mid-may

middle of the month and the everbearing strawbnerries are...bearing...which suits me some and the birds to a greater extent...

the basement teosinte has moved to the great outdoors and continues to flower...however, despite a swelling in the stem below the bloom i cannot detect anything like silks and so doubt the possibility of seed...viable or not...

some of the five containerized teosinte plants ( there is a dog here now ) are working a third leaf...pleasing...

the grape vines on the trellis and the ones in the caltalpa tree are leafing out...

as are the ones in the fir trees...

and the concord is showing good new vine growth as well...

my mooseberry bush ( high bush cranberry for those of you who did not grow up with rocky and bullwinkle ) is being skeletalized by what i believe to be virburnum leaf beetles....i try to be organic and will use neem oil if and when the japanese beetles appear however that will not control these beetles so i have utilized a systemic insecticide which i applied around the base of the plant and i have been dousing it with insecticidal soap...we will give mooseberry every chance we can even if it transgresses some tenets...

mason bees are working away at filling nesting tubes in bee houses scattered around the yard...good news and i will need to place more around to accomodate the leaf cutters coming next month...

and, finally, it has been rainy here...last month we received more than double the april avarage rainfall ( i know, averages lie )...and it has been a wet may to date...so...

fungi are popping up all around...and...

the dead elm at the back of the yard is supporting an irruption of dryad's saddles...there's bound to be more going on as the month progresses...we will see what transpires.

field peas

this past tuesday i harvested the beds of winter wheat and rye...both grains have fragile stalks ( as evidenced by the pounding they took from the rain ) which makes it difficult to weed and so, in addition to the volunteer potatoes, both beds have an assortment of native plants that have been left behind...rather than let them take the beds over i decided to plant field peas as a short term cover crop...

the peas arrived int today's mail...so...

i went out and dug the beds...

carefully working around the viney volunteers...

and broadcast the seed as thickly as the amount i purchased would allow...these will be turned under in september when i replant the grain beds for next season...

we had an inch of rain overnight so this morning...before the mail arrived, i wandered out into industrial agriculture to see what, if any , impact it had...

i did find some standing water...

and a few places where water had obviously damaged crops ( including one that neatly illustrates the corn/soy bean monoculture that pretty much is industrial agriculture hereabouts )...but not that many...

and the drainage ditches were not exactly filled to overflowing...which has me thinking that the rain was more "locally heavy" in my yard than down south...or that the crops are well enough established and it has been dry enough that the rain soaked in rather than pooled on the surface...or a combination of both...i don't have rain gauges scattered around the fields ( although that might make an interesting project if i could find a cooperative farmer ) so i have no idea what might be the case...just conjecture to this point.

been raining

three inches of rain in my back yard in four days and it is still raining...another sogy may...we will be loking at the industrial fields a bit later...

it's halfway through may and time to start thinking about zea...i collected teosinte seed from the yard last season...froze some..nd kept some out to germinate...

i do not have profound expectations of the northern tepehuan seed...the plants were runts and the seeds are small and light colored which indicates a lack of endosperm...the darker zea mexicana seed will, hopefully, do better...

i did the standard twenty minute soak in a 3% solution of hydrogen peroxide and then into brown paper towels soaked in distilled water and into a dark place to germinate...a week or so...

i went out and turned the traditional teosinte bed for the fifth time and put in some compost...i received an early father's day gift from my daughter, anon-in-law, and granddaughter ( thanks! ) which is going to host the sprouts for a time after they are planted...just in case...

in other yard news the winter rye is producing more ears...the wheat still lags...it will catch up...

the egyptian walking onions are taking preliminary steps towards a stroll...i will be pinching some of these off to produce actual onions...and i will leave some to produce more aerial bulbs for propagation...at last count there were forty four clusters of theses out there ( they walk a lot )...i can afford to take some out of reproductive production...

the south bed is cooking away with berries...and escape plans...

there are still wilted, brown leaves on the grape vines in the catalpa tree...

however they are also evincing good new growth...there is hope yet...

and, in another good sign ( for this gardener anyway ) there is another generation of black capped chickadees coming along in one of the locust trees just outside the kitchen window...a bird's eye view from the sink.