Spring is starting here in NC. Geese are flying over, the tree frogs have been awake for a while now, and forsythia and daffodils just popped.
Plums and hybrids are starting to show a touch of color, and the peaches are pink.
I bud grafted Juliet onto Carmine Jewel in Sept, and those buds are waking up nicely! (It’s also waking up on Montmorency, but that branch took last spring.)
I always think spring is the real test
After the last warm spell melted all our snow we got an ice storm. Then eight inches of snow and cold weather. Now it’s been warm with rain and wind gusting to 50 mph. I have a small pond now on top of frozen snow and ice! We’re hoping not to lose power today.
'Tis the season to see quite a few moose-licked cars about. There are often tongue tracks on cars where the moose lick the road salt off. These pictures don’t show the detail very well, as the licks are old so don’t portray the sharp color contrast of fresh ones.
Wow that’s something you don’t see every day. What area are you from?
I’m in south-central Alaska. We don’t have deer here. I’ve always wondered if deer & elk do this sort of thing too…?
lol! I’ve seen this here too with the moose. was a a local general store a few years ago and a large cow came out of the woods and started to lick the owners pick up . we watched her for 20min. she then took a few mouthfuls of snow and went back in the woods. also see them eating the salt in early spring in the ditches. never seen deer do this.
I haven’t seen any deer do that here. They do like raw salt that goes on the roads though. Why is it do you think you don’t have deer or elk? Does the snow get to deep for them? I know around here when the snow is to deep the coyotes eat them. Wolves too but they are more scaras.
Today I woke up from a nap to see a couple of really tall boxes on my porch. For some reason JF&E decided to send me my plants even though they told me they’d hold the trees until May since some were breaking dormancy. I guess someone got a little mixed up. Thankfully, the persimmons are still dormant, but now I have a jujube pushing growth I have to shuffle or figure something else out for the next 2 months until frosts pass.
My guess is that fawns would not survive winters, but I may be wrong.
I’ve always dreamed of having a place in Alaska with a landing strip. That way I could fly in and out when ever I wanted to. Not sure if I would like to stay for the whole winter though. It’s to crowded with people here, and I live out in the country! I would like the raw wilderness up by you better.
Just got back from a grafting class at a local UK ag office. It was similar to the class we had last year.
The first speaker taught about various tree fruit and then did the grafting demonstration. We were able to pick three scions to go on the rootstocks, which were M7. They had about 20 different varieties to pick from, some disease resistant apples, like Enterprise, Goldrush, Liberty, Spartan, Dayton, etc. Some not so resistant ones like Fuji, Gala, Stayman and so on, and others like Mollie’s Delicious, Honeycrisp, Lodi, Red and Yellow Delicious.
I ended up picking another Honeycrisp which we are already growing, and a couple we don’t have, Mollie’s Del, and Enterprise. We’ve tried the last two at a local orchard and thought they were very good apples.
I did some reading on Spartan, which is an older Mac variety, and wish I would’ve got one of those, but these are fine. I may end up giving them away anyway as we’re running out of good places for them.
Then there were experts on insect and disease control. After that, while we had a nice catered lunch, we listened to a wildlife expert and how to deal with them. After all that we went out to an old orchard and the first doc showed us some pruning examples on one of the old trees.
Overall, a nice day, although it was quite chilly and kinda dreary weather out at the orchard. Not bad for free!
My most beloved 15-y-o small dog died late last summer, and now I have a little young girl. I hadn’t gotten her fixed yet for a couple of good reasons (I got her shots), but my other dog is female, so no big problem, right?
Well! I have a neighbor’s 100+lb Rhodesian Ridgeback making going out the door with her progressively impossible.
This morning, he literally pushed open my locked front door and let her out! He camps out inside my screen porch for our night walks. He can bust through things pretty easy, being a giant and all. A sweet giant.
It’s kind of crazy round here, lol. He did help me find out that my front door needs to be shoved another quarter inch with my shoulder to actually lock. Good to know!
So heat lasts a month, eh? Wish me sanity for the next few weeks. That boy is crazy.
My winter/spring propagation endeavors…
I don’t use lights mainly because a lot of these will go outside into my greenhouse or nursery area in a week or so. This is an assortment of garden plants (tomatoe/peppers/runner beans/tomatillos/etc), jujubes (mostly late fall plants now abou to break dormancy), fig and mulberry cuttings, and a few persimmons that have not germinated yet. It’s getting crowded in my house and I’m ready for spring!
Love seeing all of the green outside of your window too! Great property!
Yah, nothing remotely green like that around here!
After this weekend though most of that will be brown again for a few days for we have hard freezes coming up for the next three nights. Clover and rye will still be green though. I just shiver reading about the cold up there this year. You have my sympathy.
The current landscape is making music clips from the 60’s / 70’s pop into my head- “A Whiter Shade of Pale” and “White on White” and “White Christmas”, as well as the memorable (and insufferable!) Chipmunks version of White Christmas where Alvin says 'Oh look, Dave, it’s snowing".
And then there’s this:
