Summer pasture

Just after sunrise on Tuesday morning, I saw a tom turkey strutting and fanning in the middle of the field. For whom? I saw no other living creature. I got out the binoculars and finally spotted a hen over by the willows. She must have been a looker, judging from the tom’s display. She left off foraging and headed for him. He renewed his efforts. I went for my camera, hoping to catch a romantic scene. When I returned to the kitchen a moment later, she had walked right past him. Unrequited love.

Tom, still in courtship display (facing left), is completely ignored by a hen (left) who walked right past him

A few mornings later, there were a number of toms and hens on the north field, but I was already late leaving for work. No time for pictures.

Terry finished putting chicken wire around the orchard. During the week, he moved Coop 2 and positioned it facing east as per my request. Last year, we had positioned so that the door faced the gate. Every night, I waited until all the chickens were in the coop before leaving the house to shut the coop door, and every night Rose and sometimes others, would run out to see if I was bringing anything good to eat. I gave Rose a hug, said good night, and put her back in. This year, I hope to sneak up on them because they won’t see me coming.

Terry put in the next boxes, and Hilda got the wood chips spread around. We planned to move the hens Friday night if it wasn’t raining. We would have been glad for the rain, as we need it desperately. We didn’t get any, though, so we proceeded with the chicken move. As you may recall, chickens have poor night vision, which makes darkness the best time to catch them. Terry got out the Gater and loaded the kennel in the back. Hilda and I took the chickens from their perch in Coop 1 and put them in the kennel while Terry opened and closed the kennel door.

Fortunately we remembered that we had to move the waterer before we installed the chickens. It would have been difficult to keep them contained while making space for the waterer and its stand.

Now we needed two people on the doors. Hilda took Coop 2 while Terry manned the kennel. I grabbed the chickens one by one and set them on the perch. To my surprise, they pretty much stayed there. As I was moving the last chickens, there was some tussling and squawking as they vied for position. I should have paid more attention to the roosting order when I was taking them off the perch in Coop 1. Oh well. They got it sorted out.

In the morning, they weren’t shy about charging forth to explore their new home. 

What is this place of green grass and wide ope space? 

Bella was the only one to take much notice of the feeder that I brought down to install in the coop.

It was a matter of minutes before they began systematically scattering the mulch that Terry has so carefully spread beneath the apple trees. There must be some good things to eat under there! Terry doesn’t mind. In fact, it is his hope that the girls will eat all the apple pests. The video below show Blanche beginning her work.

I brought down the trough waterer to keep outside. We prefer the nipple waterers for in the coop because the girls splash around too much in open waterers. I turned on the hose, and it worked okay for a few seconds. Then the stream reduced to a dribble. I inferred that there was ice in there. I set the nozzle so it would stay on and let it piddle into the waterer, since running water is the fasted way to melt ice.  As soon as the trough was full, Juanita, Angelica, and Rosa Dolores had to have a drink. The end of the video shows them drinking and the hose dribbling.

Fresh water is always best

It was a beautiful day yesterday. The weeping willows in the back nursery look bright yellow from a distance. Up close, I could see that they were blooming.

Yellow branches of the weeping willows

Willow flowers

The ramps are getting bigger. (“I don’t suppose we can harvest this year?” Hilda asked hopefully. No, not yet.)

Ramps getting big

The trout lilies are up!

Trout lilies

As are the Dutchman’s breeches,

Dutchman's breeches

The shooting stars,

Shooting stars

And the wood phlox.

Wood phlox

It won’t be too long before a rhubarb pie!

Rhubarb

Awakenings

A beautiful day at last! The grass is genuinely green. While most trees are not yet showing signs of life, the sassafras buds are swelling.

Sassafras buds swelling

We are in the midst of our annual and ongoing battle against box elder bugs and Asian ladybugs. Seems like every time I open a cabinet in the kitchen or bathroom, one or the other is crawling around in there (or both!). I opened the storage box on the patio to get out my boot jack for the season and found hundreds of box elder bugs congregating between the lid and the side of the box. 

The numerous box elder bugs on the outside of the patio box were nothing compared to what was lurking beneath the lid

Terry says when the box elders bloom, the box elder bugs will have better things to do than pester us. We’ll have to wait for the soybeans to come up before the ladybugs leave us alone.

Terry suggested that we let the hens have the whole apple orchard to run around in this spring while we try to get the turf to grow back outside of Coop 1. To that end, he has been busy installing chicken wire all around the bottom of the deer fence. An advantage is that the new fence will keep out the rabbits, who have chewed through the deer fence in places. We will use Coop 1 for the chicks when they arrive during the week of June 4.

Terry lining the bottom of the deer fence with 3' high chicken wire

The garlic was up last week, but I forgot to mention it to Hilda. When I saw her this morning, she reported excitedly that the garlic was up! Unlike me, however, she took the initiative to take the row cover off.

Garlic in the garden

I walked down to the creek to see if anything was coming up yet. The straw covering the space for my new woodland garden was still in place in spite of a couple of windy days last week. There was no sign of the may apples, trout lilies, maidenhair fern, wild ginger, jack-in-the-pulpit, or Dutchman’s breeches. Only the ramps were up, which was exciting. I think I planted three and two have survived. Still, if they are in a happy place, they should start spreading. We won’t be harvesting this year.

Ramps down by the creek

I don’t think we’ve had flooding lately, but I saw this corncob stuck in a sapling, probably from when the big snow melted.

A corncob from a neighbor's field got tangled in a sapling during a flood

Terry dropped off several bags of mulch by the fifth oak several weeks ago when it seemed like warm weather might be coming. It didn’t, of course, so there it sat. My task for today was to clean out around my perennials and spread the mulch.

The fifth oak with bags of mulch

Most of the perennials were starting to sprout. Here, for example, is Jacob’s Ladder.

Jacob's ladder starting to grow beneath the fifth oak

There were some dandelions, which I had to dig out, but there weren’t as many weeds as there have been (and likely will be) later in the season. Once the gardening starts, though, I’m hard pressed to find time to keep after it.

Out of habit, I started with three shirts—a waffle shirt under a sweatshirt under a lined flannel shirt. The flannel shirt was soon on the ground. By the time I was 1/3 of the way around the tree, I had to take my sweatshirt off as well. It felt good to be able to move unencumbered by layers. It’s been a long time. Here’s how the mulch looked when I got done.

The mulch and cleaned up perennials when I was done

Hilda ordered ginger and turmeric plants as a little experiment. She was horrified to find the box sitting on the front step when the temperature was well below freezing. Somehow the company she ordered from failed to send a notice when the plants were shipped. She potted them up and put them in the greenhouse. As I was getting the rake from the garden shed to start my mulching, she came down to show me that the ginger had sprouted!

A ginger sprout

Overall, then, things are looking up. So good to be outside again.

I'm dreaming of a white--Arbor Day?

There was one day last week when the air did not hurt my face when I opened the garage door. Just one. I did not even wear my winter coat.

In sharp contrast, Saturday was painful on exposed skin. Not only was a wicked cold wind blowing from the northeast, high-velocity, nearly-frozen raindrops pelted me like bbs. While the temperature was 35°F, the news reported that the wind chill was 22°. The girls were not eager to go outside, but did leave me alone to do my chores while they ate their scratch grain.

My choices for the day were yard work or shopping. Clearly, shopping won the day. Jane and I planned to go up to the outlet mall in Pleasant Prairie, WI. We still refer to this as “going to Kenosha” because that is where the really good outlet mall was back in the 80’s. Just a short time ago… I called her at 8:00 to work out the details. I had to make yogurt, do my physical therapy stretches, and shower. I thought I could be ready to leave by 10:00 to meet her in Lake Geneva at 10:30.

I was finishing a cup of tea after breakfast when the power went out. Terry called from the tractor shed to tell me that we could run an extension cord from an outlet that was powered by the back-up generator to get my car out of the garage. That seemed hard. I called Jane again, and she volunteered to pick me up. That seemed easier.

Cancel the yogurt. Cancel the shower (the generator supports the well pump, but apparently the tankless water heater relies on electric ignition—we had no hot water). Suddenly I had A LOT of time before I had to leave. I did my P. T. and got dressed. And I waited with no internet available to pass the time. I went through the junk mail that had accumulated during the week.

Still no power at 9:15, so I called Jane to tell her to come and get me. She got to my house at 10:35, and off we went to have fun. We passed the alpaca farm on Highway 67, but no alpacas were outside. I can’t imagine why. A white alpaca was sitting in the doorway of the barn gazing wistfully at the pasture.

We hadn’t been up to Kenosha in a long time. We went to Sketchers, Jockey, and Hanes/Bali/Champion. I got some shoes at Sketchers and a new pair of Champion work-out pants. Jockey was having a buy-2-get-1-free on underwear 3-packs. Bargain!

We had lunch at Culver’s, including the chocolate/almond/salted caramel custard of the day. We hadn’t tried that flavor before. We liked it. Chocolate almond fudge remains my favorite, however. There were no chocolate inclusions in the chocolate/almond/salted caramel, just the chocolate custard with ribbons of caramel and almond inclusions.

The rain turned to snow on the way home. Hilda had called me earlier to tell me that the power was not expected to be back on until 6:00. I had volunteered to pick something up for dinner, although almost immediately I realized we wouldn’t really pass anything close to home. I called back anyway, but Hilda said they had figured out how to make dinner in the electric skillet. I figured we could find something to eat. Jane and I had a late lunch; I wasn’t very hungry.

The white alpaca had given up dreaming of going outside and had its back to the door when we went by.

I was surprised to find Terry in his chair watching TV when I got home. He had extension cords strung all over. One was powering the TV and one lamp. He was rotating another one among the various freezers and spare refrigerator. We foraged salami sandwiches. Terry lit the stove with the charcoal lighter and warmed up some leftover noodles.

6:00 came and went with no power. Hilda called Com Ed again and got a revised time of 10:00. I got started on my bedtime preparations at 7:15 while it was still light out. Lo and behold, while I was brushing my teeth, the power came back on. We all heaved sighs of relief.

The wind blew all night, sometimes with rain, sometimes with ice, sometimes with freezing rain. Sunday morning, Hilda called a bit after 7:00 because the coop door was frozen shut. Terry got dressed and went out to chip away the ice. When I went out at 8:00 to take pictures, the wind was carrying frozen drops of rain.

Ice on the coop door

Here is the coop window. It does not have fancy wavy glass. It’s the ice that makes it look like that.

Coop window with ice making it "privacy" glass

Terry’s deer fence had blown over again. We are both amazed that a net catches that much wind.

Broken posts on the deer fence around the orchard

By 10:00, the frozen rain turned to snow.

Snow at 10:00 Sunday morning

At 10:35, it looked like a blizzard. 

Near blizzard conditions half an hour later

We got about an inch of heavy wet snow before it let up. Jane and I are glad we went shopping yesterday. We couldn’t have gotten out today. I spent most of the day in the kitchen make ham and beans for tomorrow night and cream of mushroom soup for later in the week (Jane and I stopped at the mushroom farm in Slades Corner on our shopping trip.) And I did my ironing. Perhaps one of the worst aspects of this long winter is that it has extended the Season of Shirts that Must be Ironed. It’s cold enough to continue wearing turtlenecks, but to do so in mid-April seems so wrong. I can’t switch to polos yet. That leaves the Oxfords, and the Oxfords must be ironed. I hope I won’t have to do that again until next fall.

The snow started again during supper. There won’t be enough for a snow day, but will likely be enough for a bad drive to work. When will spring really be here?

April snow

The weather station was sad all weekend. This photo is from yesterday morning. The only difference today is that the forecast showed a downward arrow and rain coming from the cloud. Frankly, we could use some rain, but as of this evening, it looks like the front will miss us again.

Sad, sad little weather station

We don’t need snow, but that was what we got Wednesday morning. Tuesday night, Terry said, “There’ll be snow on the grass in the morning, but it should all melt off the road.”

Sure enough, this was the sight that greeted me as the sun came up.

The view from the kitchen Wednesday morning. Note that lawn should be green at this time of year.

I hopped in my car at the regular time Wednesday morning, doo, dee, doo, dee, doo, and soon discovered that the snow had NOT melted off the roads. It had, in fact, turned to slush which glaciated under the pressure of tires driving on top of it. I got stuck behind a snowplow immediately after I pulled out of the driveway. On April 4! The plow and I soon parted ways, at which point I realized just how bad the ice was. It was a slow drive to work.

I will say this, though. It’s better to have a slow spring than and early warm-up followed by a late frost. We were afraid we’d lost all the apples last year when the temperatures dropped below freezing while the trees were flowering. I can hope that once it gets warm this year, it will stay warm.

The weather station may say winter, but the calendar says spring. Hilda and I went to Gardenfest on Saturday. Some talks were better than others, but we both learned some things. There’s a new variety of cherry tomato we’d like to try. “Little Napoli” is supposed to have the taste and texture of a Roma in a smaller size. We also got some way cool harvesting aprons. They cost a small fortune, but we justified it on the grounds that we were supporting an entrepreneur. 

Our new harvesting aprons

The bib has a big pocket in it and the apron has a wire around the top to keep it open. Awesome idea, isn’t it? Plus the light blue one has a zipper along the bottom for easy unloading, provided you are harvesting something fairly durable. I wouldn’t do it with tomatoes. The woman selling the aprons only had one zipper apron left, so we got one without a zipper for the softer fruits and veg.

Gardenfest served its purpose of getting me all excited about playing in the dirt again. Perhaps it really will warm up by mid-week like it’s supposed to. We’ll see.

Still waiting

It was 20°F this Easter morning. It never got above 38°. Amid the various seasonal symbols of rebirth, resurrection, and reproduction, we are still waiting for spring. I took a walk yesterday. It was blustery but warm enough that I did not need gloves. Low gray clouds skittered across the sky. Kind of depressing. Terry claims to see buds swelling. I have not been able to verify it by my own observations. Other than the grass and the rhubarb, the plants seem to be hitting the snooze button. Hilda’s onion sprouts are growing bravely in the greenhouse, oblivious to the actual environmental conditions outside.

Hilda's onion sprouts

Spring break has come and gone. I accomplished some major goals, such as taking my parents to see a lawyer to get their wills updated and getting signed onto their bank accounts so that I can easily pay their bills when the time comes. I have such a threshold of resistance to planning for their ultimate departure, as if by denial I can prevent it. And yet, once we got started, it was quick and not very hard. It is a relief to have that underway. The lawyer will send drafts for our review, and then we go in again to sign. It will be good to have that checked off the list.

I also spent a day getting ready to replace a colleague who will be having a baby any minute. I know for sure that I will have her lecture on Wednesday. I may have her lab and lecture tomorrow as well. I’m in for a frantic 5 weeks. The show must go on!

The fun part of my break was an overnight at Jane’s house. We did quite a lot of shopping. She had coupons for Easter candy, causing me to buy way more than we needed in order to save $2.00. This is, after all, the last major chocolate holiday until Halloween. Always good to stock up. I was inspired to get my Easter basket out of the Christmas storage box and fill it as a surprise for Terry this morning.

Terry's Easter Basket

Jane came up for Easter dinner this afternoon. It was nice to have company. We played Mexican train afterwards.

The last day of vacation is a drag. I have to put my mind to my clothes and my lunch for tomorrow. I know the semester will be over before I know it. Summer is coming. Really! At least I have enough chocolate to tide me over.