But first, the cuteness…
Gouda has a new necklace.
He has lost his other reflective collar before, but I’ve always found it and was able to put it back on. No sign of it this morning, so now he has a spiffy new blue one. We use the collars to make it easy to see which cats have been fixed, but we have only two orange cats right now – Rolando Moon, the grand old lady, and Gouda, who is about half Rolando’s size. So we really don’t need a collar to tell if he’s been fixed. It does, however, make him more visible at night and, if he every visits a neighbour’s farm, they can see that he’s not for target practice.
I got his collar on while I was doing the second feeding for the outside cats. I put out less food, in hopes it will all be gone and there will be nothing to tempt the racoons and skunks during the night. On the critter cam, though, I spotted a skunk at one of the trays, surrounded by about 6 cats, all eating!
After they were fed and watered, I went around to check on things as much as the snow and ice will let me. That included checking on the hose for the emergency bypass from the septic pump. It runs past the rigged fence where the tulips and Liberty apple tree are. On my way back towards the house, I noticed that the snow had melted away along the fence line, including where we’d planted saffron crocuses in the fall a couple of years ago. They had started to come up in the spring, but we couldn’t keep the weeds away, and they were soon choked out. If they had made it, we should have had flowers around August, with saffron to harvest.
Last fall, I didn’t even bother to mulch the area over them. They are a zone 4 crocus, so the chances of them making it was already low, with our without mulch.
Imagine my surprise when I saw this.
Do you see those sprays of greenery?
Those are the saffron crocuses!
Not only did they survive the summer, after being choked out by weeds, they survived the winter without a mulch, and have made their way through the still frozen ground!
After taking the picture, I looked around some more and got another surprise.
They have increased.
Last year, there was a single spray of green where each corm was planted. This year, I saw more sprays, and even clusters of sprays, showing that more corms have developed.
How they had the energy to do that, after the weeds took over, I have no idea. But there they are!
I have no idea how we are doing to do any better to keep the weeds from taking over again, once things warm up, to be honest, but we will definitely be trying.
The rest of the area, where the tulips are, still has a pretty thick layer of snow, so it’ll be a while before we can tell how many tulips survived.
I’m just blown away that even a single saffron crocus made it!
The Re-Farmer
The Re-Farmer 