the penultimate day of february...

it is warmer...

so while the onions are still green...

and more berry plants are escaping the snow...

there are other lines of evidnece pointing to a nascent spring out there...these clusters of buds...

will become these in a month or so...

and these...

are determined to become these...

still...april is a crafty month...cold hardy only until mid-may...we wait on the aspragus and the "in my own sweet time" mooseberry.

a short tramp around the yard

short mostly...

because, even though the thermometer array agrees it is "unseasonably warm", there isn't that much going on...and the "locally heavy rain" forecast for tonight followed by " 3"-7" of snow" tomorrow probably won't liven things up much...not that things are at a complete standstill...

there is green in the garlic patch...

and hardy berries in the beds...

and in the bed of my truck...

walking onions have walked all over the yard...

winter rye is finding daylight...

along with, due to the vagaries of snowmelt, a singular blade of winter wheat...all of it will be undercover again tomorrow if the forecast is even remotely correct...we'll see...

and in the basement the spuds are more viny than upright ( which is the way of wild potatoes...more vine than anything )...and the rye is "leggy"...it is all still green however...the rest is secondary down there.

seedy day

altogether this past season...

i harvested 2806 ( by my count...call it approximate ) teosinte seeds from twenty odd plants in my yard ( the plants elsewhere were a failure for one reason or another )...

i set aside 150 i plan to use in two ways...some i will direct sow...something i tried this past season with positive results and so feel that it is worth repeating...and some i will soak in hydrogenperoxide and germinate before planting ( i can guarantee none will go into the campus garden...only garden variety plants there in perpetuity ) in a couple of places i have in mind...

i will be planting some of these seeds from cob-like structures that came out of some ears last autumn as well....just to see what might come up, if anything...i will be sowing maize along with the tesointe this season...again just to see if anything transpires between the ancestor/descendant...

teosinte in winter

much like last year, february has brought significant snowfall...

and the teosinte ears i did not harvest have long since shattered leaving empty husks...

while the termometers do not agree exactly they concur it is warmer here than it has been lately...

the snow on the bee house is melting...four hundred cocoons coming in june...should be ready by then...

the rye and wheat beds now have ample snow cover...spring will tell if it came in time for the wheat...the rye, i believe, will be fine...

down in the basement the spuds are looking verdant...

and as dificult as it may be to discern from this photo, there are multiple rye plants with third leaves...everything down there is "leggy"...expending energy in trying to reach the light...one suspects, as usual in this unnatural environment, little forthcoming in the way of production of anything beyond as much height as they can possibly generate...

and that's a wooden duck in the kitchen...it's february...things are slow.

slow event time at the south end of the inland sea

i have not been to the campus garden since early november so, since i had the time, i took a drive over there this morning just to look around...

things seem reasonably quiet there today...

it looks as if the fabric coveing the asparagus bed is holding up...however last night's lake efect snows have obscured things to the point that verificartion is mostly a guess...

the alfalfa in my bed is being its unruly self and would seem, with the aid of the weight of the snow, to have broken free of the twine...that will need to be cut back and corralled again in the spring...

there is still carolina horse nettle in evidence...

and it clearly intends to use both seed and rhyzomes to continue its colonization efforts...stubborn plant...

it snowed in my back yard as well...

which has provided the winter wheat with a modicum of cover...

even if some of the plants look less than happy about the amount...

the rye seems more content with events...

down in the basement there are some robust looking spuds under the lights...my expectations for production are minimal...however they at least have an opportunity...

the cohabiting rye is looking a might "leggy" and much of it has fallen over...most of the plants have developed second leaves though and so they are progressing...again i expect little to nothing in the way of ears...still we wil give them a chance...it is quiet here these days...goes with the season and a deliberate curtailment of basement growth...more as it comes up.