Planting time and fat horses

It’s planting time and no matter how I try I always have more things to do than time to do them. Today after some office work I got outside just in time to get half my corn planted before it started storming. Steve made and filled a nice new 5 x 10 raised bed for corn. It doesn’t seem like much but we had plenty of corn last year from a bed that size.

I have got onions, potatoes and lettuce up and growing. I made a trip to a packed greenhouse last Saturday and picked up some new plants, one of them is quite intriguing its got large, wine red trumpet shaped flowers on a trailing vine and is called LoFos, which is short for some long Latin name. I guess it has been popular in Europe for a few years and is called Trailing Gloxina there. I got my mom and daughter in law each one too.

I got some petunias because I can’t resist some of the gorgeous colors they have even though it’s hard to find a place for them here. And I bought more lavender because some of my plants didn’t make it through the winter and a single pepper and some cinnamon basil. My sage is finally getting some new green so it did make it through the winter and the pineapple mint is also coming back- although it’s hard to kill mint. I also bought a couple new perennials. I spend way too much on plants.

A Master Gardener friend brought me some of his “trilliums” which he said his woods were full of. They turned out to be mayapples instead, but that’s ok - they look great in one of my shaded gardens and the silky white flowers scanned well for my scan art pictures. It was great weather for transplanting stuff too.

My horses Charlie and Lily took a little trip last Saturday morning. They pushed the gate out at the bottom and walked up the road in time for breakfast at the big horse farm. The neighbors were kind enough to lead them home and put them back in the pasture without waking us. I was quite puzzled in the morning though, because the gate was all bent up but the horses were inside with both latches on. I spotted a mini manure pile next to my hosta which I knew wasn’t there the night before and then I did some sleuthing and found the tiny hoof prints going up the road. I guessed they had been out - Lily wasn’t that hungry, another clue, but couldn’t figure out who had put them back without us hearing, dogs didn’t even wake up. The neighbor rode over on Monday and told me about it.

I am trying to decide if Lily is PG or just fat. If she is pregnant she would have at least a month before she foaled. If she’s just fat I got to try and get her to lose weight. In a day or so I’ll post some pictures of fat Lily so you can be the judge. I didn’t want to say anything to my husband because this happened before when we got our Shetland pony Tinker, I thought she was pregnant and made him put up more fence so she could be alone and it turned out she wasn’t pregnant. He thinks I’m nuts. But Lily was with two males, a mini jack donkey and a mini stallion or at least close to them and the man who sold her to me said something about separating her from the rest of the horses because she was always trying to protect Charlie. I got her when Charlie was two months old, which would have given her at least two heat periods before I got her. Charlie was born July 19 and mares come into heat about ten days after foaling, gestation is 11 months more or less, so that leaves about a month before its possible for her to foal.

The tree frogs are really noisy tonight. It’s amazing how big a sound their little bodies can make. They like this warmer wet weather. I guess I’ll take a walk outside as the rain has let up, and get carried away by mosquitoes.

Beautiful Sunday

It’s a beautiful spring Sunday morning in Michigan. My orioles are back, they are eating their grape jelly at the feeder, but I still haven’t seen any hummingbirds. Yesterday I bought a beautiful red wave petunia, just one to plant out front to attract them. Their feeder is full and waiting. The nursery was full of beautiful things but I restrained myself to a bleeding heart, (I don’t have any here), a new heuchera, a small agave, and that petunia. Its so nice to wander through a greenhouse on a day that’s not too hot but all those silly people buying tomatoes and all kinds of annual flowers may be in for many more trips to replace what they plant out too early.

I was talking to the greenhouse manager who is growing some tomatoes for an experimental garden we will have at Extension to see what is disease resistant and grows well in this area. I bought some unusual seeds and wanted them to be grown in a greenhouse so they would be nice and sturdy. The manager was telling me despite the fact that things were a little behind outside they are actually ahead of last year in the greenhouse as far as plant growth. But the farmers have not been able to get into the fields - and the plants they grow for some of them, tomatoes and such, are getting lanky.
That’s going to become a real problem around here soon, its getting late to plant and some fields still look like swamps. Field crop planting is well behind schedule.

I am hoping that some of this water, we have everywhere will dry up before we get any more. Rain is supposed to return mid week. Steve is outside mowing the backyard and I am inside babysitting the dogs. They have to be locked inside because he is doing the back yard, their space, which is about 6 inches high. He goes through the west pasture to get into the back yard so I had to move the horses over to the east pasture so they wouldn’t be in his way- lots of moving and prep for a simple task. The rest of the lawn may still be too wet to mow- he got stuck a few days ago in the front yard on the mower.

The April showers and cool weather have made the flowers pretty. The tulips are blooming, and forget me nots. Dandelions are blooming - and I saw some bumble bees on them. Now if I had more time to work on the yard it would be great. I did get things straightened up on the back porch where some plants over wintered and I started some cabbage seed in a flat there.

I am going to get out later today and go over some of my flower beds carefully to see what survived winter and what didn’t. It looks like my lavender plants are gone and maybe the sage. The roses by the house are leafed out as is the clematis but the roses in my big open bed still don’t show any green. Ferns are coming up but I don’t see any hosta tips yet. I did find some pretty pink violets on the west side of the house where it’s shady. I planted them years ago, but didn’t see any for several years, but strangely they are back. Lose some, win some I guess.

Mr white duck has disappeared without a trace. I have let the horses go down by the pond to eat the last few days and left the gate open to the west pasture for them. He probably went through the gate and once in the pasture he can get through the field fence and wander the neighborhood. He and his friend used to go on walk abouts every spring. Now he wanders alone, I guess. Wild ducks are visiting our pond so he should have stayed. I saw the yellow warblers down by the pond too. That pond is as full as it’s ever been. It’s got to be 15 feet deep or more on the east end.

I was just saying to Steve that it was unusual that we didn’t have any kittens yet and when I went out to feed Friday I heard new kittens crying from under the wild cat’s shelter. They all came out of there so I don’t know who had them. Don’t want to lift that to look either. Haven’t heard anything since, maybe they died. The little black and white cat that comes around from time to time is very pg. She is tamer than our wild cats but very secretive with her kittens. She’ll bring them here to eat when they can walk.

Kittens may be the only babies around here this year. There won’t be puppies and I don’t need chicks. One of the turkeys may hatch eggs but it doesn’t look great for that. No lambs, and probably no foals, although Lily is a little plump. That will be strange - spring without babies.