Spring update

I certainly had no intention of taking a nap this afternoon. It’s Terry’s fault. After lunch, he kicked back in his recliner and started snoozing. I planned to write my blog post, but I didn’t want to disturb him tap, tap, tapping on my keyboard. Besides, it has been a gray, rainy, nappish kind of day. So I kicked back in my recliner, and there went two hours. I will never get to sleep tonight.

The lisianthus look great! They are very happy in their new pots. Our challenge is keeping the greenhouse at a moderate temperature through the rollercoaster spring. Open the door when the sun shines, turn the heater on when it’s going to frost. It gives Hilda something to do during our COVID-19 confinement.

Lisianthus in the greenhouse

Spring is definitely creeping up on us. Hilda and I took the mulch off the strawberries on Wednesday. When Terry and I put them to bed last fall, we had this idea that we would just be able to lift the row cover with the mulch and put it into muck buckets. Hilda and I discovered right off the bat that the mulch on the 8’ bed was WAY too heavy. I got the dustpans out of the coop so we could scoop the majority of the mulch off the bed.

Moving the mulch off the long strawberry bed

After that, we could lift the row cover. As I was rolling it up, I found a few bits of mulch still frozen to it. That’s good. We got to it before it thawed completely.

A lump of mulch frozen to the row cover

Even though the bed was frozen in places, there were green leaves. We didn’t try to remove the dead leaves for fear of dislodging the plants. We will probably try to do that carefully when the rain lets up. It won’t do the plants any favors to have dead leaves molding all around them.

The bedraggled strawberry bed under the mulch

A sprouting strawberry crown

Terry called me Thursday morning to tell me there were “50 turkeys” in the field across the road. I counted 23 in the photos, but whatever. As usual, I started taking pictures the minute I saw them.

Large flock of turkeys across the road

They didn't seem too disturbed by my presence. I was able to cross the road for better pictures.

The front tom with a whole lot of hens

There were two toms and 21 hens. One tom was pestering two hens behind the larger group pictured above.

One tom with two hens ignoring him

The other tom took on the remaining 19. No hen among any of them showed the slightest interest.

The other tom, in this photo being ignored by six hens

The rhubarb is up and growing fast. Here’s a picture from Wednesday with the buds just coming up.

Rhubarb on Wednesday

This morning, the leaves were beginning to unfurl.

Rhubarb today

Dad's tulips are still hanging in there.

Dad's tulips 

I’ve started cleaning up around where I planted a native woodland garden back by the creek. After I got the plants in, I covered the spaces between the plants with straw and put up a chicken wire fence to keep out the rabbits. Then there were floods that knocked down the fence and filled the garden with corn stubble. All summer and well into the fall, I had on my list “clean woodland garden,” but it was too wet, or too hot, or too mosquitoey. I looked at it from time to time. I knew the strawberries had spread all over, and the joe pyeweed grew tall and flowered. Beyond that all bets were off. If felt good to get that done this week. And in spite of all that abuse, some plants actually survived! Not sure what that all are, but if I can just keep the garlic mustard, thistles, and beggar ticks out of it, maybe they’ll have a chance.

Jacob's ladder

Wild strawberry

Identity to be determined later

We had 1.2” of rain last night. A pair of geese has taken up residence in the standing water around the swamp white oak. In a break between fronts this morning, Hilda and I walked back to the creek. The creek was plum full, right up to the top of the banks.

The creek to the very top where the wildlife usually fords

And looking downstream

There’s supposed to be another inch coming tonight. We will certainly flood if we get that much. Here we go again.