tulips

Looks like I won’t be doing that again, anytime soon

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First up, here are cute kitties!

A couple more showed up after I got this photo; I think I saw 8 or 9 altogether, with Potato Beetle going straight for the sun room.

I haven’t actually seen Broccoli for a little while. She is looking far less round right now.

I wonder where she found to have her babies?

Speaking of babies, I still can’t tell exactly how many are in the cat’s house. They tend to be all in one big pile, and I can’t tell one from another. I couldn’t even tell where the grey and white one was, it was to thoroughly buried by the others!

The tulips are getting a lot easier to see among the leaf litter. Just look at how many there are!

Now, if we can just keep the deer away, we should have quite a show of flowers this year!

With yesterday’s successful trip to the city, I decided to grab the big water jugs and get them refilled in town. I also wanted to look for something for Mother’s Day, thinking that I would surprise her tomorrow and meet her for church. I was pretty sure my brother would make the trip out, and we could visit her together.

I’m glad I made the trip today, because I don’t think we’re going anywhere for quite a while. I would not have wanted to discover this while driving my mother’s car, tomorrow!

I had checked the washout on the road to the south of us. Whatever heavy equipment I’d heard the day before, they were not working there. The water may be down, but the erosion has worked its way further across the deeper washout. As I was still walking towards it, I saw a truck coming from the other direction. It stopped at the washout, then backed up until it reached a higher driveway into a field it could turn around in. I was just wearing regular shoes, not my rubber boots, so I wasn’t able to do more than check the washout from one side, but as I did, another truck came by from the opposite direction. This one did drive through, but when it reached the deeper washout, I could see it struggle to get through.

This morning, remembering a neighbor that told me our road was good to the north, I decided to avoid the washout by the bison ranch and go that way.

That neighbor clearly doesn’t take the road to our main gravel road to get out, likely going north to a paved road, instead. His driveway is a little over a mile from our intersection. At about 3/4 of a mile, I reached a washout that was even deeper, if narrower, than the one to the south I’ve been checking.

This time, I was the one carefully reversing until I could reach a stable driveway to turn around in.

So I took the main road out, but when I reached the washout near the bison ranch, I could see that it, too, had eroded quite a bit more. I was able to get through but, clearly, this was going to be our last trip out until the road could be fixed.

None of these washouts can be fixed right now. Not even a quick patch job. The water levels may be dropping, but it’s still flowing way too fast over the roads. Any attempt to repair them right now would just get washed away.

With that in mind, I made sure to pick up the few things I didn’t get yesterday, though when I saw the price of even no-name brand vegetable oil, I was thinking I’d have done better getting the big restaurant sized bucket at the wholesale store, instead! While I was paying for my few items, I commented on how much the price had gone up on the oil. The cashier got quite wide eyed (they’re still forced to wear masks, so that’s all I could see) and commented on how ALL the prices had gone up. Yeah – as cashier, she would be seeing all of it going by! She commented that she’s starting to expect wagons to show up in the parking lot, pulled by horses, because people can’t afford the increased gas prices. I truly wouldn’t be surprised to see that.

Knowing it might be a while before we could get out again, I made a quick stop to pick up a couple more of those storage bins we’re using for the transplants, then headed back again.

In the time it took me to do that, the washout was worse.

I stopped to take a closer look before trying to cross.

It’s hard to tell from the wide angle shot I took, but there’s a darker spot about in the middle. Just past that, there’s a deeply eroded part more than half way across. The water on either side of it, though, hides other deeper areas – and those are on the side that’s still safer to drive through! The wind from the south is actually strong enough that the water was being pushed back. I could see more of the road than earlier, and was not encouraged.

While I was checking it out, I saw a truck coming, so I went back to the van. I watched him as he drove through and my heart dropped when I saw the start bouncing around in one area in particular. His truck could make it, though. He stopped beside me and we talked for a bit. He told me he thought it was better around the other way. The roads here are on a 1 mile grid. If I went back to the highway, went a mile south to the next gravel road, took it west one mile, then cut across, past the bison farm’s driveway, to the intersection on the other side of this washout, I’d be able to continue home. He did think I’d be able to make it through here, though. It’s been a long time since I’ve taken the road past the bison ranch and it’s not one that’s maintained as well as those that get more traffic, at the best of times.

So I went for it and drove through here.

Yeah. I’m definitely not going to my mother’s, tomorrow! Our van had a hard enough time; my mother’s little car could never make it.

As I said, I’m glad I decided to go into town today and found out how much worse it was, now!

Which means we are basically stuck again. It’s possible that I might find a route I could get through to the west of us – the opposite direction of the highway we need to get to. The main road is no longer closed and I’m sure I could go quite some distance, but the side roads would be no different than any of the side roads near our place. I’ve talked to quite a few people who say they simply can’t get out to friends and family that way at all, and that’s even using the paved road to the north of us that I’d hope to use this morning.

We are going nowhere.

I really hope at least the main road can finally be fixed soon. I haven’t gotten any shipping notices yet, but we’re going to be getting our potatoes and live trees mailed to us fairly soon. The potato company typically finishes shipping their orders by mid-May. That’s just a week away. Then there are the sweet potato slips and more than 40 trees that will need to be planted as soon as possible – and we can’t even start digging the holes for them, yet, because of all the water in places. The last thing I would want is for these to be at the post office while not being able to pick them up. The potatoes might be okay, but the rest can’t stay there for too long.

It all depends on how much longer it takes for the water to go down and not be rushing across the roads like this, then how long it takes for the road crews to fix them up. The one by the bison ranch will be a priority fix, since that’s a main road. As long as that one gets done, most people stuck as we are will be able to get through.

So once again, we hunker down. Which is okay. We are well stocked up, and there is plenty of work to get done! A whole lot of seedlings in the big aquarium greenhouse need to be thinned, potted up and moved to the sun room. The different types of pumpkins are getting such huge leaves! Meanwhile, the winter squash started at the end of April – Boston Marrow, Georgia Candy Roaster and Winter sweet – are doing much better on the heat mat. Almost every pot has seedlings exploding out of the soil! It’s so awesome to see!

With all of these, if the plants seem strong and healthy, we plan to thin by dividing. The more we have to transplant, the less of a concern it is, if we lose some to transplant shock.

And if they all survive transplanting, some may get eaten by critters, bird or bugs.

And if they all survive that, we’ll just have whole lot of squash.

I’m good with that.

We’ll have plenty to keep us busy while we wait for the roads to be fixed up.

The Re-Farmer

Signs of spring – I’m so excited!

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After checking on the road conditions, I continued checking areas of the inner yard we can now access again. I also checked on the old kitchen garden. It just happened that the sump pump was running, and I was quite amused by what I saw.

Along with the water coming out the end, there was water spraying like fountains out of the hose! There are three areas with holes in them. Once I saw the two smaller holes next to the rain barrel, I pulled up the slack a bit, so that they will hopefully spray on the paving slabs, instead. Once things dry up a bit, I’ll just patch it with some electric tape. We do have spare hose, but I’m still considering adding it to the end of this one, to send the water further away from the house. The ground does slope away from the house rather well, here, so I really don’t need to, but it does give us more options.

Walking through the old kitchen garden, I could see deep hoof prints in the garden beds from the deer. Which made a good indicator of how thawed out the ground is!

Going into the maple grove, I noticed an area was clearer of snow that I wanted to get a closer look at.

Between these two rows of trees is where we planted crocuses. About a quarter of it is still too covered with snow, but I wanted to see if there was any sign of them, where it was clear.

Yes!!! In one section, I found so many little crocuses coming up! Including the one you see here, that has pierced its way through a leaf. :-D

I am just thrilled that they survived the winter. I went to check the area we planted the grape hyacinth in, but it’s still too covered with snow.

With the crocuses coming up, I was curious. Was it possible? I had to check.

YESSSS!!!!!! We have tulips coming up! Just look at them all! I put arrows pointing to the ones I could find. It’s entirely possible there are more, camouflaged among the leaf litter.

There are even a few visible in a section my daughters planted fewer, more unique, tulips. Only a couple are visible in this photo, but there were more.

This is just so exciting! After the deer and other critters decimated the tulips last year, we thought they were done for. It was their first growing season, and we didn’t think they had the chance to establish themselves.

My daughter is so happy. She was heart broken when all her tulips were eaten! One of the things the girls had done was make sure the bulbs were buried extra deep, as recommended on the package to keep them as perennials. A lot of people buy and plant tulips and other bulbs every spring. If they’re buried closer to the surface, they can’t survive our winters. We didn’t want that, so my daughter made the extra effort. It looks like all their hard work paid off!

Now I’m wondering if my daughter’s irises and daffodils, planted along the edge of the old kitchen garden, will come up, too. One type did show some leaves last year, but never got to the point of sending up flowers. Another type didn’t come up at all, that we could see.

Aside from some leaf buds starting to show, this is the first major sign of spring growth we’ve had this year!

Oh, and we have more exciting growth, this time indoors. We’ve got melons sprouting! Two types; the Halona melon, plus one of the grocery store melons I lost the name for.

Flowers and food, there’s lots to look forward to in the gardens this summer!

The Re-Farmer

Testing, testing!

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Well, I’m certainly glad I decided to switch memory cards on the trail cam over the tulips after I finished my last post.

With this camera, if it happens to be recording when I pull out the memory card, I have to manually turn it back on again after putting in the new card. This time, it wouldn’t turn back on again. After much fussing, and even loosening the camera so I could reach things better, I finally got it going again.

When I checked the card, there was nothing on it. Whatever happened that caused it to turn off and stay off, happened while I was positioning the camera in a new location.

So I went back, made a point of triggering the camera so I would have at least one file from it in position, then switched cards again.

I then went back and forth between re-positioning the camera, switching cards and checking the files, several more times.

There were a couple of problems. The first was, no matter how I positioned the camera on various parts of the apple tree, I couldn’t cover all of the tulip area.

The other problem was physically moving the camera. It is held in place by a long strap. One end has a gripping clasp that the other end is woven through. This is great if I have to put it on a large tree and leave it there. It also doesn’t make much difference when it was on a fence post, as I could just loosen the strap and lift it off the top of the post. To move it from place to place on the tree, the strap needed to be pulled through the clasp, every time, then placed around the trunk, reinserted into the clasp and pulled tight again. Meanwhile, the strap runs through slots in the back of the camera that grip nothing, so the weight of the camera itself kept causing it to slide around and swing.

Since it was still on while this was being done, I had a lot of videos that were very hard on the eyes to watch!

In the end, there was simply no place I could put the camera that would cover the area needed. And there were no other trees in suitable spots that I could attach the camera to.

I could see where the camera needed to be set up. What I needed was something there I could attach the camera to.

I found something.

I grabbed one of the old sawhorses. We have three, and this one is the odd sized one, so it doesn’t get used as much. I set it up on its end, and attached the camera to the cross bar. The bonus is, now that the camera is strapped onto it, making adjustments is easy. I just shift the saw horse instead of trying to move the camera. With the camera mounted so low to the ground, I can switch the memory card more easily by tipping the sawhorse onto its side, then popping it back up again, without shifting its position. If I check the files and find that it does need to be shifted, it is much, much easier to do so now, then trying to do it on a post or tree trunk.

I already have a file of Creamsicle Jr. walking past the camera!

This should work out just fine.

And yes, I did move the string of bells and plastic spinner to the sides, so that they wouldn’t trigger the motion sensor in the wind!

On the one hand, I hope to capture the critter that’s abusing our tulips. On the other, I hope the critter never shows up, because there aren’t many tulips with flower buds left. We have not found other materials we can use to protect them (the fence wire I was thinking we could use would not stop a skunk), and won’t be able to buy anything until at least tomorrow. We’ll be making our monthly bulk shopping trip to the city tomorrow, but I’m not sure if we’ll be able to find anything useful. Now that we’ve added Canadian Tire to our list of places to shop at, to get the stove pellets we’re using for cat litter, I’m hoping to at least be able to find some chicken wire or something like that.

We’ll see how things work out!

The Re-Farmer

Tulip carnage continues!

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What a disappointing sight to see this morning!

More tulip flower buds and leaves have been eaten, even with the efforts we made last night to deter the deer.

It might not be deer.

Or maybe not “just” deer.

You can see it a bit in the photo; something has been digging in the leaf mulch. It looks like skunks were digging for grubs.

It turns out skunks eat tulips. too.

I am thinking of setting up one of the trail cams over the area. Meanwhile, I think the roll of wire fence that I intended to use on the squash arch is going to be pressed into tulip protection duty.

I just hope the bulbs have enough energy left in them to grow more leaves and survive this.

The Re-Farmer

Tulip carnage

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I woke up late this morning, and it was already getting hot by the time I headed out to finish in the garden. I still made sure to check my daughter’s tulips, after so many flower bulbs got eaten the other night.

At first, I was please; the rope I’d put around the front and side had worked. No new damage.

Then I looked further back.

The deer had just gone around the back, through the lilacs and caragana hedge. They didn’t just eat the flower buds, either, but the leaves as well.

My daughter was quite upset. It looks like all the ones with black flowers got eaten. We have no idea if the tulips will recover from having so much of their leaves eaten. We’re hoping they will still be able to grow more leaves, but so much has been eaten!

This evening, the girls added more rope around the area, and dug out some chicken wire that was among the junk stacked around the garden shed. You can’t see it in the photo, but it’s along the lilacs in the back. I still have some plastic spinners I’d picked up from the dollar store, then we raided my craft supplies for some Christmas bells. Those got strung onto twine. In some areas, there are short lengths hanging down. At the back of this photo, plus on the other side of the lilacs at a more open area covered by the chicken wire, we tied longer strings of bells.

Hopefully, this will keep the deer away from the rest of the tulips.

Of all the green things coming up that the deer are going after, why does it have to be my daughter’s flowers? :-(

I suspect the girls will not be so averse to my goal of hunting, anymore. Especially if it’s venison with a hint of tulip.

The Re-Farmer

Our 2021 garden, interrupted

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Today being Sunday, I normally avoid all unnecessary work. With the weather turning nice, it became a day to get back to hauling dirt, so we’ll have something to direct sow and transplant into, so that counts as necessary work! Tomorrow is supposed to get quite hot, so I wanted to get as much manual labour done today.

I had a couple of distractions.

One of them was the mock orange at the clothes line platform. I was starting to wonder if it had survived our deep freeze in February. We’ve been including it in the watering, and parts of it have started to leaf out, so I figured it would be a good time to prune it, now that I could actually see which parts were still alive.

I did accidentally snip one branch that had leaves, but otherwise, this is all of what got killed off this past winter.

A lot of little twigs and tips got snipped away, too. There’s not a lot left, but I know it will recover quite well. These are remarkably resilient plants!

It was also a nice enough day that the transplants could be set out to harden off again.

This is the first day of hardening off for all the Mongolian Giant sunflowers, and most of the Montana Morado corn. Some of the cups got left in the bin, as they either didn’t have anything sprouted in them, yet, or had only recent sprouts. I’ve been watering them in the bin from below, and I noticed many of the cups had roots coming through the drainage holes, so I put them in other cups to protect the roots while they were outside.

That done, it was time to start hauling soil.

I had company.

Nutmeg really wanted attention!

He and Ginger share many mannerisms. Ginger has a habit of hunching down and flopping a certain way that I just figured was because of the missing leg, but Nutmeg does it, too!

He’s such a cutie. :-)

This was the progress I made before I headed in. I couldn’t figure out why I was starting to feel kind of light headed, but then I realized I’d had only 4 pieces of toast for breakfast – and it was past 3pm!

You can see the corn block that had been done before the rains started, in the back. I’d finished a sunflower block, another corn block, and over half of a sunflower block, before heading in for some sustenance.

Not straight in, of course, because there’s always something to do first, right? :-D The seedlings went back into the sun room, and various garden beds got checked. It’s so nice to see so many seedlings, even if they are still really tiny!

After a couple of hours, I headed back outside. On my way to where I’d left the wheelbarrow by the garden soil, I paused to check on my daughter’s tulips. They have not opened, yet, but we can now see the colours of petals beginning to show in most of them.

Something didn’t seem right, though. In fact, something seemed very wrong.

Were there fewer flower buds?

Yes, indeed! Among the tulips closest to the edge, the flower stalks were cleanly snipped, and the flower buds missing.

It seems the deer were enjoying some appetizers!

I am not impressed. I didn’t expect them to squeeze between the plum and apple trees to get at these.

I left them for the time being, and continued working on the corn and sunflower blocks.

One of the down sides of setting up these beds in the area we intend to plant food trees later on, is that they are very close to the road, and today was a high traffic day. Thankfully, with all the rain we’ve had, I didn’t have the clouds of dust blowing in that we usually do. At least that won’t be as much of a problem for long, as the lilac hedge is leafing out quite nicely. It does a great job of stopping the dust cloud. One of the ATVs that passed by turned out to be our vandal, studiously and resolutely pretending not to see me. ;-) Which is fine. At least he’s stopped giving me the finger as he goes by.

During one of my trips back to the pile of soil, I saw him heading back, then could hear him slow down and finally stop on the road. I decided to see why, and found that he’d crossed paths with someone and they both stopped to talk on the road. So I continued with getting the load of soil, then heading back to the last of the corn blocks I was working on. I could hear the vehicles part ways, and our vandal’s ATV driving onto his property. As I was placing the soil, I could hear the ATV getting closer again, though clearly not on the road. Eventually, I heard it stop and the engine was shut off.

Then I started hearing gun shots.

By the 4th shot, I decided it was time to go inside. I have no idea what direction he was shooting in, but I wasn’t going to take chances with a stray bullet. It wasn’t a high powered rifle he was using; it was likely just a .22 I had only a row and a half left to do, but that can wait until tomorrow!

It was shortly after 8pm when I went inside, but I did head back out again about 10 minutes later. I dug out what was left of the yellow rope we found while cleaning up and tied it around some trees by the tulips.

It might be a bit too high, but I hope it will still discourage the deer from going under the bright yellow thing. We can hand dangly things off of it, to further discourage the deer.

As you can see by the spots of colour, there are still quite a few tulip buds. Thankfully, none of the Bull’s Eye tulips – the little ones in the foreground – were harmed. I counted the other ones, and all 54 bulbs have come up, but only half of the Bull’s Eye tulips (I found a fourth one had emerged, though it’s not visible in the above photo).

While I was doing this, I heard our vandal’s ATV start up again, so I headed over to where I might be able to see something. I did eventually see him off in the distance in his field. I can’t imagine what was out there that he would be shooting at. Normally, I would guess a skunk or some other potentially troublesome creature small enough that a .22 would be useful, but that would be an issue closer to his house or outbuildings, none of which we can see from our place. Out in the field like that, I might expect a bear, but if that were so, I would have expected to hear a higher caliber rifle!

Ah, well. Gun shots in the country are not all that unusual. The only reason it was a concern is because I had no way of knowing what direction he was firing, and I would not expect him to care where his bullets might end up, if he missed hit his target, whatever that may have been.

So that was it for my garden work today. Tomorrow, I’ll finish those last rows in the last corn block.

Oh, my goodness. I just checked the weather. The predicted high for tomorrow has been increased. We’re now expected to hit 27C/81F tomorrow afternoon! I’ll have to make sure I finish up much earlier in the day. The expected low tomorrow is 15C/59F. then temperatures are expected to drop right down again. We’ll have overnight lows just above, or at, freezing for three nights. After that, overnight lows are expected to range between 11C and 14C (52 – 57F) and stay in that range, well into June. Theoretically, that means we can start transplanting things outdoors by the 28th.

Which is what I did last year, when we got a frost on June 2. So while we will do the direct sowing we have left to do, the transplants will wait a bit longer!

Once I’m done with the corn and sunflower blocks, we will be done with all the areas that will be direct sown into. The next job is to work on the bed the winter squash, melons and gourds will go, since we will have to dig post holes for the squash tunnel we’ll be building to support them. Once that’s built, it’s back to hauling soil for the beds all the transplants will be going into.

I forgot to take a picture of the pile of soil. It is much depleted! I suspect we will be finishing it off and bringing soil in from the pile in the outer yard, by the time we’re doing the last of the beds.

I am so glad we were able to get two loads!!

The Re-Farmer

A tulip explosion!

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The girls headed outside this afternoon, and were excited to ask me if I’d seen the tulips.

I had, when I did my rounds this morning, but clearly, something had changed.

The tulips have exploded with flower spikes!

Most of my daughter’s tulips were planted in this spot. Over 50 bulbs in 6 varieties were planted here. We haven’t tried to count how many have come up. I think, by now, any that haven’t come up were casualties of February’s polar vortex. :-(

While just to one side, another group of very different tulips were planted. These are Bull’s Eye tulips (which Veseys apparently no longer carries). Of the 8 bulbs that were planted, it looks like only 3 survived the winter.

I can’t believe how quickly these flower spikes shot up!!

They are not the only ones.

The flower spikes in the grape hyacinths are a bit harder to see, but they are certainly there! Pretty much all of them that we can see have these tiny spikes emerging. Once they start blooming, we’ll finally be able to get a better idea of how many of the 200 we planted survived the winter! :-D

Meanwhile, the winds have only gotten stronger – I had to fight just to open the door to go outside and get these photos! – and the temperatures are still rising. I look forward to the cooler weather and, hopefully, rain to come!

The Re-Farmer

Snowy morning

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This morning, we had snow coming down with flakes so big, I could see them without my glasses! :-D

They even triggered the motion sensor on the security camera during daylight. That happens all the time at night, with the infrared flash (and I wake up to hundreds of emails with images of snow or rain streaking across… :-D ), but almost never, during the day.

The outside cats are completely unphased by this little bit of snow. :-)

The future tomato bed got some much needed moisture! The more the better, to help break down that cardboard and straw.

The garlic sprouts don’t mind the snow at all. :-) The snow actually made it easier to see how many more have sprouted since I last checked them out.

It was interesting, going through the maple grove and checking out the areas we planted bulbs and corms in. There was a void in the snow, under every single spruce tree. This is a good visual to ID which areas are getting the least moisture, so if/when we do water where we planted, we know which areas need it more. Of course, once the other trees and bushes leaf out, there won’t be any difference, but that’ll be a while, yet.

There are still only two tulips showing, and that one onion that’s managed to survive from when this was my mother’s garden, in the areas my daughters planted their bulbs. They don’t seem to mind the snow at all!

In the sun room, while it was still just below freezing outside, the thermometer was reading 10C/50F. That is more than adequate for the onion seedlings. The light and heater bulb kept the tomato and luffa seedlings nice and warm through the night.

By the time I finished my rounds, much of the snow was already melted away, and from what I can see on the security camera live feed, there isn’t a bit of it left.

I don’t know that we’ll have a nice enough day to continue working outside today, but we’re supposed to get warmer over the next couple of days, then cool day with rain. As much as it slows down how much progress we can make on the garden beds, I am thankful for every drop of moisture we’re getting right now! After one hot day, the temperatures will drop down and basically flat line at around 8C and 10C (46-50F) for highs, and hovering at or just above freezing for the overnight lows, for the next two weeks. We might even get a bit more rain in there, too!

The weather for today is still saying we’ll have a high of 7C/45F, but that it’ll feel like 4C/39F. I’m hoping to be able to get some more progress outside, but we shall see. The melted snow might actually make it easier to dig more post holes for the other pea trellises we’ll be making. If we can’t get to that, there’s plenty of other things we need to work on! :-)

What fun! :-D

The Re-Farmer