mother's day out back

with seventeen trees in my back yard and five in the front areas of full sun are at a premium and confined to the south side of the yard and house...since part of that is a driveway i have taken to growing what needs full sun in containers...

so i purchased a couple of twenty gallon totes, which were cheap since they did not have lids...shipping and/or ordering error one supposes...drilled drainage holes in the bottoms and covered them with a thin layer of garden soil...

i had cut some red nordland seed potatoes yesterday to allow them to callous...i put them in one container and covered them with more garden soil...

i did the same with some russian banana fingerling potatoes which i did not cut and callous...

and i gave them a shot of water with marigold's help...i will move them into the sun and as they break surface bury them again until they reach the top of the containers...and we will see how well this works ( or not )...

elsewhere around the yard, mason bees are just waking up and getting to work...so far they have filled seventy-five tbes in two bee houses with larvae...the next generation is well under way...

the asparagus continues to produce new spears which i am harvesting although i have left a few to "fern" early to feed the roots...

the ramps on the north side of the house are doing well...hoping for bunching and for flowers both...

the mooseberry bush ( aka high bush cranberry for those of you berift of the bullwinkle j. mooose reference ) is blooming...

the strawberries are blooming as well and beginning to bear fruit...

a dense stand of jerusalem artichokes in one corner of a bed will need close monitoring or they will take over...

the first chinese yam vine of the year has popped up...there will be more...another colonizer...

and, finally, the potato that had been under the lights in the basement has been outside for going on a week...it has clearly shocked and is expressing its ambivalence about the environment it finds itself in...i can relate...more as it comes up.

four fifths

it's four fifths of the way through april and the temperature has dropped off from the upper seventies ( fahrenheit ) into the upper sixties which hasn't put much of a damper on things around the yard...

thirty-seven ramps have made an appearance under the critter net on the north side of the house...something ( one? ) was making off with them last season so i covered them to see what would transpire...

the mooseberry bush ( high bush cranberry for those of you who grew up berift of rocky and bullwinkle ) is leafing out nicely and visiting with his daffodil neighbors...

the relentless colonizers known as jerusalem artichokes have popped up...i found them on april twelfth last year so either they or i am running later than last season although in the past they did not appear until early may so it may still be called an early appearnace...

the asparagus is doing well ( remind me to take a jaunt out to campus this weekend to see what is going on there ) and i have already harvested some...

the ever bearing...

and wild strawberries are blooming...and, holding to the pattern, they have been discovered later than last year when the were both out on april twelfth...someone is tardy...difficult to know whom...

and becuse the berries, as well as a host of other spring flowers lincluding the daffodils, tulips, and violets are blooming the bee houses are alive with mason bees working on moving their dna along to a new generation which, to steal a line from old sam pepys, "pleases me mightily"...spuds, maize, and teosinte coming up in may.

mid april

tax day and the asparagus is starting to come up in strength out in the east bed, with expectation of more to come...

this past weekend i noticed some of the ramps had come up through the leaf mulch so today i opened it and weeded...i had some still viable in the bed from a few years ago and i planted more last autumn so i am looking for a good crop this year, hopefully with some bunching so it can become self-sustaining...a few flowers and som seed wouldn't hurt either...

it is a mostly cloudy and cooler day today with the sunn popping out at intervals so the mason bees are a bit more sluggish than they were a few days ago...they're still out there however and the daffodils, russian olives, violets, and dandelions are still out there as well...feeding, collecting pollen balls, mining soil, and nesting continue.

mason bees

it is a sunny saturday here with temperatures near sixty degrees ( fahrenheit )...flowers are blooming and today i have seen spring bees taking advantage of the opportunity to begin moving their dna to a new generation...

they are fast and somewhat skittish...i do believe that simply my presence disturbs them...and having marigold nosing around pondering what one might taste like doesn't help getting a decent photo ( actually marigold is part of the reason there are mason bees around...as the name implies the bees use clayey soil in their nesting process and marigold, being the terrier she is, opens up a trench in the back yard with little real effort providing ample nesting material )...

the bees are certainly interested in the daffodils and i have noticed them on the crocuses as well...spring has arrived in a number of ways...

aside from the blooms they are showing marked interest in the bee houses around the yard as well...there is an ample supply of them for the mason bees and for the leaf cutters i hope to see later in the summer...so there should be some photos of nesting as spring progresses...we will keep an eye out for those.