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.

what could be more natural...

...than temperatures twenty-eight degrees above "the average for this date"...

and nearly a half an inch of rain ( with more on the way...no snow forecast ) three days before the end of one of the warmest years on recorded and the deniers firmly in control of the political apparatus...if we look to the past for definitions of "normal" we may find ourselves seriously confused about what is going on...

bright green lichens seem out of place in december at the south end of the inland sea...

the local berries...

and the new york imports in the yard and in the bed of my truck are all cold hardy so their verdancy is not a surprise...

neither is that of the winter rye...

ot the winter wheat...although some of the wheat seems to be tinged a bit yellow...it is, perhaps, not accustomed to rain rather than snow this time of year...

some of the onions and the berries cohabiting in the south bed seem to be yellowing as well...

while the population of dryad's saddles and lichens slowly consuming stumpy seem to be robust and expanding...

and on anther "robust" note...the spuds in the basement are doing fine.

quiet april, so far

i drove out to campus this morning to have a look around the garden and do some maintenance work...i found it pretty quiet...

all i found moving much were some opportunistic grasses...

and some lichens that had tagged along in the compost i used to mulch the asparagus last autumn...and it was mostly the asparagus that brought me there...

i hadn't expected any movement there ( we will get tot he reason why in a bit ) however it is time tho move the mulch back from the crowns...

which i did so that the spears have an easier time of it when they do decide to appear..asparagus isn't the strongest of plants...it needs some assistance...i intervened in the lives of the plants...my intentions were good...

i hadn't expected asparagus on campus because the asparagus in my back yard has not broken surface yet either and it has been uncovered for a week now...as i recall it made its appearance earlier last season than this...things seem different in 2019...

there are still only three ramps up and at this point i am reasonably confident they are there because of frost heave in the bed..all of them were so near the surface in terms of their roots i felt compelled to replant them...again, the ramps were earlier last season...they were popping up in the middle of march ( see 3-14-2018 post )...

and by april twelfth they were well into leaf...either a dealyed spring or something has been in my ramp bed...

beyond the winter cereals and the berries, the only things out there showing any real signs of life are the onions...

and the daffodils...i am waiting...i am trying to be patient...it is almost time to work on germinating the teocintli...and dig the beds they will be going in...it's slow...it will speed up soon enough..then we will be talking spuds and maize.