the little wild kingdom

[flowerbug]

That's fantastic! Glad it went so well.

it did, i forgot to say how many people were there, five of us.

i got a nice thank you note from someone this morning.

 

[flowerbug]

yesterday i took another stab at winnowing down the bean collection. it's about 5lbs lighter now. hard to get rid of them but i have no plans on growing most of them ever again and there is little demand for any of them when i go to seed swaps or talk with other bean friends. so they're going to be eaten (by me or by the worms in the worm farm).

almost all of them were unnamed mutt bean crosses or selections from varieties - almost all the heirlooms that i'll keep growing i didn't thin out too much from those. a few that don't appeal to me or didn't work out well in our soils/climate.

brown beans. i think i've now gotten rid of almost all of them. that would be about 100-150 selections i'd held onto for 5-7yrs. none of them appeal to me other than a few for their shape. i did hold onto the olive and greener colored ones and a few others from the solid colors, but i got rid of a lot of the variations in color because i just wasn't going to go that ways any more. i have a lot more interesting colors and patterns to work with now in more recent beans i've grown.

 

[flowerbug]

last round of rain we had a very long soaking storm and the roof leaked again. in one spot. the roofing guy hasn't replied to my message yet. we hoped we got the problem figured out before and with the roof vent replacements i'd sure hoped that too. now we're going to have to figure out what to do next. i wanted him to pull up the top shingles and flashing around the corner where the leak was but he thought it was just the vents. so now that's going to probably have to get done. it might take a while to get him back here though. intermittent roof leaks are a pain in the butt. this has been going on for over 11yrs already. good thing we didn't fix the drywall or have any painting done.

still too cold and wet here to do any gardening. last night was down into the mid teens again. forecast for the next few days is wet and cold so i'm not going to get anything planted this week by the looks of it.

still nice to have the sun out for a change.

 

[flowerbug]

the killdeer picked a place out front for a change for their nest site this season. i'm not sure yet if it is the calmer older pair that have been here for many years or a younger, newer pair that make more noise. we'll find out eventually when i have to do more gardening out that ways.

 

[flowerbug]

second garden club meeting did happen yesterday afternoon. one of the previous people did send a note that they could not attend due to partner having covid and not wanting to risk giving others the crud. still there were four of us and we talked about various topics for an hour.

i then used the nice table to spread out and get some things figured out for planting this coming season and organised my give-away beans.

for fun i took some garlic and onions i'd wrapped in towels and had stored in the garage to unwrap and see how they were doing - all were in good condition.

the garlic i've brought in so i can peel it and use it for cooking or grind it up and drench it with lemon juice and put it in the freezer packed in small jars.

the onions i hope i can plant this week sometime.

 

[flowerbug]

spring is coming along. the crocuses are mostly done. as you can see this pic of the North Garden from standing at the patio door looking that ways (N-NE) shows plenty of the daffodils have bloomed the past few days. there's a rather large number that look alike so i could give away most of them in the picture and still have a lot more to also give away that i've not yet moved (from further uphill and around the edge that all need to be divided).

the daffodils more in the foreground with the hyacinths will have more variety as the spring goes on, but i see some of those are duplicates that could be given away to make room for others so i have a more unique collection up front (with a longer flowering season). one of the whole reasons for arranging them as i have was so i could do all this figuring out and winnowing down. i'll get more markers out tomorrow...

 

[flowerbug]

another pair of killdeer put a nest inside the fenced garden. at least this time it is up high and out of the way instead of inside a pathway.

 

[flowerbug]

too cold to mark things today. tomorrow might be better.

this morning we had a visit from a pheasant and it was nice to see them here again. they wander through once every few years. more often we just hear them out and around as they are off in the farm fields or in the back field. i don't have a very good telephoto lens so i didn't really get any pictures worth posting.

 

[flowerbug]

say hello to Lenny our newly replaced power company pole:

just something silly, but laughter is always welcome and finding things to laugh about these days also is good for us.

 

[flowerbug]

finished first draft of the onion project page:

Onions | Anthive

Flowers, seeds, bulbs, green onions...

www.anthive.com