Season's First Ticks

There was an afternoon break in today's cold rain and a perimeter walk was in order.  The lane provides a clear path and views of the changes that are happening daily.  The red maple buds are showing red color and are swollen.  Soon the trees will be covered with beautiful open flowers.  They are small in size but their masses are impressive to see.  Our neighbor was not pleased with the state of the buds.  Their condition marks the end of his sap season.  For the second consecutive year, unusual weather negatively impacted syrup production.  Nights with below freezing temperatures followed by warm days move the sap up the trees and into collection buckets.  That has not been our local conditions.  Days of below freezing temperatures produce no sap.  Nights of above freezing temperatures produce no sap.  By today all of his collecting buckets have been removed.  There is no market for syrup made from bitter cloudy sap.

Garlic planted near the back woods is up and looking good.  My shredded leaf mulch is a little thin and will have no impact on controlling weed growth.  Now that I have discovered that my hand mower has a collecting bag, I can easily make shredded leaves by the bucket.  Next year my garlic will push up through a proper layer of leaf mulch.

When I came indoors after my walk, two deer ticks were discovered walking on my ungloved hands.  This marks the beginning of the full body check season at the close of every day spent outside.  Lyme disease is nothing to treat lightly.  A former student was forced into disability retirement in his mid thirties by this disease.  Our college librarian daughter worked with a student recently blinded by this disease.  We continue to enjoy our time spent outside but undergo full body inspections daily.  Ticks have been found attached to the most personal body parts possible.  We did not include any tick photos with this post.  You're welcome.

We drove to the top of the ridge for this picture.  For the past several years a pair of geese have used this spot to raise their family.  A sizable man made pond can be seen at the top of the photo but the geese nest amid the brush and trees.  We have no way of knowing if this pair is the same pair that nested here in the past.  We do know that these two have been on this water for the past several weeks.  Once they were seen floating in a small patch of open water that was surrounded by ice.  Soon only one goose will be easily seen as the other will be sitting on their clutch of eggs.

This is the season for an important period of March madness that is more useful than basketball.  Breeding time is here for the wild animals.  While I was walking the lane, two gray squirrels came charging in my direction.  One was close behind the other and neither noticed me standing in the center of the lane.  At the last possible moment one veered left up a tree while the other went right into the bushes.  It is highly likely that after I had passed, they found one another and finished their business.  Moments later two birds flying beak to tail passed very close to my head.  The turn to avoid me was just a brief moment in their aerial dance.  Spring might be officially a week away, but things are definitely heating up here!

Where To Begin? Start Anywhere!

After all the waiting and anticipation, today was the quintessential spring day to work outside.   Ed started early and headed for the back.  When he returned from there, I got my cart and all my other gear and joined him in the garden.  The crocuses are beginning to bloom and it's a pleasure to hear the buzzing of the bees.  There might not be many flowers just yet, but this bee's sacs are brimming with orange pollen.  We have lots of cleaning up to do, but the beds with blooming  flowers  beg for attention and they get it.

Right now my Kathryn Hodgkin Dutch iris are  a delight.  Some of them are open and there are more to come.  These early flowers are always good for a smile.  Cleaning up around something so lovely is fun.  The tree swallows are back and provide a little aerial excitement as well.

Lest we forget the weeds, they seem to have wintered over well.  Here is shepherd's purse already in flower.  Quack grass is making an appearance as well.  The dandelions are off to a slow start, but give you a great feeling if you can get the small plant and its gigantic root out in one piece. We spent the rest of the morning, removing mulch, pulling weeds, cutting back dead stems to make way for new growth.  Ed potted up some Clara Curtis chrysanthemums that he wants to move.  This kept up until lunch time. We were both starved and enjoyed the break for lunch.  After lunch we left our tools in the garden, thinking we would return to do more and took the truck on a scenic tour around the place.

On our stop at the gravel bank, we found the colts foot in flower.  The yellow flowers are one of the first wildflowers to appear.  The flowers always come before the leaves that give the plant its name.  It really is a ditch weed.  These plants are growing on a section of gravel bank that was actively mined last season.  The clump may have slid down to its present location.  Its charm lies in its early blooms.

The buds on the red maple trees are still tightly closed.  We will need more warm weather before they will open.

One of our stops was for me to watch Ed use his new cable and his truck to pull out an invasive rose. The cable has a ring at each end .  Ed puts the cable around the stump and the smaller ring over the hitch ball on the truck.  He still uses his pry bar to loosen the stump, but then the truck pulls it from the ground.  We will see how many Japanese honeysuckles and nusiance roses will get this treatment. I'm betting a lot.  Ed  is delighted with every one that goes!

That's a pretty big rose bush.  It fills the back of the truck. We took it to join the others on Ed's brush pile down at the gravel bank.

When we returned Ed went back to work on weeding a garden bed.  I was out of gas, so I just went out to put away my tools.  We are both tired but happy.  Tomorrow looks like another nice day. I hope we are both up to it!