When I transplanted my avocado from their little jars of water into soil, I had to split the pits to get them out of the jars (note for future reference: make sure the mouth of the container is not narrower than the rest of it!). I wasn’t sure if they would survive the transplanting.
Well, they have!
They are now big enough to prune back to 6 inches or so (as I’ve read needs to be done).
I had added more pits directly to the soil to see if they would root like that – just in case these ones didn’t make it – so even though this pot is designed to provide water from below, I am surface watering the pits as well.
We have a provincial election coming up, with voting day on the same day we have a medical appointment for my husband in the city, so we are taking advantage of the advance polls being open right now.
I’d already voted and had to go through the whole registration process a few days ago, so when the girls and I came in, I had some time on my hands while they did the paperwork.
The location just happens to have a Pokemon Go gym at it, so I went outside to conquer it.
While I was doing that, I noticed some beautiful fungi at the bottom of a maple tree.
While pausing to take pictures, I noticed something amazing about the tree.
I’m going to stack the photos below and hopefully give you some sense of what I was seeing.
Woodpeckers have drilled a trench up the tree, then into the tree, with holes opening it up along the way.
That blows my mind is that the tree is somehow still alive! There is very little bark left on it.
While taking those pictures, I noticed the tree next to it.
With this, just a short distance from my head.
I have a hard time believing no one has noticed it, since it’s clearly been there a while. Which means it’s been left there on purpose. This is a municipal owned property, and all I can think when I see that is “liability.” !!
I can see where other trees have been taken down, plus there are pieces of tree trucks strewn about artistically in the grass. The trees are obviously tended to, in a general sense.
Though the power lines to the building run right through several trees.
*sigh*
Anyhow.
I just thought that swooping, bird created trench and holes in the one tree was really amazing and wanted to share it. :-)
I went outside late last night, and ended up staying out longer to enjoy the incredible view!
Even with the yard light on (we can’t turn it off since the power company replaced the original), the stars were bright enough that I could see the Milky Way!
Then I went out again later, with my daughters, to ogle the sky.
My husband gave me his new phone not long ago, to replace mine with the cracked corner, and I had yet to try night shots with it. I put it on manual and basically guessed at the settings I was changing – I could barely see the numbers, never mind read them. After fiddling with the settings, I would lay the phone down on the ground, then use voice commands to take a picture.
Then I’d fuss with the settings a bit more, set it on the ground and try again. Eventually, I figured out how to do a long exposure shot – and recognize the sounds the phone made, so I wouldn’t accidentally pick it up again, before the exposure was complete. :-D
This is one of the results.
The only thing I’ve done to this image is resize it.
I’m really amazed at the shots I was able to get with just a cell phone!!!
Between the high winds and rain we’ve been having recently, it’s been a while since my rounds have included all the perimeter of the spruce grove.
The predicted storms have, once again, passed us by – this time to the south – but we have been getting rain almost constantly for the last while.
Which would have been wonderful in the spring. The farmers in the middle of harvesting their crops are now being hit with a triple whammy. A cold late spring followed by a hot dry summer, and now when hot and dry is what the crops need, it’s cold and wet.
That’s the reality of farming, though, and everyone just goes with it. What else can you do?
In the last while, the kittens have become more interested in following me around as I do my morning rounds. Especially when I go to switch the memory card in the trail cam. Usually, it’s just one or two kittens, though.
This morning, my daughter came along, and that really got their attention, so we had 4 of them from the start. :-D
The girls and I were able to get out for a wonderful visit with my older brother today. We had a fantastic time, and we got a tour of their yard, including the hundreds of new trees they planted!
Gotta love having a big enough yard to be able to do something like that. :-D
Blue Spruce tips
This picture is of one of their blue spruces that they planted years ago, looking nice and healthy, in spite of the dryness. What a difference it makes when something is planted with planning and care! At least some of the blue spruce I have found here would have been planted at about the same time, give or take a year or two, and should be looking more like this. Hopefully, with the clearing I’ve done, the surviving ones will recover.
Of course, the RCMP called me back after we left. I wasn’t expecting a follow up call so soon! The officer is going to call again this evening, so I’m staying near the phone now.
It’s been one heck of a day, outside. While there were high winds at my brother’s, the winds are even higher here at home. I’ve already done a check around the yard. There are lots of small branches on the ground but, so far at least, not a lot of larger ones. It’s getting winder even as I write this, though, so I’m not going to start picking them up until tomorrow, at the earliest. (Oh, wow, are the maple branches out my window ever being flung around as I write this!!!) The bird feeder was blown over when we got back and I put it back up again, only to have it blow over soon after. I’m leaving it for now, since there’s no point in putting it back up until things calm down.
Right now, we’re at 30C, with a “real feel” of 34C. We were supposed to get thunderstorms tonight, but now the predictions are for thunderstorms starting tomorrow afternoon. The weather system causing the winds right now has storms in it, too, but from the weather radar, they’re all going to pass to the north of us.
What a thing, to actually wish for storms to hit, just so we can get some rain!
