thaw II

it is raining right now as the thaw extends into a second day and the snow has mostly melted...

leaving both the rye ans wheat ( hard to tell the difference ) both completely uncovered...

the grains and berries aren't the only things that remained green through last week...the established onions are photosynthesizing away...

and the clusters of aerial bulbs the egyptian walking onions produced are still putting out roots and sprouts...photosynthesis there as well...

the only green on stumpy is some moss...which is to be expected...however the dryad's saddle seems to be doing just fine despite the recent travails...more resiliency than i would have thought for a fungus...spores would have been my expectation...

and there are still teocintli seeds of questionable viability hanging about...the thaw is set to end about mid-week and i am still concerned about the grains in temperatures in the teens ( fahrenheit ) with no cover..we will see what transpires by next weekend.

thaw

a few days ago it was seasonably cold here...

and there was a reasonable amount of snow on the ground...among other things acting as insulation...we will be getting to that in a bit...

in terms of temperature things today are markedly different...and all the snow is melting...

and, while the ambient air temperature is well above freezing the ground underneath all this snow has not thawed yet and the melt water is pooling behind ice and snow dams at the edges of the fields...

and when those dams melt and the water finds its way to the edges of the fields and runs off i would imagine there will be some significant erosion here and there...it is supposed to cool again later in the week...nothing like last week...it will slow the process but spring will come...so we will be touring the fields over the next few months to see how much erosion we find...

the snow in the winter rye bed ...

has declined in the thaw as well...however the insu;ation it provided left green rye in the bed after prolonged sub zero ( fahrenheit ) temperatures...

not having much choice the snow in the winter wheat bed has followed the path of that in the rye and declined precipitously...still leaving behind green wheat...i mentioned that it was due to cool in the ocming week and i am uncertain of how the loss of the snow pack will affect the plants...growing grain is a hazardous business...even in thirty-two square foot increments...we will be looking at that as well...

the grains were not the only beneficiaries of the snow's insulating properties...the new york import strawberries...

and their local counterparts are all happily green ad photosynthesizing away as the snow recedes...these are not your basic pansies.

don't ask me why i thought this would be a "small" season

found these while i was rummaging around containers in my room...plants have a schedule that does not always mesh with my desires and that is just the way it is..these were not going to make it much longer without some assistance...so...

so i put each one in a peat pot and pretty much buried it in potting soil and gave each a shot of water...

i put one in with the garlic ( yes you are seeing it..that population has expanded...doing fine too )...

the spud i planted twenty-eight days ago is doing well...so well in fact that i back filled the container before i gave the solo plants some company...

eventually everyone will need their own space...but for the nonce they can practice their social skills...

from puddles' kids to the mashua and yacon all are green and robust...it is warm in the plant room...it is a room of its own down there and it has its own heat a/c vent so when the door is closed ( to keep the cat out ) the temperature goes up...especially when the heat runs in sub zero weather...so i gave everyone a fair drink of water to keep them on a roll...more as the population relentlessly expands.

indices of climate change in my back yard

the epa has published a list of forty-five indices of climate change..some of them such as carbon dioxide emissions i cannot measure ( even though i know my activities emit them )...the level of arctic and antarctic sea and land ice...or glacial melt...there are a few i can monitor in the relative comfort of my back yard or house however...heating and cool degree days is one...the call sixty five degrees fahrenheit the dividing line between heating and cooling days...this seems unrealistic to me..at sixty-five degrees i would have the windows open and the heat-a/c system would be off...still i can monitor how many days the heat and a/c run and what temperatures they are set at...high and low temperatures is another and that would be a natural to go with heating and cooling days...i have a rain gauge so heavy precipitation events ( we have been exceeding the annual average rainfall here for some time ) and drought would be simple indicators to keep track of as well...

my yard is replete with trees..deciduous and fir...( somewhat of a mitigation to my emissions...the perennials are carbon sinks too )...

as well as vegetables and flowers that all leaf and bloom ( the locust trees bloom and when the seeds fall it looks a lot like snow ) cyclically throughout the season so the first leaf and bloom dates should be simple to track over the seasons...the epa says we are running four to eight days earlier than the first leaf and bloom days were in 1950..a multi-year project for my dotage...

i have recently taken sophie d. coe to task over her statements about teocintli being unable to mature and set seed in northern latitudes...it is doing so successfully in my back yard...

both the seeds and the berries i am finding in my yard in november are there because the growing season is getting longer...the first frost is coming later and plants with longer seasons have the time to do what they do...in my yard and all over...

and i am finding one that is not on the epa's list...this is carolina horse nettle at the community garden on campus...it is not native and the garden is well north of its native range...it still is robust, blooming, and reproducing where it does not belong...an invader from a different climate that is in a new home not so different that it cannot survive...i know the climate is changing...i can see it empirically...i have me beliefs about why it is changing even though i cannot prove them to anyone's satisfaction...especially the deniers...that is understandable given human nature..it doesn't change fact.

polar vortex? whatever you call i it is cold.

at least the snow in the rye bed...

and the wheat bed...

reached a sufficient depth before the cold arrived...we may be in fair shape this season if this holds...certainly the snow is not going anywhere today.

expansion

it is a snowy day out there today and beyond shoveling, checking snow depth in the beds, and maybe photographing stumpy there won't be much going on out there...things have moved along indoors however...

a garlic bulb in the kitchen is either way ahead of schedule or knows something about spring i do not...

it was intended mostly for culinary purposed but i scarpered off with the clove that was farthest along...

refilled the peat pot i removed the spud from yesterday and planted him under the lights...and how is the spud?

doing fine...no signs of root shock...green..robust...and there is a new kid in town to get to know...and the season i had hoped to keep somewhat simple just got that much more complex.