fleeting cold and sheeting, old

Beautiful spring weather has helped to make our outdoor-work time really pleasant. Todd has been hauling wood...

...and clipping out extraneous metal debris on our old fences.

They were in pretty bad shape...

...so they're all being replaced this week!

Many of our old fence posts have bird houses attached, but only one of the houses is chock-full of bluebird eggs.  Todd set up a post about five feet away from the old post and quickly transferred the bird house to minimize nest disturbance.  Mama bluebird has been happily visiting the new spot and hasn't seemed to notice her new real estate!

We've also got nesting finches in our front porch eaves.  See the little head?

We're pretty suspicious characters and the finch pair watch us closely as we traverse the porch each day.  

Besides regular work, I've been planting cold-hardy seedlings out into the garden. I've planted in about 1/4 of the space, and we're plowing up another plot in a week or so.  Hooray!

Sunny days...blue skies and fluffy white clouds overhead.

Such a nice variety!

The apple tree is in full bloom and the blossoms have an intoxicating scent.

Dead nettle is rising in the back fields, and their little purple tips are the exact color of the redbuds that border their space.

The woods around our house and all along our main road are full of redbuds and dogwoods.  Coupled with the chartreuse color of the tender new leaves, the colors are gorgeous!

I love cutting a few branches for the front porch.

We've got horses directly and diagonally across the street, and I've discovered that there's a grazing pasture just beyond our back woods.  I can see a group of horses out in the mid-afternoon, peacefully eating.

It all makes for a wonderful and bucolic atmosphere for being outside.  

My perennials are starting to fill in!

Claudia is feeling more frisky with the warmer weather too.

Blooming apple tree, rapidly-sprouting roses, peonies, hydrangeas, and lilacs, unfurling hostas and maple leaves, all after a prolonged period of warm weather.  And then, directly in middle of two 70-degree stretches, we have...dum dum DUM!...snow.  

Snow!

Tuesday night's forecast:  rain turning to snow, with up to an inch of accumulation.  Temperatures dropping down to 27 degrees.  

If I do nothing, we would have another year with no apples.  Many of my seedlings would be toast.  My bleeding hearts and roses would probably die.  Just like last year, our hostas and even hardier perennials like ground geraniums would survive, but be blackened.  

I'm going to have to pull out every old sheet in the house and cover as much new, tender growth as I want to salvage.  All seedlings will have to be covered, again.  It's a big frustration with a midwestern spring.  Hardy annuals prefer cooler weather, so if you want beautiful May and June blooms, you need to get them into the ground as soon as possible in April so that they can establish roots and set up buds. Moving them into the ground frees up space under grow lights as well. But, of course, you run the risk of these random freezes.  So I'll be rolling up my sleeves and covering, covering, covering on Tuesday afternoon.  Gritting my teeth and reminding myself that this hard work should pay off nicely in a month or so...I hope!

Have a great week!

the annual mating game

 Spring!

A much-need rain turned torrential.

The birds tried to keep dry under the shelter of newly-leafed branches....

...but my outdoor seedlings took a pounding and had to be repotted.

The warming temperatures have brought out the lovebirds!  These two earthworms are makin' babies!

Have you ever wondered what that pink band on earthworm bodies is for?  It actually moves during reproduction, producing mucus.  The worm's eggs stick to the mucus and then passes them over the seminal receptacle of the male, thereby fertilizing the eggs.  

These two cabbage white butterflies caught my eye with their fluttering mating dance.

Male cabbage butterflies inject a hard packet of sperm, which makes up 13% of their body weight (for comparison, this is equivalent to a 5-gallon bucket for a human).  The hard packet helpfully contains nutrients that the female butterfly uses for nourishment.  Clever!

Todd and I disturbed this (nesting?) pair of geese on the back pond.  

I miss our South Carolina "goz" so hopefully we'll see babies later this spring!

There are nesting bluebirds along the fence line...

We've seen turtles peeking out of both the back and the front ponds...

...looking for mates?

We're planning a spring garden expansion.  Here's a big delivery of compost...

...and I've been hurrying to get hardy annuals into the ground as weather permits.

It's nice to enjoy the plants that don't take these exertions...the perennials that faithfully return every year.  

We're loving the redbuds coming on and all of the green that's suddenly (and delightfully) crowding our senses.  Hooray for spring!

spring ephemeral sprawl

We took a hike on Easter morning and I was so excited to see the spring ephemerals out!  As the name suggests, they're the woodland flowers that bloom for a few weeks and then disappear.  

Bloodroot is one of my favorites.  They wear their leaves like little green cloaks before opening up.

Lots of Spring Beauties...

Duchmen's Breeches...

Young May Apples!!

The forest floor was absolutely carpeted with Yellow Trout Lily leaves.  Millions and millions!  Only a few were blooming...I think it's going to be amazing there within a week!

I also saw wild Wood Phlox, Rue Anemone, and big swatches of Columbine leaves...and the first pollinators of the season!

So nice to walk around the lake...

...see the budding trees...

...and a little wildlife!

(opossum tracks)

I've been seeing a bit of activity at home, too.  Several large coyotes have been loping around the barnyard some mornings.

They look very well-fed!  Claudia definitely stays close after she catches their scent.

It's a beautiful time of year to walk around the property.  Red-winged Blackbirds are nesting in the front pond...

...while others are keeping an eye toward our porch rafters as a potential nesting spot.

The field grass is growing quickly, and Todd is mowing down the taller bits before the early summer bush-hogging.

As quickly as I can, I'm getting seedlings, like these iceland poppies, planted in the garden.

This backfired on me last week, when we had a string of unseasonably cold days, with one night down to 20 degrees!  This caused an extraordinary amount of work for us.  I had to go around covering flowering bulbs and tender sprouts in the front garden...

...while Todd pounded stakes down the middle of our planted row.  Over the stakes went the frost cloth, very difficult to secure against the fence side, and then whatever bedding/towels/tablecloths that I could spare from the house to doubly insulate.

This whole mess had to be peeled back during the day, so that the seedlings could get some light.  I grumbled the whole time, but it worked - although some seedlings had frost damage to the outer tips of their leaves.  Lesson learned:  even if a seedling is frost hardy, no setting them out if there's even a chance of a freeze within a 10-day period...i.e., probably wait until April.  

Fingers crossed that we're now onto a mild, comfortable spring.  

Have a great week!