preparedness

it was a busy season for mason bees out back...however their season is over...so...

i took down the boxes they have nested in...

and placed them in preditor resistant mesh bags then put them away in the tool shed...

after which i placed new bee houses in the old sites...

then i spruced up the hatchery and placed new cardboard on one end to black it out, leaving the other open...why? tomorrow my leaf cutter cocoons arrive and they need places to both hatch and to nest...one hopes for as active a leaf cutter season as the masons produced...we will see...in the meantime there will be an arrival blog soon enough.

variables

despite 1.3" of rain earlier this week...

the weather forecast in terms of rain is grim...

and the drought monitor forecast for the next three months is...extreme drought...so...my garden beds will survive...one wonders how the bi-polar monoculture in the indistrial fields will be doing...and what the price of corn and soy beans will be like soon...specifically probably unpreidictable, however one surmises they cost will not go down...

out in the back the wheat on the compost pile is doing just fine...

the mulberries are in various states of ripeness...( the ripe ones are both seedy and sweet )...

the concord grapes in the fir tree are coming along...

as are the seedless grapes on the trellis...we will be getting back to these soon...

the berry plants are throwing stolons out everywhere...

while the bee hatchery is quiet...that will chage as the temperatures rise...

the deer fence i put up around the teosinte and maize beds seems to be working...

the damage to both has ceased...at least for the nonce...

and damage and loss are the subject of the rest of this post...mooseberry seems to be hosting some aphid herding ants and they seem to be impeding the new growth on this stem...this will be ending...they can move to the teosinte when it matures...it does not seem to mind them...

as i said, the grapes are coming along...and, as last years bird tape experiment was a dismal failure, this year i went in a different direction...

i purchased some netting...

and covered the vines on the trellis...

i began to cover the concords in the fir tree as well...however this is going to take some thought, experimentation, and a bit more work to see through...more as it comes up

sluggish

something of a more autumnal day here with cooler temperatures, a trace of rain, and three ( for me at least ) salient points out in the yard...

because of the cooler temperatures there are bees moving in slow motion...if not napping...all over the yard...mostly in the relative safety ( it is fairly breezy to ) of larger blooms...

a safe perch would seem to be relative to geographical location however...the blooms are in the front yard because someone is showy and this bee found a place on a teocintli flower out back where the blooms are more plebeian...and while we are talking teocintli...

out there among the single and clusters of green ears...

i begin to see darkening seeds and thinning husks preparing to split and shatter respectively...so there will be daily reconnaissance around the zea patch so there is a harvest of at least some of the seed to freeze and to propagate another generation next season...

and...finally...i brought i some spuds today...morene on the right...tacna on the left...and some elmer's blue center...thinking lunch.

first day of autumn

the last night of summer delivered four tenths of an inch of rain to the first day of autumn in my yard...

three tenths fell on the twenty-first so the fungi are blooming...

and a refreshed dryad's saddle is still consuming stumpy in slow motion...

there are still untouched ears of maize out there...

and some not so pristine...

unlike the campus teocintli, none of the seeds....husked or unhusked...have declared their season over...there are seeds clearly visible...harvest in a couple of weeks i think...

tomatoes and peppers are ripe or verging on it...

bees are still working over the marigolds...

the chamomile in the bed of my truck is blooming along...

and the bean is producing seed for me...

the native berries are still blooming ( they like the rain )...

and producing...lots of pollinators still going out there...

and while we are on the subject of berries, the new yorker in my truck continues to stake out new turf before winter...

it has a daughter in full leaf...

that has generated a stolon that has gone from this...

to this...

to this in four day's time...

additionally, a second stolon from the mother plant has produced a second daughter...we are not quite finished even if autumn is officially here.