunday night at 11 pm it was 40 degrees and I could hear frogs outside my office window. On Monday morning we had six inches of heavy wet snow on the ground and it has snowed on and off since. It’s a good thing the ground was still warm and some of the snow melted or we would have been buried. I hate snow. Poor robins. I put some dried cherries out in the bird feeder but they haven’t found them.
The grass was growing and we had the pasture on the west side all fixed up, ready to move the horses over there, but the forecast made us wait and I’m glad because I would be carrying buckets of water through the snow instead of using a hose. Charlie is getting to be a real little terror. He needs more room to run.
Our poor white pine in the backyard lost more branches due to the heavy snow and so did a scotch pine in the dog kennel. It’s another mess to clean up. By the time you get one winter’s messes cleaned up its time for another winter. I want to start gardening- hauling manure to the beds and making another raised bed rather than shoveling snow. Oh well in Michigan it may be 80 in a few days.
On the nice days we did have I was able to sit at the pond for a short time and once I even made it to the woods. Our pond is the fullest I have ever seen it and when we add the runoff from this last snow it should really be something. I went to the woods to pull up some fence posts out there we don’t use anymore and I noticed new bottles and junk sticking out of the ground so I stayed to bottle hunt a bit.
The woods was where the previous owners of this place all the way back to who knows when threw their trash. Its swampy woods with a steep slope off the pasture. So each year new stuff surfaces, most is broken, like some Depression glass plates I found but sometimes you find a good piece. I need to dig there but its always so busy in spring I never get to it and then the bugs get bad and it gets hot soooo. This time I found some old rusted enamel coated pans and pots. I brought a pair up to use as planters.
The big tree that fell over a few years back has a ground hog burrow under the uprighted root ball. It’s the first groundhog burrow I have seen on our place in a while. And the stump left is sticking out at an angle about 20 feet long. My son cut the tree off where it lay across the old pasture fence and then the remaining stub lifted up so the end is about 6 feet above the ground at an angle. On the underside something has a pretty good sized hole in the trunk, I am hoping a screech owl. I am going to keep an eye on it. That’s one thing our woods has, plenty of dead trees for cavity nesters.
Most of the trees left in the woods are popple and birch. There were some nice elms and ash but they are dead now, lost to their respective pests. I have some small pines and spruce planted and I am trying to get some maples in there. It bothers me that there are no wildflowers there, no trilliums, no bloodroot, no trout lilies. I suspect the deer took care of that long ago. I want to try and get some started in there. I could haul some old fence down there to protect them maybe. But first I need to get the gardens around the house cleaned up.
As a garden writer and teacher I want my gardens to look good but I never seem to have enough time and money to do it right. My resolve this year is to start nothing new and get some of the old beds really renovated. Maybe I will have the time this year, ha. Ha.
The grass was growing and we had the pasture on the west side all fixed up, ready to move the horses over there, but the forecast made us wait and I’m glad because I would be carrying buckets of water through the snow instead of using a hose. Charlie is getting to be a real little terror. He needs more room to run.
Our poor white pine in the backyard lost more branches due to the heavy snow and so did a scotch pine in the dog kennel. It’s another mess to clean up. By the time you get one winter’s messes cleaned up its time for another winter. I want to start gardening- hauling manure to the beds and making another raised bed rather than shoveling snow. Oh well in Michigan it may be 80 in a few days.
On the nice days we did have I was able to sit at the pond for a short time and once I even made it to the woods. Our pond is the fullest I have ever seen it and when we add the runoff from this last snow it should really be something. I went to the woods to pull up some fence posts out there we don’t use anymore and I noticed new bottles and junk sticking out of the ground so I stayed to bottle hunt a bit.
The woods was where the previous owners of this place all the way back to who knows when threw their trash. Its swampy woods with a steep slope off the pasture. So each year new stuff surfaces, most is broken, like some Depression glass plates I found but sometimes you find a good piece. I need to dig there but its always so busy in spring I never get to it and then the bugs get bad and it gets hot soooo. This time I found some old rusted enamel coated pans and pots. I brought a pair up to use as planters.
The big tree that fell over a few years back has a ground hog burrow under the uprighted root ball. It’s the first groundhog burrow I have seen on our place in a while. And the stump left is sticking out at an angle about 20 feet long. My son cut the tree off where it lay across the old pasture fence and then the remaining stub lifted up so the end is about 6 feet above the ground at an angle. On the underside something has a pretty good sized hole in the trunk, I am hoping a screech owl. I am going to keep an eye on it. That’s one thing our woods has, plenty of dead trees for cavity nesters.
Most of the trees left in the woods are popple and birch. There were some nice elms and ash but they are dead now, lost to their respective pests. I have some small pines and spruce planted and I am trying to get some maples in there. It bothers me that there are no wildflowers there, no trilliums, no bloodroot, no trout lilies. I suspect the deer took care of that long ago. I want to try and get some started in there. I could haul some old fence down there to protect them maybe. But first I need to get the gardens around the house cleaned up.
As a garden writer and teacher I want my gardens to look good but I never seem to have enough time and money to do it right. My resolve this year is to start nothing new and get some of the old beds really renovated. Maybe I will have the time this year, ha. Ha.
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