Morning rounds are so much more enjoyable, now that it’s warmed up, and I don’t have to slog through snow, slush or mud. 😂
First, the cuteness!
Broccoli let me pet her today.
She is so very round.
I counted 32 yard cats today, including 5 that were following around one of the white and greys that was obviously in heat.
*sigh*
Of all of them, the least feral one was Shop Towel!
I tended to the raised bed that was planted in yesterday.
In the first photo, you can see that the stove pellet mulch has absorbed moisture and broken apart into sawdust. The second photo is after I gently spread it around. I like using stove pellets as mulch when direct sowing because even things with small seedlings, like the spinach, can easily push their way through the light and fluffy sawdust.
I also managed to get a picture of an emerging snow crocus!
We’re not seeing many, yet, and the few we do see tend to be too far from the path for me to get a decent photo. Looking at the forecast, I was happy to see rain, but a closer look at the hourly forecast shows that we have an only 4% chance of rain, so… none. At best, we’ve got a 25% chance of rain some time tonight.
After finishing my rounds, I headed to the post office to pick up a couple of parcels. One was a courier delivery, so timing wasn’t an issue, but the other was to our postal box, and I wanted to pick it up before the post office closed at 11:30.
There was nothing there.
Strange, but okay.
My husband was surprised, as he got email notifications for 4 different parcels, instead of just the 2 I was expecting. When I had the chance, I went online to check the tracking, which has timestamps on it.
Two showed “attempted delivery” times that were shortly after I left. Two others had time stamps that were after the post office was closed. A fifth (!!) simply said “delivered today”, which would have been a courier.
One of the packages that came in has our sulfur in it; last I checked the tracking information, that one was supposed to come in on Thursday, so it’s three days early!
The post office opens up again at 2, so I’ll head out again this afternoon.
Then it’s back to work in the garden beds! Woohoo!!
The Re-Farmer
The Re-Farmer 
How quickly does sulfur act to lower the soil ph?
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I haven’t been able to find a firm answer on that. The closest I could find was agricultural and said to plant the following year.
Once I have my first bed treated, I plan to test with my pH meter frequently. The granules should have at least some effect after every rainfall or watering. But how much and how fast is the question!
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I live in a desert with extremely high soil ph (8.6). I gave in to the thought that some of the agricultural extension services run by universities in states with lots of desert (Arizona, Nevada, Utah and New Mexico) might have information on lowering soil ph.
https://extension.usu.edu/yardandgarden/research/solutions-to-soil-problems-ii-high-ph
Click to access az1415.pdf
were two interesting articles. The sites all have search functions that may uncover more information.
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Thank you! I look forward to checking them out!
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Those links were very interesting! Especially the one about iron. Iron availability is not a problem where we are – as the rust stains everywhere from our well water attests to – yet I recognized some of the examples of iron deficiency in foliage. With our pH as high as it is (and I don’t actually know what it is, since our soil test went only to 7.5 and my meter goes only to 8), our soil can have all the iron the plants need, but they just can’t absorb it!
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