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Post by 12540dumont on Mar 18, 2015 21:49:21 GMT -5
Oh, Steev, these got away about 50 years ago. I don't know as there's any hope for them now.
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Post by steev on Mar 19, 2015 0:59:52 GMT -5
Hope, unlike water, springs eternal. Next January, it'll cost you dinner and a helper to get those cleaned up; they will thank you with even more glorious bloom.
I will have wisteria on the farm when I'm there more (I've killed a couple so far, for lack of attention). I love the bloom, the scent, and the drifts of fallen blossoms.
Don't feel bad that yours haven't been pruned, neither have my sweetheart's, and whose fault is that? She has a "gardener", but he's worth diddley-squat; just mow n blow n go.
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Post by reed on Mar 19, 2015 7:57:48 GMT -5
It is a little cool and overcast today but we have had a stretch of warm sunny days with a dry breeze. Nice as ground will soon be tillable but a little spooky of what might come. April Santa Anna wind fries March flowers as the saying goes. That's right isn't it?
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Post by philagardener on Mar 20, 2015 17:43:13 GMT -5
5 inches of new snow around Philly. Supposed to get to 50F tomorrow!
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Post by flowerweaver on Mar 20, 2015 19:40:16 GMT -5
Sending thoughts of spring your way philagardener! We are getting some rain, so far not the gullywasher and flood predicted. Every pair of jeans we own are covered in mud. Guess I'll plant in this tomorrow just to keep moving ahead. |
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Post by philagardener on Mar 20, 2015 20:02:32 GMT -5
Every pair of jeans we own are covered in mud. Guess I'll plant in this tomorrow just to keep moving ahead. Helps me stand up after a long day in the Spring garden! Looking forward to it  |
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Post by steev on Mar 21, 2015 22:41:39 GMT -5
Getting warm nights and hot days on the farm. Tempts me to try corn 2 1/2 months early, but I know there can usually be hard frost through May. Think I have to take a shot with varieties I've plenty of. If my tomatoes were much more than cotyledons, I'd put some of them out; maybe I'll buy some larger plants as potential sacrifices, just on the off-chance King Kong won't kill them; blond, blue-eyed tomatoes, like the sweet, juicy "Aryan Tootsie" variety: white, plump, not much depth of flavor, quite determinate.
Other weather/planting "news": California being in its fourth year of drought, the pace of planting new orchards/vineyards seems to be accelerating and the rice fields are being readied for flooding/planting; business trumps environment.
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Post by 12540dumont on Mar 22, 2015 19:51:59 GMT -5
 The weather report says rain. Here's the Fringe Tree in all it's glory. The only thing that's raining here is blossoms. |
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Post by steev on Mar 23, 2015 0:55:13 GMT -5
Yeah, it rained ~10:30PM for two minutes; big woop.
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Post by reed on Mar 23, 2015 3:45:00 GMT -5
Rain is predicted here starting tomorrow and my grape vines are supposed to ship out from New York today, crap. I'm off work today unless when I check email it contains some emergency, gonna try to get the new corn patch tilled. I have never heard of a Fringe Tree but that thing sure is pretty, do the flowers have fragrance?
I don't know how you folks deal with the lack of rain issue but sounds like you do a lot better with it than I could. If I had known that spring was there in the neighbors pasture when I bought this place I could of added a few acres to the purchase and owned it but too late for that now. It would still be a 150' vertical rise to get it up here. My little pond goes completely dry in the summer on it's own as do the creeks. Things have to stick it out mostly on their own for two, four, eight weeks at a time.
I kinda miss when it rained in the summer but at least the grass doesn't need mowed every few days like it used to.
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Post by flowerweaver on Mar 23, 2015 8:41:06 GMT -5
We had two inches of rain over the weekend, which was perfect. The transplanted greens look fabulous. Sending all you Californians positive thoughts for rain!
In 2010 we had no rain for 11 months and we fell into an exceptional drought. Our well went completely dry for six, and we were surrounded by the wildfires you undoubtedly read about. Living with that kind of anxiety without running water was probably the most stressful thing I have ever gone through, even worse than the tornado. Hauling water from the river became my full time job, on top of my full time job. I conservatively estimate we physically lifted 54 tons of water, bucket by bucket.
Then the river dried up, and I bought 4,500 gallons of tanks and donated a large sum to the county fire department to bring me a tank of water. Then the city said they couldn't do that again because I lived in the county. Never mind my taxes helped pay for that truck. I became a beggar. You quickly find out who your friends are. Our 'closest' friends were too worried about their own wells. It was the oddball neighbors, folks the community deemed 'crazies', people with entirely opposite views on life, complete strangers who gave water generously to us.
Afterwards, we wanted to deepen our well. Because we have an open well hand dug in the late 1800's by the pioneers, no well service would help, deeming it unsafe. No one wanted to go down there because of potential poisonous gasses. That is, except local ex-cons and druggies who came to our rescue. Three men showed up and between them they were missing three front teeth, four fingers, and an ear. They lowered themselves by ropes with an electric wench and removed two feet of silt to get the thing flowing again. It was a real life lesson.
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Post by 12540dumont on Mar 23, 2015 19:45:14 GMT -5
So glad the well has not gone dry yet. My father told me that wells did dry up in the 30's. So, I'm cautious. Every row this year is triple planted. And I have been admonished by Leo, to plug ever spot I pull something out of, so that the beds do not go dry. It's much much harder to irrigate from dead dry, than from moist below the surface.
The tree is a
Chionanthus retusus it has a lovely mild fragrance
We actually did get 5 minutes or so of rain. Not enough to leave a puddle, just enough to clear the smog, and top off my rain barrel.
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Post by reed on Mar 23, 2015 19:57:42 GMT -5
That reminds me of the stories I remember of the 1936 drought here. My dad and grand dad went to the Ohio River and dipped water to carry ten miles or more back to the farm using horses and wagon. I guess it was pretty much a daily activity. Then the Ohio River ran dry except for pools here and there but you couldn't get to them.
1988 was the worse I'v ever seen and the high rise dams were in place before then, still barge traffic was halted because water levels dropped and the dams were sealed tight anyway for fear water would drop below the intakes for the cities. Things have and will again get bad, set new records I suspect, most people have no clue.
It isn't the next exceptional drought that worries me the most, it is the more and more "normally" rainless summers. I would like to move down 300 or 400 feet by a bigger creek or a place with a big pond. Someplace where I can fill big tanks during the winter for use in summer.
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Post by 12540dumont on Mar 23, 2015 23:58:17 GMT -5
Reed, our creek now only runs for a day or two in the winter. In speaking to the USDA, they suggested tanks to collect water off the barn, or ponds to fill from the rain. Leo and I long thought that the best idea was to put a pump in the creek and pull out water on the few days it rained. If we ever leave this farm (alive) I want a river, a year round creek or a spring.
I believe you are right, the drought goes own, people become complacent until cows lie belly up in the field. My father told me awful stories about ranchers going out and killing all their cows and then taking their own lives. Folks in town didn't see their entire lives dry up and blow away. Well, not until the farmers no longer came to town to buy anything. Then the shops shut up too.
Scarey to me that the area where the drought was the worst in the 30's...they built a million homes. The water wars are just beginning. Right now it pits the folks in LA against almond farmers. It will get worse. Google Almonds and drought and you'll see both sides of the story. Greed, waste, etc.
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Post by steev on Mar 24, 2015 0:52:57 GMT -5
The neighbor east of my farm has already started losing his grip; he dropped a dime on my north neighbors to the county water commissioner, claiming that they are pumping so much water for their livestock that they're depleting the aquifer; this is absurd, since their well is unrelated to the source of his (and my) water and they use far less water than he chooses to believe. The remarkable thing is that those folks have been there for generations, are totally integrated into the valley's community, and know all the authorities; the commissioner pointed out that California has no applicable laws regulating ground-water, that their water rights are senior to his in any event, and that he should mind his own business.
I've known him 30-some years; he's a narcissist who never lets go of an offense, will brood on these insults (whether self-inflicted, real, or imagined) for decades, and will seek revenge if he sees an opportunity. I doubt he has an inkling of how thoroughly he's alienated all his neighbors within a quarter mile with unreasonable, even bullying, behavior.
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