natural? unnatural? new natural?

something like a four degree difference from one side of the yard to the other...or it might just be the thermometers are not calibrated the same...one suspects they were never completely accurate to begin with...that does not conceal the fact that it is near or above fifty degrees ( fahrenheit ) here on the fifteenth of december and that is unusual..or would have been in the past...it may just be what is these days for whatever reason you may wish to attribute it to ( bound to be some deniers out there )...

warm enough that the berry plants i rescued from my old truck before i sold it have decided it's safe to escape the netting i put over them to keep the new puppy ( it has been a busy autumn ) from digging them up ( a terrier, she likes to dig and fresly turned soil is irresistable ) and seek sunlight and evince new growth...admittedly they stay green all winter and are cold hardy...still, they generally hunker down afer november until march...so there is movement in the yard...

and in the basement the rescue potato is doing well...

as are the zea plants...i begin to suspect that, despite the oddly shaped seeds, these are teosinte...they simply do not look like maize...so..it's december and, for the most part, quiet...we will see how the remainder of the month goes weather-wise and what the yard does...the basement would seem to be prety stable for the nonce.

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

water

water issues come in various forms..usually either too little or too much...thirteen days ago there was considerable snow in my back yard...this has since melted and was followed by around four inches of rain in the middle of last week...

this has induced local creeks and rivers to abandon their banks for the surrounding countryside...

leaving behind silt and debris as their levels fell...all that water had to run off from somewhere and, in this particular stretch of deep river, that was from the surrounding fields...

which exacerbated old breaches in the field's berms...

and opened some fresh ones where there had been none before...these are not no til fields and the washed out areas in the fields will be filled in again with spring plowing in preparation for planting of field corn or soy beans...the berms probably will not be filled in..and next year that much more erosion will go on...this was not catastrophic flooding...there were some issues in suburban areas...roads were closed and there was doubtlessly water in many basements...i haven't heard a word about injuries, much less loss of life, though...and it is happening here more regularly...becoming expected...routine...events that would have been rarities decades ago are becoming a new normal...there is no dearth of water this late winter verging on early spring...wondering what summer will be like.

rain

temperatures more indicative of autumn have arrived...and along with it significant rains...

the last time it rained, nine days ago, this rain gauge collected just over an inch and a half of precipitation...

today it shows five...a three and a half inch rainfall today in the middle of my back yard...

the one on the north side between the housed uncharacteristically held a shade less than the other on the fourteenth of the month...

today, characteristically, it is topped out...we have had some rain today...

the evidence in on the petals, silks, and ears...

the hawthorn tree in the front yard stood out sharply as i pulled in the drive this evening...

the bees that gathered the nectar in the hawthorn blooms this past may...

will help feed the birds as winter deepens...nature is a web of interconnections...this one is so obvious i can see it plainly...there are others, more complex and obscured that human cognition has little hope of finding, much less understanding...time to relinquish the idea of control and be part.