Bush flora and fauna....and barrels 'o peas.....

April 14, 2024

The snow melted, the rain came...is still coming....Thankfully. The bush is now full of the vernal pools that were missing this spring. The pond has come up beautifully, the grass is greening, and when the sun comes out again....things will be bustin' out all over!

The heavy snow has broken down a lot of trees in the bush, and some have just keeled over from all the moisture softening the soil. Hubby has done a round or two of the trails, with ATV and chainsaw, and today we pulled off a few more smaller trees that have succumbed since then. 

The red squirrels have had a prosperous winter with lots of white pine seeds to eat. The stripped cones are lying in piles under trees, beside rocks, wherever the little rodent sat to eat.

The resident Pileated Woodpeckers certainly have lots of options with all the dead and dying beech trees. Apparently something edible was still in this stump after this broken tree was cut down.

More blooming things in the bush...

                                 Eastern Leatherwood

                                           Red Maple

And on the trail cameras....

A moose ambling by. It has a bald spot on its withers where it has probably been rubbing against trees to dislodge it's tick load.

(Disregard the date and time stamp.) This mild winter was probably a bad one for moose ticks.
On the gardening front, I have baby tomato and pepper plants just emerging, under lights, and there is some life starting to show up in my winter sowing jugs outside. Mustard, kale and oregano are poking up tiny sprigs of green. I've since prepped a few more containers and set them out with marigolds and several varieties of lettuce.

Perennials have been moved from the nursery bed in the end of the Field Garden, into the new bed out front, and I shovelled lumps of the remaining snow around them for slow-release moisture. It has been raining for several days since, so my timing was good. By no means is it a finished project yet.

The herb bed has had the rotten edging removed, and the new hemlock planks are being readied for insertion.

This is the first bed we made when we moved here in June of 2017. I was dismayed when I encountered this behemoth right in the middle, which refused to budge.

A couple of years later, I decided to dedicate this bed to herbs. To make the soil deep enough for planting, we cut an old water barrel into sections, and I positioned one right on the rock and filled it up with soil. I made the mistake of planting mint in it, but the rock did help stop the spread. We rolled the mint barrel out, put it on an old aluminum toboggan and pulled it to a spot over near the compost bins with the ATV. I'm sure it will be happy and thrive there! The other piece of water barrel in the foreground has oregano plants in it. The rock is marked on my garden plans every year, and again will be a place to plant very shallow rooted stuff.

A few days before the rain started, I dumped the soil out of these two barrels onto a tarp, revitalized it with some moisture control soil and a good pail of my sieved compost from last spring.

This morning, in the rain, I donned rubbers, waded out along the edge of the overfull pond, cut willow sprigs for uprights, then wove and tied a few more around for supports. A not too tall variety of pea is planted around the circumference. When the rain stops, I plan on putting just a few lettuce seeds in the middle.