Just Now – Tips of Red

It’s Red this week for the Headbanger challenge, not much red out were I’m at, oh wait, look at those tree tops and the catkins beginning to bloom and the red twigged wild roses down low.  Even reflected in the water, which I dedicate to Tom who chose the theme, spends much time on the water and loves reflections.  Check the side board and click on the links to see what the others have for the Headerchallenge of “Red”.  Oh and we’ve added someone new and when I remember how I did the sideboard thing I will add her over there on it, until then here is her link Sandy

Get Red-dee

All week when I thought of “red”  I kept saying, “Red dee” to myself.  Don’t really know why, ‘cept that I’m ready to be red-dee I guess.  Ready to run fast and hit hard!  This will be a better year than last (but next year will be even better, God willing that I get there)!

Lots of things have been busting loose and I’ve not had much of a chance to sow any seeds except in my Hippy Hot Hut and those planting dates really don’t need to coincide with phenological events, mostly Lanny’s got time events, and the almanac said to the day before sorta thing.

But this week I am red-dee and it will be an outdoor planting week on into Tuesday next, potatoes will go in their beds, beets, carrots, turnips in one of the root beds (they went in at the end of the day yesterday) and hopefully a plethora of things in one of the salad beds. Onions plants should be arriving any day from Dixondale.

Neither of the whole fifty foot bed for the roots nor salad greens will be planted this week.  They will be more spread out date wise, succession planting it’s called.  That way we’ll have a nearly constant supply of fresh from the ground produce of the greens and roots during late spring and on through summer and fall. 

Round ’bout July, for some roots and August for others and greens, we will put in larger amounts to take us on through winter and into early spring  of next year.

The potatoes might actually be planted in succession, not on purpose mind you, but because I can’t fling the water fast enough, but that’s another story.

(Dirt came home and fixed my pump last night so I will be flinging water fast today, but really, that is another story.)

The phenological events this week

The view in the header is facing west from my Market Garden, a perfect place to see the tops of the trees turning a more brilliant red against the dark green of the evergreens and the grey blue of the tumultuous spring sky as they begin to bloom out.

The Killdeer are nesting.  They nest on the ground out in the horse pasture in a very open nest, a dangerous place to raise a family of short people if you ask me.  Her whole wounded trick won’t be of much help if little Missy Marvy goes a galloping that direction.  And I don’t think our egg hounds are put off much by her limping distraction.  The dogs have to stay inside when we come out to the Market Garden, someone, not sure who, already stole one of mama’s eggs. There were two on Friday but only one on Saturday.  It could have even been a wild enemy and not one of the dogs, but I’ll not have yolk on our hands or paws. 

She did promptly lay another by Monday, these eggs are whoppers! I can see that it would take her a day in between to recover, there should be more eggs added to the nest unless she only lays four per nesting even if one is jacked from the nest.

She and her kind usually have four eggs to a nest and that she replaced the one missing (it could have been such that I came upon them after two had already been stolen) is good for the whole phenological timing thing. For we are clearly catching her at the very start of her first nesting of the season, she will have more nests through out the summer.  They take a very long time for such a little bird to incubate, somewhere round twenty-eight days, a full month!  That’s more than a chicken.  When you’re talking early spring planting and phenological events, a month is a lifetime!

The leaf buds are swelling on the Salmon berries, Rubus spectabilis.  You can tell that they are salmonberry bushes not Thimbleberry because they are covered in prickles on the stems.  It can be a little confusing as to who’s who, for both berries grow like gangbusters all over in the woods here, but one is prickly, really prickly and the other is not at all.  Sorry no picture, the camera wasn’t in my pocket.

But I do have pictures of the pear that is busting…

And the colored hyacinth is near bursting….

Update on earlier Phenological planting.

How did my peas planted according to Indian Plum bud burst do?

They all came up very well thank you.  Even the ones that are paddling around with water wings on in the wetter part of the Market Garden.  The Market Garden actually has several wetter parts. very swaley land. Only a very few of the beds are out of the water for their full length.  Most of them have one end or the other that dips down and has a good bit of water in the paths, unfortunately a few beds actually have water covering them as well.  But that’s another story….

If you’ll remember, Dear Reader, I put them in and then we received our coldest snowiest weather for the year for here.  But they came up and they did so in good time.   So Indian Plum buds bursting still holds as time for pea seeds.  Next year I might have to run a experimental patch and push the timing forward on to some other event, just to see…

Note of caution

I was over at a friends house the other day and from the corner of my eye was perplexed by a flower that was blooming a bit out of season.  I didn’t think too much of it at the time as we were busy chatting and after all my Tete-a-tete daffodils are very much earlier than all their cousins.  So it could very well have been the case with what I saw but didn’t explore.

Then I read on Far Sides blog, a little aside comment about her crazy batch of day lilies already coming up, she said they do this because they are planted directly above a heat duct to an outside building (or something to that effect).  It reminded me of a tree that is late to turn in autumn and quick to bloom and leaf in the spring because it is planted by an on ground electrical station that feeds a huge reader board.  Clearly a lot of unnatural heat is created. 

Moral of the story.   Only go by reliable and very very local events for your timing.  In reliable settings, not by buildings or places that could fluctuate from year to year even if they are on your own place.  To pick a bush that is tucked in and away that might bloom earlier or later is one thing.  It will bloom earlier or later each year, but don’t pick one next to a building that perhaps is kept warmer this year over other years.  It is just best to key in on things in your own vicinity that are away from buildings and that you know are not planted over underground stuff.