bee houses

because the dog ( marigold by name ) is a terrier and is inclined to open up construction-grade excavations in the back yard, mason bees had ample raw material to work with out there in nesting terms last spring...

and so they began to utilize the bee houses i had hung up around the yard...

after the bees' season ended i took them down and stored them in predator-proof bags in the tool shed for the winter...

spring, and mason bee season, is nearly here and since i cout twenty six tubes of mason bee larva waiting to hatch i concluded it was time to bring them out and hang them back up so they don't hatch out in the tool shed...

the soil is thawing...new excavtions are opening up...the yard is ready...all we need are the daffodils and the bees.

moss and lichens

there are seventeen trees in my back yard two firs among them ( as well as two firs on the south side fo the house ) which serve as sinks for some ( not nearly all ) of the carbon emissions i produce...if i had room there would be more firs out there, however that is not possible...recently i have been reading about the ability of mosses and lichens to sequester carbon and so i went out to look around...

among the mulberries and maples out back there are two gigantic locust trees...

and they are home to a vaiety of mosses and lichens...

the maples back there seem to be only hospitable to lichens since i did not find an moss i could identify...

conversely the black walnut seems exempt as a host...

however the moss and lichens on the dead wood out there...

as well as the moss on the ground...

and lichens on stones make up for the habitat denial...the back yard is a shady place when in leaf and so moss and lichen friendly...i wasn't expecting to find as much in the sunnier front yard...seems i was mistaken in that...

it is a fact that the maples out by the street have a mush sparser population of mosses and lichens than those in the back...

however the ground along the north side of the yard, from the bushes that border the neighboring driveway back to the ramp bed is alive with mosses...including the drive itself...so...pleasingly, there are more carbon offsets in my yard than i had imagined...it will take some serious calculation to discern how much of the carbon i produce these mosses and the combination of fungus and algae that make up lichens will sink and i doubt i can come up with an exact figure...which won't stop me from trying to ballpark it...more later.

zea mays mexicana IV

the smaller of the two teosinte plants under the lights in my basement...

has irrupted in silks and is beginning to show signs of blooming...this has happened before and i am not sanguine about ears or seed much less viable seed...still i claim the right to be geeked by the whole thing.

is the efficiency mechanical or animal?

i had the opportunity to have a look at a couple of industrial fields that were home to dense yellow #2 field corn last season...

and mostly what i found were cobs neatly stripped of kernels by the combine harvester...

along with a scattering of kernels in a number of places the combine obviously missed...

compared to fileds like this one that i have seen in the past today's were remarkably free of corn kernels...so it may be that combine harvesters have dramatically improved in efficiency or, this being january, wildlife may have been doing a remarkable job of gleaning the fields...one seems as likely as another, however given the severity of the cold in the last week or so, wildlife may have been doing as much efficient clean-up as any harvester...

along the berms of the fields i found an old acquaintance from the campus garden...carolina horse nettle...brought some fruits home to grow in containers as well as a few kernels of field corn to plant in the spring just to see what ( if anything ) happens...we will see...

and, lastly, plastic is everywhere...a local resident told me "people think our road is a garbage dump."