winding down

ran into a depressing sight when i visited the bee houses this morning...the unmistakeable sign the mason bee season is slowing...two dead girls...

there are still busy girls out there...only fewer...and they seem to be in a hurry...working even harder...time is short and dna is relentless in its demand to be reproduced...it needs to carry on in a new generation...soon it will be time to take the houses down...put them in parasite proof mesh bags...and store them away in the shed until next march when i hang them out again for another cycle...

the end of the season is always a letdown...no more buzz...still...we had a pretty good season...last count was over three hundred sealed tubes and when i do the final inventory in a few days i am wagering there will be more...the last couple of leaf cutter seasons have been disasters...stillborn...none of them hatched last year and not many the year before that...hoping they take after the masons come june.

mason bees

since the thirtieth of last month...

the bee houses i put out the third week of march...

have become increasingly active...

as a new generation of bees...

hatches out...

to keep the relentless dna...

passing along.

the last day of winter on the farm

since my daughter is on good terms with her neighbors i was allowed to wander around their farm and have a look...

even the farm dog was in a friendly frame of mind and we strolled around together...

one of the first things that struck me was the amount of dense yellow #2 that either...

the combine missed...

or, somehow or other, failed to be ensiled...the second issue stems from the fact that the farm is located on the valparaiso moraine ( you can see how the topography undulates in the top photo )...

which has led to...

some erosion on the slopes...i am uncertain if this is a no till farm or not...there was stubble in the fields and no evidence of a post-harvest tilling as there is in numerous fields i pass by while commuting...this will likely be a bean field this coming spring, and while the window for planting tsoy beans runs from early april until june i usually don't see them until the later part of may...the weather here has been scrambled and the storms have become more severe with heavier rainfall which could lead to some ravine-like erosion between now and planting...i may have a chance to see...i may not...however i will be keeping an eye on local rainfall. adendum...this wouldn't account for wind erosion which will occur...we have discussed elsewhere in this blog that, although they do not appear so from the outside, due to row spacing these fields are mostly bare soil

asparagus from seed?

it has been a quiet season in the basement...all i have going is a strawberry plant that was in sad shape when i brought it in last month and a four corners potato that had sprouted and so deserved a chance...i do want to establish more asparagus around the yard come spring however... there are still a number of berries on the asparagus in the east bed...

so i brought some in and removed the seeds...

and planted them in sundry containers in a mix of potting soil and earthworm castings...

and lowered the light...stay tuned if you're interested...we'll see how this goes.

artificial selection. grapes, nuts ( not grapenuts ), the pheonix and more

i had a few volunteer spring wheat plants pop up and they have finished their season...that's hard red spring wheat on the left and emmer wheat and its 10000 year old dna on the right...the emmer is about a foot shorter than the "improved" wheat...

which has much larger seed heads...

with twenty ot better "berries"...

as opposed to nine on the ear of emmer...emmer can produce more given the correct conditions...however not as much as the "improved" variety...but remember they were volunteers and i left them to what the environment gave them and the environment here has been mostly dry...i am considering a bed of emmer in the coming spring and if i do plant we will see how it does with human intervention...

the seedless grapes which are not seedless are producing well...

and the squirrels here seem to be getting lazy as i am finding windfall black walnuts under the tree by the kitchen window...

the grape vines from the pheonix concord grape roots continue on their way into the fir tree...

and the tendrils are busy anchoring the vines...no grapes for a few years...no matter..i am pleased at the rebirth...

in other news, pickles...

and beans are emerging into the summer...if it ever rains to a sustainable degree ( we are still in "moderate drought" ) i will wind up the garden hose...no time soon it would seem.