stubbed toes and mud pies

[flowerbug]

Hi Flowevug, Your link is broken, not sure how important it is to watch?

sadly we can no longer edit older posts so i can't go back and change that, but if you remove the end part of that link the beginning part will still take you to their home page.

 

[flowerbug]

almost done with turning the ex-strawberry patch so i should be able to get it ready to plant later today and plant it tomorrow morning. digging holes and burying things is a lot faster than weeding and i like that i'm not wasting valuable organic materials and also the energy from the sun that those plants collected. i'm also getting this done before most of the plants have gone to seed so that helps a lot for the future efforts in this garden. it's still going to be a long road to get this garden better for growing vegetables but it will be a lot easier to take care of now than it was as a strawberry patch.

 

[flowerbug]

with the forecast for evening rains i decided to get back out there and not only get ready for planting but to actually get some bean seeds in that garden. i didn't finish planting the whole thing and don't particularly like the layout i ended up with but it will have to do. what is left is the last few rows near the end where the killdeer nest is at. won't take too long because i did sort of level it this evening so i just need to beat some rows with the cultivator so i can scrape a drill and plant.

and then it actually did rain! this is the first significant rain in the last week or so and am so glad to have it.

the downside was that i failed to bring out some paper and a pencil to write down exactly what i planted and where. i know the first rows and wrote down what i can remember, but "mix" is going to be a frequent term of art for this piece of paper.

i hope i can finish up the rest of the planting of that garden Monday and be able to move on to other gardens that need some attention.

also today we had a friend who was looking for some extra $ come over and do some work that Mom wanted done (removing some old lavender plants which we both react). there's a bunch more to do as we have a lot of lavender around here. round two will theoretically be this Thursday.

 

[flowerbug]

finished planting the ex-strawberry patch and then weeded other gardens and pathways until i was tired enough to call it good for the day. simple day and peaceful and nice outside.

what helps a lot with the peaceful is that the grackles are gone - they've had their babies and left.

the rains are arriving and that too is nice timing again - the storms are fading as they get to the valley which is ok, i don't need them to be too strong anyways, just give the plants a drink and get the seeds moist enough to sprout... the ground was already wet enough from last night's rains so just a bit more is perfect.

 

[Marie2020]

@digitS' air rifle with scope, new ammo, finally sighted in last fall.

i hate to kill any creature, but some varmints get Mom so wound up that i am pretty much her bad guy at call. grackles, chipmunks, rabbits, groundhogs. can sometimes trap and move the groundhogs, but i am trying to track down their dens and discouraging them and that is improving. rabbits, pretty much have to hunt those to thin them out or we get overrun. chipmunks i can sometimes trap and the semi-feral kitty gets some of them and the small rabbits. the grackles are the worst because of both the mess they make and also because they can so easily dominate all the other birds and i do like the diversity we have here for bird life. cedar trees grew tall enough to be prime grackle nesting and are now too tall we can't remove nests easily any longer.

me == bad guy... *sigh* still, gotta do it. mess from 50-100 grackles would be more than even i'd tolerate. i wasted a huge amount of time last year when i should have been gardening.

in good news... today was already noticeably better from caulking up gaps bugs were using to get in the house.

What on earth is a grackle?

Honestly it's like you guys are on a completely different planet at times

 

[flowerbug]

What on earth is a grackle?

Honestly it's like you guys are on a completely different planet at times

Common grackle - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

'...When grackles are in a group, they are referred to as a "plague".'

they are a big black bird, rather pretty in the sun, but not very quiet and also not very nice to other birds.

 

[digitS']

But, @Marie2020 ,

your part of the world has magpies ... jackdaws ... rooks. Rooks?

And then, there are those English sparrows .

Steve