A new mower

Our old mower had a loose belt. It turned out to be a tragic flaw which could not be fixed. Terry traded it in on a larger one. The new one has three blades instead of two and not only mows a wider path, but also cuts more uniformly. It is more comfortable to ride as well.

Before I used it for the first time, I read the instructions, beginning with mower safety. Here is the most horrifying safety icon I have ever seen: Do not mow over the baby in forward OR reverse.

Safety icon from the owner's manual. Note apparent severed leg in first illustration.

If you look closely, it seems that the baby’s severed leg is flying above the mower blade, especially in the first picture.

Here’s an icon that also appeared on my new weed trimmer. The weed trimmer did not have any explanation, so I assumed it meant “Deflect arrows with all parts of your body.”

Another safety icon 

The mower manual, however, said that it represented “Beware of flying objects.”

I was able to do some mowing in between torrential rain showers. I walked down to the creek Thursday morning. There had indeed been a flood in the night. The fence around one of Terry’s nursery beds was pushed in and lined with debris.

The fence pushed over by flooding at one of the nursery beds

My may apples had muddy leaves.

Poor, bedraggled may apples after the flood

The whole area by the fire circle was covered in silt.

Silt on the ground

The creek was high and muddy. The grass lay down on the banks.

The creek at the top of its banks with evidence that it had flattened the grass recently

We finally rescheduled Thanksgiving Observed. Normally, we have it in February because February is such a depressing month, and a turkey dinner perks everyone up. This year we had to postpone because my dad had just gotten out of the hospital and wasn’t up for company. We thought we had time….

Anyway, Pat, Nancy, and Jane were available Sunday, and I was eager to get the turkey out of the freezer. Another friend, Laura, came for a little while with her son, Noah. Years ago, Noah and his sister had helped Terry scatter grass seed by the creek. We took a walk back there so he could see the result. He’s a grown man now, halfway through college. My goodness.

On the way, I took pictures of phlox, Jacob’s ladder, and the white shooting stars by the fifth oak.

Native Phlox

Jacob's laddter

White shooting stars

The geraniums and the wild ginger are duking it out by the side of the garage. It will be interesting to see who wins.

Wild geraniums in bloom around the wild ginger

When Jane got to the house, she noticed a tiny Johnny jump-up in the lawn. I tried for years to get them going by the side of the house. I was pleased that this little guy lives on. Jane suggested transplanting it to a place where it wouldn’t get mowed over, but I wasn’t sure it would survive. If it’s done okay in that location so far, I’m not going to risk it.

A lone Johnny jump-up in the lawn. So cute!

Laura and Noah had to leave before dinner for another party. The rest of us sat down to the full turkey dinner. It was a fun day.

Roast turkey!

Tulips and other spring flowers

Dad is gone, but his tulips are still with us. He loved tulips and planted them at the base of a couple of the big oaks when he first moved here. I was not a big fan. They are pretty for only a short time, and then they look all ragged and worn-out until you go out and dead-head them. I learned the hard way that you have to watch for bees inside before you grab the spent blossom to snap it off. The foliage that is left behind isn’t much to look at either, but you have to leave it to store energy in the bulb for next year.

Dad's tulips

I like the tulips more this year. They seem to have really bloomed their hearts out. I sat down and had a little chat with them. They listened patiently. It seems so long ago when my dad could bend well enough to put a bulb in the ground. In more recent times, he had his flowers in raised beds on the deck. We're going to put strawberries in the beds this year.

The wild ginger by the tractor shed is doing spectacularly well. Not like the ginger I planted near the creek that Terry weed-whacked because he can’t tell a perfectly gorgeous cluster of wild ginger from common weeds. It has never been the same. But I’m not bitter, that’s the important thing. I have so much ginger by the tractor shed that I can just move some down to the creek. I’ll have to remember to do that in the fall.

Ginger flowers under the leaves

The magenta shooting star is blooming by the fifth oak. The white (or perhaps pale pink) shooting stars lag behind, buds unopened.

The first shooting stars

The trillium that I dug up at Camp Pokonokah Hills before it was sold to the State of Wisconsin is blooming cheerfully. It is starting to spread, which makes me happy. It was just getting established at our former home when I dug it up to move here. It seems to finally be settling in.

White trillium

Back by the creek, the second Jack-in-the-pulpit is up, and both are blooming.

Jack-in-the-pulpit

There are many violets everywhere. Best news is that we seem to be making some progress against the garlic mustard.

Violets

Terry found a nest of 5 jelly-bean sized eggs when he was weed whacking around the deer fences. I hoped it was not from some exotic rare species. I strongly suspect that the disturbance and consequent lack of cover would cause the female to abandon the nest. From a cursory Google search, they look a lot like house sparrow eggs. That would be no loss, as that species is non-native and invasive. I question my identification because the sources I read did not say that they typically nest on the ground. In any case, they picked a poor location for their nest.

Putative house sparrow nest with 5 eggs

More birds and a new toy

We are, as Terry says, bird-a-licious. I finally got a picture of the male hummingbird flying, which is tricky…

Male hummingbird in flight

And with the light at the right angle to show his ruby throat, which is almost harder than catching him in flight.

Showing a bit of his ruby throat

Here’s the female.

The female humming bird

The goldfinch males have completely molted to their bright yellow. They are the same color as the dandelions. A flock of them were picking through the seeds under the feeder one morning. I don’t fill the feeder every day because, as I have mentioned before, they just throw it all on the ground. They can eat some of that before I put more out, dang it!

So many goldfinches!

I have seen both the male and female orchard oriole, but only got a picture of the male.

Orchard oriole

The white-crowned sparrows don’t hang around long. A day or two, and they move farther north. I did not see or hear the white-throated sparrow this year. Their visit is even more fleeting.

White-crowned sparrow

The chipping sparrows are around all summer. They look like they are wearing rusty-colored bike helmets with white racing stripes.

Chipping sparrow

Saturday was gloomy, cold, and damp. I met friends that I hadn’t seen in a long time for breakfast. It was nice to catch up. Jane and I wen grocery shopping after that. We went back to her house to try making orange jelly. Jane read somewhere that the orioles prefer it to grape jelly, so we thought we’d give it a go. We haven’t tried it yet. All jelly has to sit for 24 hours before moving it, which counted me out for having any until next weekend when I see Jane again. Jane is finishing her grape jelly before converting. While at Jane’s, I saw four indigo buntings. That was very exciting! I had only ever seen one at a time before.

Terry suggested that I get a battery-operated weed whacker because he felt I was too weak and puny to pull the string to start the gas-powered one. It would be an insult worthy of righteous indignation if it weren’t true. I’d asked Jane to do some research for me, and she shared her results. We decided on a Kobalt 80V Max. It had overwhelmingly good reviews, was on sale and in stock at Lowe’s. We were surprised that it was raining when we left the house at 2:00.

We shopped in the rain. I drove home in the rain until the last mile or so. It turned out we’d had no rain at all. Just a little spitting, that was it.

The first thing I did after opening the box was charge the battery. Academic that I am, I read all the instructions for my weed whacker before putting it together. I learned, among other things, that I should always wear safety glasses and not use the weed whacker while barefoot, intoxicated, around unsupervised children, near open flames, or in the dark. It’s like they don’t want you to have any fun! Seriously, they could have saved three pages of fine print with four words: DON’T BE AN IDIOT. But that assumes too much, I realize. We live in an age where “true fact” is no longer needlessly redundant but a necessary clarification to separate verifiable information from all the ridiculous crap on the internet. I digress.

I did a minimal bit of assembly and put in the battery. I’m sure there are safety glasses somewhere on the property, but I didn’t know where. I took the weed whacker outside for a little trial without wearing eye protection. The creeping Charlie beneath the deck felt my wrath. In return, it peppered me with green flecks of leaf and stem. I did not sustain any eye damage, but I think they could add one more warning to the manual: wear old clothes.

My battery-powered weed whacker

The sun broke through the clouds just at sunset, creating a beautiful pink sky.

A beautiful sunset ends a dreary day

I bought new safety glasses at Menards while I was out and about this morning. Now I’m off to whack weeds for real!

Feels like spring!

It was a dreary week, day after day of rain. It was good, though, because April had been exceptionally dry until the last three days. It would have been nice for the rain to have been spread out a bit more, as Terry went straight from bitching about having to water his nursery stock to complaining about it being too wet to do any of the work he had planned for this week. There’s just no pleasing that man.

I’m just happy that the vernal ponds are back, which means we are constantly serenaded by chorus frogs. It doesn’t seem like it’s spring until I hear that sound, which is usually described as sounding like someone running a finger over the teeth of a comb. You may recall from previous years that chorus frogs are impossible to see (for me, at least). They stop singing as I approach, so I have no way of knowing where the tiny things are. I finally saw one two years ago when I raised it from a tadpole.

I went for a walk yesterday to see how things were progressing. There were no tadpoles in the pond yet. I did see this plant poking up through the water. I’m sure it’s wild cucumber and amazed that it can germinate in standing water.

Wild cucumber growing through standing water

The garlic has recovered from being compressed by the row cover. It is standing up straight and proud now.

The garlic

The dandelions are flowering. Terry says they flower when the soil temperature reaches 50°F (although I could swear in years past, he said it was 70°).

Dandelions by the house

Dandelion is an introduced species. (My flower book says “escaped from cultivation” when make me chuckle at the thought of it picking up its leaves and running from the garden on its roots, like Cinderella rushing from the ball at midnight.)

Make disparaging remarks about it if you must, but it and creeping Charlie (another weed) are just about the only flowers blooming right now, and they are covered with pollinators that we will need the moment the apple blossoms open. I once heard a butterfly expert point out that we should proceed with caution at removing invasive species until we are sure that there is some native plant blooming at the same time.

A bee with pollen baskets on its legs packed with pollen (the orange round structure on the back legs)

Back by the creek, I was excited to see four mayapples up, and two of them ready to bloom this year.

Four mayapples

Mayapple flower bud between the two leaves

The trout lilies are not being as invasive as I had hoped. I will probably have to order some more to get them to fill in better.

Trout lilies liming along

There was no sign of the maidenhair fern. The ramps, like the trout lilies, are not taking off yet. Both are beginning their third year.

Still not much going on with the ramps.

The Dutchman’s britches is displaying their tiny little pants. So cute.

The upside-down pantaloons of Dutchman's britches

The Jack-in-the-pulpit is just coming up.

Jack-in-the-pulpit

The wild ginger that I planted several years ago is doing well.

Wild ginger

Terry’s experiment with shade grass is finally paying off. We seem to be winning the war against the garlic mustard at last!

Grass instead of garlic mustard around the firepit

Every year I worry that the trillium that I dug up from Camp Pokonokah Hills before it was sold will not come up. I scanned the bed anxiously until I finally saw its leaves.

Trilium

The asparagus is just getting started. It occurred to me, to continue a thought from my last post, that another big reason that I tend to not eat out-of-season produce is because I eat so much of it when it’s in season that I can’t look at it again for a good long time. Asparagus does not can or freeze well, so I binge on it during the six-week harvest and am ready to take a ten-and-a-half-month break after that.

Asparagus

The juneberries that Terry planted last year are blooming. I’m not sure if Terry will let them go to fruit or not. Sometime it is too much stress on young trees to put all that energy into reproduction.

Juneberries (a.k.a. serviceberries)

The rhubarb is getting huge. Marian (in California) commented last week on Facebook that she never understood the appeal of rhubarb, which her father grew for a few years because he considered rhubarb sauce a delicacy. Amy (in Richmond, VA) emailed to tell me she hated the idea of rhubarb going to waste in my rotting bin. She grew up in northern Illinois and has found that Virginia is too hot for rhubarb. She pines for it. 

Rhubarb approaching full size

The duck nest is empty. I didn’t check on it all week because I didn’t want to interrupt incubation during the days of cold rain. Yesterday morning, the nest was totally empty. Not a feather, bone, or shell left behind, like they’d cleaned up to get their deposit back. I did a little Googling and found that some suggest that the shells are the ducklings’ first meal, and others claim that the shells are left behind, but they are quickly consumed by other animals eager to get the calcium. If the eggs disappear in one night, it’s probably a predator. I’m going to assume that the ducklings and their mother made it safely to water somewhere. I can’t believe a raccoon would be so neat.

Completely empty duck nest

Our summer bird friends are back. I’ve seen hummingbirds, but haven’t gotten a picture yet. The orchard oriole and Baltimore orioles are both back.

Male Baltimore oriole eating grape jelly

A pair rose breasted grosbeaks were at my feeder this afternoon.

Mr. Grosbeak eating seeds that the goldfinches threw to the ground

Mrs. Grosbeak perched above the feeder

The wildflowers under the fifth oak were massively invaded by grass and dandelions. I spent an hour weeding them this morning. It was another lovely day, warm in the sun yet cool enough to work comfortably in a long-sleeved shirt.

Grass (blue green) invading penstemon (lighter green)

I noticed when I was out working that there was another song with the chorus frogs, and I was proud of myself at identifying it as toads. After lunch (and a nap), I walked out to the pond by the willows, but the noise seemed to be coming from the south. I headed that way, and sure enough, there were two bachelor toads. Both were completely submerged when I took these pictures

Bachelor #1

Bachelor #2

Either the girls haven’t shown up yet, or they don’t trust that the puddle will stay long enough for their tadpoles. That summer when we had all the toads turned out to be an extraordinarily wet May and June.

While I was looking for more toads, I saw hundreds of bubbles clinging to the top of the muck. I thought they might be eggs, but it turned out to just be oxygen from the algal mat. Not that it's trivial. I appreciate the algae's efforts.

Oxygen bubbling up from algae photosynthesis. Pretty impressive, really.

My goodness, it’s great to be outside again!