gardening and Modern Photos crocus, gardening, photography 13:20
from the other day:
I am going to figure out how to make crocus work in a naturalistic fashion, someday! These are a species crocus with a fairly good, saturated color planted in a tall grass section of the lawn. The deeper color is more effective against the light background of the dead grass than the paler pastels. (pure white also works) Now, if I can get past the vole issue….
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Heavy fog this morning, gave way to a pleasant evening. Almost tempting to sit outside and watch the sunset while supper cooked, but not quite there yet. One of the nice things about a good western view though!
Spring clean up continues apace, very much a team effort. I chopped back some big old burning bushes this year, on the theory the volunteer dogwoods and yew deserved the space more. The brush (log!) piles vanished while I was at work, magic that 🙂
And some peas are in the ground! Also a team effort.
The white crocus vernus seems to be the survivor, good thing it looks good. Yellow apparently gets eaten first, then cream blue/rose shades. Curious.
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Got a little bit done today, I’ve been distracted by work/life which is no bad thing…I think.
Anyway, two critical bits of lawn raked off. A good clean-up in the spring makes all the difference, I’ve found. Really more than fall.
Almost too late on the section next to the two white birches, several of the crocuses were up and blooming already, about a month early. Despite the population boom on rodents this year, a few of my favorites have come up:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crocus_angustifolius
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gardening and Modern Photos gardening, photography 22:38
also known as today’s random photo, since while today was very busy it really isn’t blog fodder, so a random photo it is! You will note that a broken top really does not detract from the bottle’s interest, at least in my view.
I was driving down through a decidedly suburban bit of Connecticut today (gah). And noting the lawns. With all their leaf piles: oak, pine, lawn clippings, some maple. Some finely chopped, some just raked. All neatly stacked in nice long rows. By the Side Of The Road for the Garbage Truck.
I am most assuredly not a follow of Gaia*, but I sometimes wish Mother Nature would whack people over the head. Hard. Preferably with a tree branch.
*I was on my way as parish clerk to attend the Diocesan annual convention for the Episcopal Church!
The birds are having a ball: three types of sparrows, titmice, nuthatch, chickadee, juncos, woodpeckers, et al. working away on the dropped apples. Only the mourning doves don’t seem to care for them.
Two stroke engines that start on the first pull: Awesome. Two stroke engines that don’t: language practice.
Chainsaws are wonderful. Sharp chainsaws are even better.
I like the smell of sawdust/gasoline/bar oil.
It was a very nice and productive day. And that really annoying little re-sprouting tulip tree is finally cut down! It wasn’t even what would be sapling size really (three stems, each about four inches, about ten-twelve feet in length). I’ve been using it as guard for the Sugar Maple that is intended for the spot next to the drive. It had gotten a bit ugly, thanks to periodic cutting over the last five years. It will resprout next year of course, to do its job once more. But not at a size which will interfere with the maple.
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It seems we hit or went under 25 F last night (according to my notes that is the temperature which causes the Gingkos to drop). Sure enough, a steady leaf fall of very green leaves out there. It will be a pain to clean up. Interestingly, they hung on frozen until the sun hit them this morning. The sixty year old one on the South Lawn has a more open branch structure and is dropping them faster, it will probably be bare by noon. The big one on the north lawn is slower, but also looks to have gotten sufficiently cold.
No gold fans this year. Just green banana peel….
Curious plants.
The oaks, of course, could care less. They are still solidly green and still whacking one with acorns. It is a great time of year, if you can get the distance (from another hill or from the air), to look at forest cover. Each species of tree looks different.
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Snow? Really? Non-melting snow? Alright not that much, but really? (The passing squall didn’t melt in shady bits of lawn grass!
On the other hand, this freeze has killed off the bits of the garden that desperately needed killing, so I can’t complain that much….
But it may not have gotten as cold as I thought, mid/high twenties at most. I have to go back and look at my notes, I know the Ginkgo will drop its leaves green at a certain temperature, but I can’t remember what it is. Either 23 or 28, I think it must be 23.
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rain….that would be nice. What would be nice is if it started off gently and watered in the plants that I put in the ground yesterday. I can’t claim prescience, I didn’t know it was going to rain, I just knew I needed to get them in the ground before the growing season stops.
Otherwise, it smells rather like a cider mill here. A good cider mill at the moment, but if I don’t get in gear….it won’t be so pleasant. Anybody want some apples? I can’t give them away this year, I tried. Everybody has apples. I ended up swapping apples with a guy at work. He brought apples to give to me and I brought apples to give to him. Rather defeated the exercise. At least they were different varieties. I tried giving them away at church coffee hour, and at vestry, and at choir…..apparently, apples aren’t popular, even really good old style MacIntoshes. (And I forbore from making jokes about serpents even!)
What I need to do is to freeze some more, but that whole peeling apples thing is a bore when the gratification (the pie) is relatively immediate, when it is a distant idea, even worse.
Maybe I should take the rotten ones to a certain bit of politics I ought to attend as a symbolic statement….
Bad idea that!
Drive a stick!
I learned on one, of course, but with several years of no driving and then coming back and driving automatics for the most part for the last five years….
Summer went some where, but I finally knocked the psychological rust off by driving the Green Truck downtown today to drop some things off. It is older than I am by a fair bit. It runs well. It’s loud, it lacks all safety features, it eats gas….you can keep it running with nothing but an odd whack on the carburetor. We might take it to the local car show again next week, people seem to enjoy unmodified, working vehicles. The only thing that doesn’t work is the horn and the gas gauge.
I then spent some five minutes wrestling with the gas cap on a trimmer….unlike the Green Truck (1970 Chevrolet) this bit of equipment is a modern, leak proof creature (Stihl 2012). I agree that a leak proof cap is Wonderful. But it does nothing good for one’s blood pressure when the —- won’t lock down!
However, the trimmer is absolutely critical to maintenance here: that balance of trees and undergrowth would not happen otherwise. Once a year, the entire lot must get trimmed, some sections more often than that. Perhaps a little early this year, but not really since it is dry: the ferns are dying back and while the wood aster is lovely, cutting it as the flowers start to go past reduces the seed count. I don’t want all of the area to be wood aster, after all. The trick is to not cut what one wants to leave, since the blade will happily go halfway through a fiberglass, half inch fence post on the first swing (if you hit it right/wrong) not cutting things can be a little tricky. I do pretty well. If I don’t recognize it, I try not to cut it!
Acair Fearann 