the little wild kingdom

[flowerbug]

had some mice tracks in the snow near the house and had to get the traps out, but gladly the crawlspace entrance did not have any mice nests in there so it was around and under the air conditioning unit that the mice were getting into. i trapped four mice and haven't had any more mice in the traps since the last one. with no snow on the ground now i can't see if there are tracks or not until the snow returns. i won't reset or refill the traps with peanut butter until i know i have more mice out there since i don't want to attract them towards the house.

all else is going ok, working on some projects and keeping busy inside and will have to start figuring out what i want to package up for the seed swap which happens towards the end of February. other than that life is going along ok.

[flowerbug]

to encourage bean crossing i have often interplanted both types together and then replanted those harvested seeds to see what has happened. that has worked fairly well, but it does take time.  we have a lot of squash bees around (smaller sized bumble bees) and also the larger bumble bees which can feed in the bean patches.

some people plant isolated bean patches and have other gardens in between to try to keep the bees from cross-fertilizing the beans with the other varieties they grow but my goals are often the opposite of that because i do want to encourage crosses. 

[flowerbug]

the deer have come back this year to get some mid-winter food. this picture was taken before all the snow melted. now it is all back to browns and grays with a little green in the grass.




i found the earliest GIS plat maps on-line which show the house just after it was mostly built in 1996-1997.




along with the wider view of more of the neighborhood.

[flowerbug]

one of my beans that i've got fairly stable enough to give it a name, i like the pattern on the bean and reminded me of fire so i had to come up with a name that had fire and then i thought of a travelling tinker of the older times where they would go around and help people fix things and sell bits of this and that. a tinker sitting at the fire after a day of travel.


Tinker's Fire:

[flowerbug]

this bean was a bush bean the first time i grew it, but this season when i planted some of those seeds they were not all bush beans or even lavender in color.

Lavender:

[xdrix]

Very funny beans!
have hapiness to look grow them!

[flowerbug]

beans are always fun to grow for me.

the seed swap went well. i probably gave away or sold samples to 100-150 people. more socialization that i'd do in a few years done in 5hrs of that day. by 4pm i was out of energy and my voice was ragged. came home and took a 3hr nap and took a few more days to get my lower back to feeling normal. i'm not used to sitting or standing in one place that long. still it is a good way for me to get my goals accomplished of getting beans and seeds to people who want to garden.

about 80% of what i gave out were Purple Dove as they are a very versatile and edible bean as fresh, shellies or dry, besides the color of the flowers and the growth habit and leaves. it's just a overall nice bean to have. so i was making sure people had that one. some of my other beans also went out but not as many.

i've not had a very good internet connection the past few weeks so today i can finally get back to a few places again. 

[flowerbug]

flowers are out for sure now. a lot of daffodils, hyacinths, some tulips starting up, etc.

the main gatherings of daffodils i can see from the house are now around the edges of the north garden. some need to be thinned out again already.




i like how this garden has turned out, not much needs to be done to it even 12 years after it was planted

[xdrix]

Beautiful garden!
I grow together pulmonary, oregano and stonecrop (sedum) and lemon balm.

[flowerbug]

May 13, 2023 16:56:44 GMT -5 xdrix said:

Beautiful garden!
I grow together pulmonary, oregano and stonecrop (sedum) and lemon balm.

that garden also has a line of lilies which get 1 meter to 1.5 meters tall so that as the tulips are dying back they block the view from the house of the mess that Mom does not like to see.  those lillies are just now getting going.

in other news my early pea and bean planting sprouts have come up and there are some morel mushrooms around the berm and pine tree.  to me, gardening season doesn't start until the peas and beans are starting to come up - before then it is project season.

you can see how tall they get in this picture from another year

[flowerbug]

still frost a few nights ago. some damage to some bean sprouts but i think most will survive.

planting onions now and using up some of the worm compost. will be planting the rest of the greenhouse starts over the next several days. always the hardest task for me to get done but it will be over soon and then i can get on to planting beans.

[flowerbug]

i'm still planting beans, but these last gardens are outside the fenced areas so they may be sacrificial beans, deer fodder or perhaps a cover crop and some harvest - won't know until i get it. mainly i'm working on these gardens because i do not want them returning to weeds and grasses again. it was a lot of work to clear them and get them back to gardens so i don't want to lose that effort. what i would like to do is reclaim even more but without any rains the ground is way too hard.

i'm also spending a lot of time picking gravel so i don't have such a hard time scraping or weeding or planting.  it was my big mistake to do what i did to begin with so i'm just cleaning up the mess i created - about 15 years ago i had some gravel and sand mixed together that i cleaned out of an area and instead of screening it and cleaning it up i just put it down along an edge of a pathway and then planted irises over it.  now i'm about 2/3rds of the way along that edge cleaning all that gravel out of the dirt and garden where it gets scattered and moved around even more.  may take me a few more years to get it all done, i just keep chipping away at it as i have the inclination (or get annoyed by seeing it ).  if there is enough of a concentration i can use a screen and save a lot of time over picking each piece of gravel.  i probably saved three hours just yesterday alone.  still i would have saved myself many more hours by just cleaning it all to begin with...

[xdrix]

Peas pods are dry on the plant.Peas plants was dry before the peas maturity.
They was used for mulched others plants.For improve the soil quality we put drip irrigation kit around ours plants.
Beans get flowers.
This year is very stranger.

[flowerbug]

some peas can dry on the plants and will be ok, and then i have others that the chipmunks will take so i have to pick them earlier. yes, i use bean plants and pea plants as soil amendments after the harvest, i also put bean pods in the worm farm for worm bedding. i think it is much better for the worms than shredded paper.

[flowerbug]

i finished planting the other day. just in time for these rains to help out - we've really needed it. the grasses going dormant already is not common at all at this time of the year and also the two large ditches hardly having any flow in them.

i'm very glad for all the plants and animals that could use a good drink.