Just plants
Apr. 22nd, 2026 04:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
greenstormIt's hot out! Still frosty nights but probably over 20C during the days. Solly lays down every time we go through shade on her walks, and really is only enthusiastic on the morning and evening ones.
I tried taking off her cone today. Fingers crossed for us all. She's a licker, but she was busy cleaning her front paws, and I'm hoping this will let her get at her bones and toys better. Besides, she was flexible enough to be able to reach and lick her wound with the cone on these last few days, I guess her leg is feeling flexible again.
I got the tiller working. It required siphoning out the old gas and putting in new. You're supposed to run the seasonal devices dry before storing them but I can never bring myself to do so. Maybe I should put the snowblower away and give it a try, anyhow.
The upper field is dry, the back field is a little squishy still but the puddles are gone. It's fascinating to use crocuses as microclimating tools. Places I'd think would be warmer, like a west slope, end up not being because of a couple degrees of angle in the wrong direction or a brief string of shade that I wouldn't expect to last long enough to have that impact.
All my apples in the main orchard are nicely woodchip mulched from last fall. I put in daffodils but the woodchip mulch is a ridiculous insulator: anything under it is still frozen, including any hose that runs under woodchips. The only exception is my perennial beds, which were layered woodchips and compost and maybe are just warm from compost still, or maybe the raised edge is south-facing enough to counter it?
About half of my scionwood has arrived. I'm going to try grafting one of everything on the wild saskatoons and one of everything on siberian crabapple rootstock: you can get two grafts out of a stick, usually.
I replanted some of the basketry willows along the ephemeral creek, some had grown up but geese had eaten others. The geese are excluded from the area currently, though it's occupied by a half-dozen muscovies who can fly around causing trouble.
The favas soaked last night, so I'm hoping to get them in the ground today. I should interplant them with spinach or radishes, something short. I had also considered alternating rows with a grain, wheat or the barley. I'll see what I do, I guess. They'll need watering whatever I do; we haven't had rain really, though that most recent snow was a lot of moisture for snow.
The first wildfire started in the area, though no one is worried about it. It did make it to 3ha, when usually they get caught below 1ha.
I'm mostly not heating the house anymore. Until the leaves come on the deciduous trees it's greenhousing when the sun swings around to the west. The point of sunset is moving really fast right now, but that's around 4pm at the moment. The temperature inside shoots up to 30C or so, I open the windows, then close them on the way down. By the next day midmorning the house is down to 18 but then it started to warm again, slowly then quickly. The basement has a tiny bit of heat going into it but that's mostly from the growlights down there.
The thermostat down there still doesn't work in spring, though it works in fall. I'm sure it has to do with the way the air flows through the area but it's deeply annoying. If it did work, I could keep downstairs at 20 and not have such extreme fluctuations, but it just doesn't turn the baseboards off when things heat up. Problem for another time.
Anyhow, gardens are good.
I tried taking off her cone today. Fingers crossed for us all. She's a licker, but she was busy cleaning her front paws, and I'm hoping this will let her get at her bones and toys better. Besides, she was flexible enough to be able to reach and lick her wound with the cone on these last few days, I guess her leg is feeling flexible again.
I got the tiller working. It required siphoning out the old gas and putting in new. You're supposed to run the seasonal devices dry before storing them but I can never bring myself to do so. Maybe I should put the snowblower away and give it a try, anyhow.
The upper field is dry, the back field is a little squishy still but the puddles are gone. It's fascinating to use crocuses as microclimating tools. Places I'd think would be warmer, like a west slope, end up not being because of a couple degrees of angle in the wrong direction or a brief string of shade that I wouldn't expect to last long enough to have that impact.
All my apples in the main orchard are nicely woodchip mulched from last fall. I put in daffodils but the woodchip mulch is a ridiculous insulator: anything under it is still frozen, including any hose that runs under woodchips. The only exception is my perennial beds, which were layered woodchips and compost and maybe are just warm from compost still, or maybe the raised edge is south-facing enough to counter it?
About half of my scionwood has arrived. I'm going to try grafting one of everything on the wild saskatoons and one of everything on siberian crabapple rootstock: you can get two grafts out of a stick, usually.
I replanted some of the basketry willows along the ephemeral creek, some had grown up but geese had eaten others. The geese are excluded from the area currently, though it's occupied by a half-dozen muscovies who can fly around causing trouble.
The favas soaked last night, so I'm hoping to get them in the ground today. I should interplant them with spinach or radishes, something short. I had also considered alternating rows with a grain, wheat or the barley. I'll see what I do, I guess. They'll need watering whatever I do; we haven't had rain really, though that most recent snow was a lot of moisture for snow.
The first wildfire started in the area, though no one is worried about it. It did make it to 3ha, when usually they get caught below 1ha.
I'm mostly not heating the house anymore. Until the leaves come on the deciduous trees it's greenhousing when the sun swings around to the west. The point of sunset is moving really fast right now, but that's around 4pm at the moment. The temperature inside shoots up to 30C or so, I open the windows, then close them on the way down. By the next day midmorning the house is down to 18 but then it started to warm again, slowly then quickly. The basement has a tiny bit of heat going into it but that's mostly from the growlights down there.
The thermostat down there still doesn't work in spring, though it works in fall. I'm sure it has to do with the way the air flows through the area but it's deeply annoying. If it did work, I could keep downstairs at 20 and not have such extreme fluctuations, but it just doesn't turn the baseboards off when things heat up. Problem for another time.
Anyhow, gardens are good.
