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!