Monday, May 31, 2010

End of May -- Rain Roulette

It seems it's always like this for the first hay cutting.  The threat of rain looms and area farmers are consulting crystal balls to decide when to cut.  You don't want hay laying on the ground in wet weather if you can avoid it, because it will rot or mold.  It needs to be dry before baling or you risk poisoning your livestock or burning down your barn.

What to do?  What to do?  I guess you "bite the bullet", make a decision and keep your fingers crossed.

We're now into the weather in which you slather on some sunblock and spritz on some mosquito repellent before venturing out to do the morning chores.

The humidity is sometimes notable and we've been all the way up to 90 degrees recently, although sometimes 80 seems like the new 90 in terms of humidity.  It's muggy and buggy.

On the bright side:  plants in the vegetable garden have experienced a growth spurt in the heat.  There are already baby cucumbers forming.  Chard is big and beautiful.  Fennel has self seeded and already formed nice hands.  Bees are in the borage; snow peas will be part of today's dinner; beans are climbing right up to the sky.

Geese set on massive nests in both flocks.  In the chicken house, a goose is minding lots of guinea eggs laid in a ground nest along with goose eggs.  It's unlikely anything will come of it - but if it does, I'll let you know.

Thursday, May 13, 2010

Foggy

Fog covers our hilltop this morning.  It's been raining off and on for a couple of days and will continue the pattern for at least a couple more.  Wonderful.  It is greatly needed to make things grow.

I'm surprised that my last post was so long ago.  Most of the iris is finished blooming already.  Peonies are in full glorious bloom.  The fruit on the trees is visible from a distance.  It's looking good for pears and peaches.  There are even some apricots and lots of plums.  Apples abound.  The raspberries are forming, blossoms done.  Multiflora roses exude that lovely rosy smell.

We tinker with the trimmer and I am slowly managing to trim around the fruit trees.  I'm hoping it will manage to stay together until I can get it down the hill and neaten up the area around the old house.

Yesterday, I spent about an hour weeding the vegetable garden.  Lettuces are coming up.  Chard and kale are big enough to harvest.