Locust trees

I had someone bring me a tree sample for identification. The piece had tiny white pea-like flowers in drooping clusters with the most delightful scent. The small round leaves made me think locust- as well as the flowers and when looking it up I found I was right - it was a Black Locust, considered by the author of the reference I consulted to be a “weedy tree” but I really liked it. The young guy who brought the piece in said the tree stood in an empty field and was quite huge. He wanted to get a young plant or seeds from it. I want one now too. Someone should make a perfume from that scent. On the way home from work I actually noticed two of the trees in yards, because of the white flowers. You would think a native tree that grows in poor soil as this one is supposed to do would be found in more places. It gets to 60 foot high and has rough interesting bark .

Our Bristly Locust is blooming right now, it’s flowers are larger but pea-like also and a pretty shade of pink. It has bristles up and down the stem and weedy does describe it. It makes small trees but spreads through runners and soon takes over a spot. We allow it to grow along the east side of our property by the road. It doesn’t have that nice smell but it is pretty this time of year.

We have had quite cool weather but I have taken the chance and planted out my tomatoes. I did something different this year and real redneck re-cycling- orientated. We had the box springs from a double bed in the spare bedroom we were going to throw out. It had a nice wood frame so I pulled it outside, took off the cloth on top and the layer of batting and excelsior under it and laid the frame over one of my raised beds, propped up by black plastic pots on each corner so it stands about 18 inches off the ground. I took the matt of batting and excelsior and laid it on the soil under the frame and cut holes through it to plant the tomatoes. I want the tomatoes to grow up through the frame of wood and wire springs and spread out over the top, off the ground. We will see what happens. It will be easy to throw a cloth over if frost threatens too, although it’s June and we shouldn’t be having frost! I am going to get a picture of it and post it here soon.

I saw the wild little kittens last night. There are at least 5 of them. We have 5 female cats on the farm and normally by this time we would have tons of kittens but this is the only litter we have had. Not that I’m complaining, its just strange. These will be real wild, I did pick one up because its little eyes were glued shut and it didn’t see me coming. It hissed like crazy but didn’t fight too hard. They are about 5 weeks old I think. It was nice and plump and besides its little eyes looked healthy. I pulled the eyelids open and put it in the feed dish where it started eating. The others snuck out after I went up to the barn and sat down. There are a lot of mostly white ones, our cats tend to be mostly white or black although we do have two striped ones now.

They say that the color of the feral cats in your area can give you clues as to where the original settlers of the area came from, as the color of the feral cats reverts back to the original stock after a while and different ethnic groups preferred different colored cats. I think the black and white / gray and white ones like ours were supposed to be Dutch, which could be, German- Dutch people did settle this area early on and the Amish are German derived. There are a lot of cats marked like ours in town too.

Today Charlie will get his first hoof trimming. This should be fun. Hopefully neither I nor the gal coming to do it will get hurt nor will he. This girl is a friend of a neighbor and hopefully she knows what she is doing. I could not find anyone who wanted to come out here just to do two mini- horses without charging an arm and a leg. I tied Charlie up to a post the other night to try and get a piece of wire out of his tail and he managed to break the post and take off dragging it which scared me to death. He stopped though when he got to where Lily was and I was able to walk up and unsnap the lead. It was hitting his legs and belly and I was afraid he would kill himself. The post was rotten- that should teach me a lesson.- Maybe him too, hope he doesn’t freak out being tied today.

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.

spring

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?

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.

A few words on a lot of things. I have a lot I have been thinking about but no time to write about. First- Gardening Granny’s idea of what should be done with Detroit. I have a wonderful idea for making the oozing sore on Michigan into a tourist attraction. There are literally miles, many square miles of property in Detroit that are essentially abandoned. The square mileage of Detroit is like three times that of most major cities. So we offer the few remaining homeowners in some of those abandoned stretches homes of greater or equal value in areas where the neighborhoods are a little more populated. The state or city owns many such homes.

Then we bulldoze miles of abandoned houses and stores, pour a few loads of manure on the land and plant native prairie plants and plants like switch grass. We also put up several wind turbines to produce energy which won’t affect the rest of my plan. After the prairie is established we add some buffalo. Of course we will need a huge fence around Detroit, sort of like the one they are building on the border with Mexico.

Now with buffalo grazing on the restored prairie we hire some Detroiters to act like they are buffalo soldiers- remember them? Or Native Americans and then they can lead horseback tours through the prairie. People can stay in Detroit’s big hotels, visit casinos or sports stadiums and have an outdoor adventure too. Maybe we can set up some French trading posts along the river and take people on canoe trips down the Detroit River too. Turn Detroit into one big amusement park. Something to laugh in, not at.

Ok, that’s done. Now on to my dislike of ruling by committee. Nothing gets done. Look at our senate and Congress and just about any city council or school board. Everyone is out to make sure their interests are covered and nothing gets done. Or bad things get done- here’s another Detroit reference- look at their city council or school board. People should vote for people they believe can lead them- choose a leader- and let that person make decisions. If the decisions are wrong then vote out the leader. Of course every leader needs advice and suggestions. But this crap about everyone having their say and let’s not offend anyone ( at least those we like) . All the time and energy spent arguing and posturing, pretending to study issues and look important is wasted time and money.

Leaders have to be strong enough to stand up and lead and to take the blame for bad decisions if they make them. We could save a whole lot of time and money for our country if we got rid of most of the senate and house. Maybe allow one person from each state as a representative and maybe one from each region for the house. Even that is probably enough to slow things down but this country demands such a scheme. At least now, maybe in the future people will see what a mess we have created. Get rid of political parties and just vote for the best person for the job. Small committees if we have to have them, where all the people know who represents them.

And school boards and city councils? I’d eliminate them and choose a leader. Someone who can work swiftly and decisively. He or she can have advisory committees if he or she doesn’t let them drag down decision making. Most businesses don’t work by committee, they have a boss. The most successful businesses generally have a strong leader.

Now on to the furor over the AIG bonuses. If the furor was back when they received the bonuses it would be one thing, but it was months ago when they got those bonuses. We are asking people to give back money they expected to get and probably spent already. Was it right? NO! but it was the governments mistake, they handed our money out without any rules. Learn from the mistake and move on. Make sure no company receiving money from taxpayers gives out bonuses until the money is paid back. Stop hounding the rich idiots who received the money and get mad at the government who gave it to them. Another one of those stupid committee decisions.

Now my plan to cure the mortgage crisis. Demand that all banks lower interest rates to 5% on all mortgages under $500,000. ( Primary residence only). This would lower the mortgage payment for most home owners, leaving more disposable income and allowing people to pay for health care etc. Now go over all of the mortgage holders in trouble and determine if they have the means to pay the lower payment. If not, banks should offer to trade the current home for one that the bank already owns where they can afford the payment. Some people will still lose a home but most would be helped. It’s simple and effective. Yes banks would lose some profit. Maybe they should drop bonuses. Better some mortgage payment coming in than none. Maybe the 5% rate could be allowed to rise for new mortgages after a few years.

Another fix would be to set the limit on current mortgage payments to 30 % of a family’s income, re-evaluated each year. Yes, some people would get really good deals on big houses they couldn’t afford in the first place but remember the banks greed allowed them to get those bad mortgages. And new mortgages would be exempt.

Nothing about the farm here. I’ll save that for the next time when I am feeling mellow.

The animals are springing themselves!
We had one glorious spring like day on Friday, sunny and almost 70, then it was back to winter. On that one glorious day I was emptying all the frozen water dishes and cleaning up a bit around the yard. I went out the gate to the pond from the horse pasture to dump out the ducks dish. The dogs in their yard could see me and Tiny Tina decided I needed help so she climbed the back fence and came after me, then chased all the wild cats up trees, which incited Peanut, her grandmother to climb the fence too, and Peanut went after the poor old duck. Since only the edges of the pond were unfrozen he couldn’t swim away from her as he does in the summer and she chased him across the pond ice to the bank near where I stood then caught him by the leg. He didn’t fight her at all, didn’t do anything even make noise. I had caught Tina to keep her from joining in and I was trying to get down the steep slippery bank holding her under one arm.

I finally managed to snag Peanut by the collar and now I am laying on the muddy bank, a dog in each hand. I couldn’t stand up, it was too steep and slippery and if I let either of them go they’d go back for the duck, who was alive and not bleeding, a good sign. So I crawled up the bank on my belly, pushing a dog before me on each side while holding on to their collars. What an exciting life I lead!

The duck is 8 years old at least, his last bachelor friend died last spring. He’s a white Pekin, but very wild. I made him a shelter out by the gate to the pond and have been wading through the snow all winter to put food and water over the fence. Last winter the ducks came up to the lean-to on the barn for shelter but we had torn that down and put up new fence since then. So he was kept alive all winter only to be caught by the dogs. He’s still alive actually, but I think a leg is broken. He is staying in the water and on the bank near where they caught him, I tried to catch him but he gets in the water just out of my reach and I can’t trust the ice. I threw him some bread but I don’t think he ate it. He’s used to eating dry cat food. This morning we had a dusting of snow and the gate latch was frozen so I couldn’t even get down by the bank.

The dogs were excited by the spring like day and so were the horses. I let them out in the bigger pasture and they ran and ran, kicking and rearing and having a great time. No grass but a lot more room. They decided they liked that I guess, because when I went out this morning they were out there all on their own, gate still closed. They had pushed some fence away from a post and squeezed through. By the time I went through the barn they were back in their stall area, quite innocent looking, waiting for their sweet feed. I tried to fix the fence but I didn’t have tools with me. Then I thought I would just open the gate to keep them from making any more damage, but its latch was frozen too. Hopefully they will remain in the small pasture today.

As soon as it warms up and the grass begins to grow we are moving them to the west pasture with the run in shelter but that may be a month or so. We have to fix a gate and put up some fence on top of the five foot fence to keep the dogs from climbing the shared boundary when they see the horses. It seems like I am always trying to keep something in or out.

Charlie really needs to be gelded. That’s the next big hurdle, and he needs his hoofs trimmed for the first time too. They both need some work, they have become bratty over the winter. Charlie wants to bite or kick me all the time.
Ah, the sun has come out even if it is cold- Hurray!