It's A Snow Day

It should be time to start thinking about getting outside, getting my hands in the dirt once again. The first daffodils are blooming, as is the apricot tree. But after a mild and dry winter, March has decided to show its lion side and has dumped an inch of wet, sloppy snow on us this morning. I really can't complain. We need the precipitation - plus it saves me having to get the hoses out to water the trees. It should all be gone by tomorrow, anyway. So for today, I'll sit inside by the fire and watch the birds outside my windows.

A flicker eating snow on the deck railing.

 

Goldfinches waiting their turn on the sock feeder.

A black-capped chickadee, feathers puffed up against the cold.

And the first robin of Spring, wondering how much longer he'll have to wait.
Me too.

Wanna See a Bushy-Tailed Woodrat?

This is a bushy-tailed woodrat, minus half his tail. We found that a few days ago, stuck to a glue trap in the cellar (he'd chewed off his own tail to escape).

And this is what he's been doing to the fruit in my cellar:


You can read more about my vermin dilemma on my post on the Simple Green Frugal Co-op blog.

Bobcat Prevention - Quick Chicken Pergola

A couple of months ago, we lost one of our chickens. And the bobcat sightings have since still been occurring from time to time around our neighborhood. Sometimes it's just a lone adult, but also a half-grown young one is around too. Since the female had to get pregnant somehow, it's probably safe to say there are now at least three in the area.

Yesterday afternoon, I was out working in the yard when a neighbor driving by stopped to talk. The day before, they'd come home to complete carnage inside their chicken coop. They have cameras on the outside of their house, and when they ran the film back to around noon, they could see an adult bobcat bounding across the yard and jumping the 6-foot chicken pen fence easily. After swatting down a couple of the chickens in the yard, it then followed where the rest had fled into the coop, killing 20 of their 25 birds.

Yesterday evening, Aries was out in front of our house when he heard and saw a couple of magpies raising a ruckus coming down our street. They were diving and squawking at an adult bobcat as it walked down the middle of the road. When it came even with the front of our house, he tossed a couple of rocks at it. It headed up the hill into the sagebrush, magpies still squawking and diving overhead.

When Aries got home from work today, the magpies were squawking in the neighbors' tree. He walked down to check, then came back to get me and the camera. The young bobcat was sitting up there IN the magpies' nest, ignoring the squawking magpies hopping about overhead, calmly looking down at us. Momma was probably somewhere nearby.

Our neighbor called the Sheriff's Office, asking if there was anything they could do. Dispatch told her it was a holiday weekend; they had neither time nor personnel to deal with a bobcat up a tree. Neighbor called the state Division of Wildlife and they too would do nothing. Furthermore, neither could she. Despite the livestock predation, if she wanted to shoot or trap a bobcat, she'd first need to apply for a permit, 'else face poaching charges.

We left the cat up the tree and walked home. After hearing about how easily bobcats can jump 6-foot fences, that they're active even during mid-day, and that they'll kill for sport instead of just hunger, Aries decided maybe putting a top on our chicken pen might be a good idea. We still had about 3 hours of daylight, lots of wood in the scrap pile, and bits and pieces of wire fencing. It was kind of like erecting a makeshift pergola over the top of the pen. We had some really long 2x4's salvaged from when we re-built the deck a couple of years ago. Using a 1½" drill bit, Aries cut holes in the ends of some of those to fit on top of the t-posts on either side of the pen. More long pieces were then laid crossways over the top of those, with an upright center post for extra support.

The bits and pieces of wire were then patchworked over that. Lastly, we tied everything together on top and to the sides. Amazingly, we were finished by sunset. It's not pretty. Some of the boards we used were really weathered and some were warped and twisted. We'll probably have to re-work everything later on in the year to make sure it's strong enough to withstand the weight of next winter's snows. The guineas and our four half-feral chickens aren't going to like not being able to fly out, either. But I feel a bit better knowing our flock is perhaps a bit safer.

Ants Love Electricity?

I've heard ants are attracted to electricity, but never seen any evidence until today. I started my tender vegetable seedlings inside my spare room a couple of months ago. Once they had germinated, I set them up under lights plugged into a timer. Today, I moved the plants outside for a bit, hardening them off in preparation for setting out after Memorial Day.

Since the lights were no longer needed, I started breaking everything down to store for another year. When I unplugged the timer from the wall plug, tiny little piss-ants came just pouring out of it. I ran to get that timer outside, ants swarming over my hand (and biting, too! nasty little creatures!). I set it out in the middle of the yard on an upturned bucket, and went back in to take a second look at the outlet. There were a few ants wandering around the plug, but it looked like the majority of them had been inside the timer. When Aries got home from work, he took the outlet faceplate off and pulled the outlets out of the junction box a bit (he's a facilities engineer at work, so knows about safely working around electricity).

That wall is an outside cinder block wall, so there are hollow spaces inside, built on a cement slab floor. Checking with a flashlight, he could see some more ants at the back of the box, using the wiring for a highway, probably coming up inside the wall from the dirt outside through a crack in the mortar. We vacuumed up all we could see (but they didn't seem to have come inside beyond the plug and the timer connected to it), and then he sprinkled a bit of boric acid inside the box. He left everything apart so we can check it again tomorrow.

Outside, the timer rattled inside when I shook it, and the ants still kept pouring out. Knocking it against my hand over the white bottom of the bucket, I shook out a bunch of pale little ant eggs. They'd turned that timer into a nursery! I shook it and rapped it until it seems like it's empty, but it's going to stay outside for a while anyway. Yuck! I'm just amazed that the timer kept turning - it kept perfect time. (Note: Aries took the timer apart and cleaned it out completely - now I can put it away without getting the shudders.)

Uh Oh, Who's Missing?

There were feathers wafting about in front of the house today - not a good sign. I did a chicken roll call and Flopsy, one of our Buff Orpingtons, was missing. Further investigation turned up a half-eaten chicken carcass over in the neighbor's yard. From the evidence, the most likely suspect is the bobcat that's been seen here and there around the neighborhood lately. Darn! From the looks of our egg take today, it appears she was the one laying the really big round egg (bottom left, below) each day, too.

We usually let the chickens have the run of the whole yard during the winter. They're my organic, integrated pest control patrol. They're pretty good about staying within the fence, for the most part, but I had noticed a couple them were venturing outside the fence more and more often lately. It looks like it's time to confine them to their pen. It was about time to do so anyway - once the growing season sets in, their incessant scratching and dust bathing gets too destructive. They never like it, but now, it's for their own protection too.

I think I might have to start keeping my camera close by, especially the couple of hours just after sunrise and just before sunset. I'd love to get a photo of that cat. I just hope he stays outside the fence.

Deer Defense

We've caught sight of our deer visitor a few times now. I first saw him when I went out to shut up the chicken coop, just before full-on dark. It's a lone 2-point buck, maybe a couple hundred pounds. He was in the garden, but hopped over the fence and headed towards the fruit trees when I came out the back door. I called to Aries, and we both watched as he went over our lot fence to the west, across the road, over our neighbors' fence, and then headed up the canyon. A couple of nights later, I caught him out there again, same time, same place. Aries has also seen him a couple more times just before sunrise.

We might as well just hang out a "good eats" sign - he's not going to be easily scared away. The scent of the dog didn't faze him, nor did the wire I laid down where the tracks showed he'd been hopping the fence. He just went around to another spot. The mirrors hanging in the corn patch, to keep the sparrows from perching on the top tassels and breaking them, might have kept him away from the unripe corn, but I don't think so - he munched the bean blossoms close by, and was probably just biding his time until the corn was ripe. When I put a wire cage over the chomped carrot and beet tops, he ate the onion tops. The choi and chard were pruned to just clumps of stems. He reached down inside the cages to eat the leaves off the pepper plants, and spit out the peppers. Only stumps were left of the lettuce I'd let bolt for next year's seed.

I researched deer deterrents. Irish Spring soap was listed, or predator urine products, or sprinkling blood meal around the plants. But it also said deer get used to scent-based deterrents, so you have to keep changing every few days. The only sure-fire preventative was a fence, a tall fence - mule deer can jump 10 feet.

So, we set to work increasing the height of our garden fence. We had a bunch of rebar out in the scrap pile. We slid pieces of that down inside the t-bar fencepost clips. Then added the old chicken wire, salvaged from the garden fence we replaced earlier this year. Then, to make the fence look even taller, I strung surveyors' tape around the tippy-tops of the rebar. Aries says, from the street, it looks like we put in a tennis court. But so far, so good. No tracks, no droppings, no more damage. If the first freeze holds off for another month or two, most of the plants might recover enough that we'll get a bit of a harvest after all.

With the garden out of reach, he's started eating the leaves on the grape vines and fruit trees. We had such a cold spring that there's no fruit this year, but that might be a blessing in disguise. The trees are big enough that I don't think he'll do much damage, and once the leaves fall, maybe he'll move on. I just hope he doesn't decide to bring the wife and kids.

Trouble in the Garden

They say a garden is always greenest in January - in your imagination, while paging through those beautiful garden catalogs. The reality though, in August, can often be quite different. And so it is here.

As always, I had such high hopes for this year's garden. The new fence was doing its job - no ground squirrels or bunnies had munched anything. Reconfiguring the chicken coop and pen worked too - no guineas flying from the top of the gate into the garden for snacks; no chickens flying in either, scratching up the dirt. Three of the newly aligned garden beds were in place; the rest to be done this fall.

Despite a long and cool start to summer this year, things were starting to look really good when I left for a week in Colorado. Aries stayed home, so I knew he'd keep up with the soaker hose schedule. But, upon my return, just walking up to the gate I could tell the garden didn't look even as lush as when I left.

I'd deadheaded the calendulas, but there were no new flowers to greet me. The bean trellis, almost completely covered with leaves, with flowers just about to open, was now just a few bare vines twisting upwards. The summer greens - chard, kale and choi - looked like they'd been severely clipped back. Aries doesn't eat salads. What was going on?

Bunnies, or birds, couldn't have done all this. Everything still looked green - I knew Aries hadn't skipped watering. What had happened to my garden? Wait! What was that dark pile over there, in the middle of a side path? Certainly too big and too many to be rabbit droppings.

There's another pile over there, and another. Oh look, are those tracks in the dust? Arrggh! These are deer tracks! Oh, no!

I did see deer up on the hillside above us, last winter. Even then, I remarked that it was rare for them to be down this low. In the summer heat, they stay up even higher. I've never had to deal with deer in the summer, in the garden! This is gonna get ugly.

It's Always Something

I spoke too soon, bragging about being able to grow such beautiful tulips earlier this Spring. About a week ago, I noticed some dirt thrown up on the edging of the herb & flower garden. I thought maybe the cat or one of the chickens had been in there scratching about, and just swept the dirt back. Not long ago, one of the fence-flying chickens had started laying eggs just inside the little picket fence. I'd put a golf ball in her nest so she'd keep using it, so I could gather those eggs without having to look for them.

Then, a couple of days later, when I looked for eggs, the golf ball was gone. Upon closer examination, I found that it had fallen down into a hole dug out where a tulip bulb used to be. Uh-oh, not a good sign. Checking around beneath the flourishing oregano, wildflowers, and hollyhocks, I found only more potholes, wilting strips of tulip foliage, and gnawed pieces of the very bottom bits of bulbs. The daffodils, I think, are still there, but some squirrel found the tulips and appeared to be starting on the grape hyacinths next. Damn!

So I set the box trap in that garden, and have caught two fat squirrels over the past few days. I took them for a little ride to the south, over to a willow and cottonwood thicket across the creek, far from any other houses but with plenty of grasses and shrubs. There's cover from coyotes, and I hope the running water will prevent them from trying to head back over here.

Yesterday evening, when I was down by the chicken coop to let them out for a little walkabout before dark, I noticed one of the Rhode Island Reds huddled down next to the shade shed. When I went over to see if she was ok, I noticed she had a quarter-sized gouge ripped out of her back, just above her tail, and when she got up she balanced on only on one leg. I don't know what attacked her - the gouge looks more like something took a bite out of her than being pecked by the guinea or trod by the rooster. There was a hawk circling over the pen yesterday morning, and there are owls nesting in the trees across the street. It doesn't look like anything has dug under the coop, and everyone else seems to be ok.

I made sure she got some food and water, and by nightfall she was inside the coop, inside one of the nest boxes. We left her there for the night. Earlier today, she was outside with the rest of flock, so she is still managing to get around. Worried that the other birds might pick on that open sore, or bully her away from the food and water, we moved her up to the dog run this evening. She ate, and then settled down for the night inside the little brood shed. She's still gimpy, but maybe a couple of days on her own will allow her to recover.

March Comes In Like A . . .

Well, it's not really a lion this year. The snow has momentarily given way to rain: drippy days, freezing nights, icy mornings. But I'm sure the snow isn't done with us yet either. After all, this is northern Nevada: just wait a few minutes, and things will change.

Yesterday, outside one kitchen window, a quail stands watch on the deck railing as his covey sneaks through the fence, heading for the spilled seeds under the bird feeder.

Out in the garden, I hope the doubled-up wire fencing will be enough to protect newly emerging seedlings of my fall-seeded spinach and arugula from hungry little beaks. One plan this year is to reconfigure my garden layout this Spring to make the garden beds easier to cover. The city is sprawling our direction. As developers bulldoze the sagebrush, the birds and animals are on the move - looking for new homes and food. Our lot must look like a green oasis, flashing signs saying, "Good Eats Here". I try to make sure they get only their share.

A bright spot in the gloomy weather are the yellow crocus outside my living room window. Closed up tight when it rains or snows on them, as soon as a ray of sun breaks through the clouds they open right up. This wire cover is chicken-proofing. Three of the hens got into this garden and had a field day. Once the girls find something of interest, they get downright obsessive about it. Merely running out there every half hour, flapping my apron or waving a broom isn't gonna keep them away. Time to go find more wire. So, now, they're lined up outside the little picket fence, cocking their heads from side to side, beady little eyes checking out all the wire. This garden is safe for the moment.

March is certainly no lamb this year either. Rain here is snow just a few hundred feet higher up the hill, and snow is still in our forecast this week. This morning, looking out the other kitchen window, a couple of white moving patches caught my eye (hard to see, center of above photo). I recognise what it is immediately, but it surprises me.

It's the rump patches of five mule deer. I'd seen fresh tracks walking with the dog up the canyon, but we rarely see deer down this low. Two things cross my mind: one, I hope they're not hungry enough to jump our fence - maybe the dog will deter them; two, if you see deer, there may be cougars. You probably won't see them, but they are around. For my walks up the canyon, I think I'll be using my sharp-tipped hiking poles for a while now. March came in like alert? alarm? Just no lions, ok?

Foster's Bighorn

Rio Vista is a little town in the Sacramento River Delta. Midway between Sacramento and San Francisco, halfway between I-80 and I-5, it's a place you'd come across only if you were exploring the secondary roads in this inland delta area. Rarely, the town makes the news when a wayward humpback whale happens to stray miles from the sea, upriver. Rescuers gather there to guide the whale back to safety. There's a monument to Humphrey down by the river's edge.

Rio Vista has another strange little attraction however - one not as readily noticed. On Main Street downtown is a little storefront saloon - its facade of glass bricks only about 20' across. Inside, the bar stretches the length of the long narrow room with high ceiling - room only for a row of bar stools and space to walk behind them. At the back, the room widens out a bit into a small dining room. But it's not the dark, claustrophobic room that has us standing, transfixed, open-mouthed, when we enter. It's the decor.

Bill Frates started out as a bootlegger in San Francisco. In 1931, after Prohibition ended, he moved to Rio Vista, changed his last name to Foster, bought a bar and cafe, and went into the legitimate liquor business. Running the bar provided enough money for him to pursue an expensive hobby. Bill Foster was a trophy hunter.

We take a seat at the bar, and order a round of drinks - a fair enough "price of admission" allowing us plenty of time to gawk at his collection on display. Up high behind us is a row of taxidermied heads of the world's ungulates - deer, elk, sheep, antelope. Underneath those are closely arranged framed black and white photographs encircling the windows - the hunter posing with various carcasses, a slip of white paper with typewritten caption accompanying each picture.

My sister and I check out the dining room in the back. The sights there are even more amazing, or maybe appalling would be a better word in today's sensibilities. We trade off photographing each other. At 5'6", I'm dwarfed standing under the head of an African elephant, mounted with ears and trunk fully extended. Even more fascinating, to me, is a wall plaque bearing the head of a giraffe on the other side. Still open-mouthed, below, my sister stands with her back to the bar area.

Back on my seat at the bar, I strike up a conversation with a local gentleman sitting next to me. He tells me his favorite thing in the place is the photo hung where the bar curves to meet the wall in the front of the room. I get up to check it out, leaning in to read the caption and studying the photo. I can't help thinking about The Thornbirds.

In the novel by Colleen McCullough, there is a gripping scene that always stuck with me. After a wildfire burns through the family ranch and the father, caught out in it, doesn't return, his sons set out to find him. One son, after finding his father's body, startles a wild boar in the brush. He gets off a shot as the animal charges, killing it, but in its momentum it falls on the son, killing him as well. In the photo before me (left, center, here. Check out the video link too, but first read to the end of my post), on the left side are the remains of a hunter - only a skeleton, leather boots, and his gun are left. At his head, on the right side, are the bones and rack of a bull moose. A hunter's nightmare, only this time, it wasn't fiction.

As I finish my drink, I gaze at the animals mounted in realistic poses behind the bar. A rather strange one, above the cash register, catches my eye. A small, burrowing-type owl peers out from what looks like a hollow of a tree. But I've never seen tree bark that looks like that - it looks like the gray, wrinkled skin of an elephant. Oh, no - he didn't! Did he? I've seen the carnage left after a skunk killed some of our ducks, then feasted on the tenderest parts. Could this really be a true-to-life depiction of an opportunistic little scavenging carnivore? The gentleman next to me confirms my suspicions, earnestly telling me it's something the management doesn't really advertise.

Ok, I've been a bartender. I've heard my regular customers telling tall tales to gullible tourists. It's a very common barroom occurrence. But I believe him. If you're ever in the area, check the place out (or click on through to the video on the Foster's Bighorn website, linked to above. Stop the video at 1:21 to see what I'm talking about, there, just left of center frame). Tell me what you think. Tree, gray mud, or is it elephant?

Keeping Busy

When I get a nice day, I try to get outside to work a while in the yard. Aries dug the last of our finished compost into half of one garden bed for me a couple of days ago. So I planted my garlic and shallots for next year, along with a few spinach and arugula seeds. I got the grass and weeds pulled out of the strawberry bed, thinning out some of the runners in the process, and then mulched them with straw for the winter.

The chickens are let out of their pen each day now, on pest patrol, but a couple of them have been flying over the garden fence. So when I finish up with something in the garden, I have to cover it with wire or they'll dig it up again. Every once in a while, I'll hear them all start squawking and really raising a ruckus outside. That usually means the hawk is back. This morning, he posed on the deck railing long enough for me to snap a photo through the kitchen window. I don't think he's big enough to take one of the chickens, but he sure makes everybody nervous when he's hanging around. They huddle under the lilacs, the picnic table, and the deck steps. I hope he's just looking for the mice and sparrows that come after the chicken feed.

When the weather is too windy, cold, or wet, I keep busy indoors. All of the peppers and chiles have been processed for the year - the chipotles done and packed away, the bells chopped into pieces and frozen, the habaneros made into a batch of hot sauce. Reliance red seedless grapes are supposed to hold for a few months in storage, and mine have. I just got the of them I'd stashed in the cellar cleaned and into the dehydrator.

It was my turn to post on the SGF Co-op blog today. I've been trying to make a few pillowcase aprons for National Tie One On Day, November 25th. I took photos while making this one, and posted a tutorial. Made from a thrifted pillowcase in an hour or two, it's a great project even for beginning sewers. Need an apron before Thanksgiving gets here? Check it out!

Save Some Cherries for Me!

Frost nailed the blossoms on our sweet cherry tree this Spring, so no black cherries for us this year. We have a standard-size self-pollinating one. It's 25 years old, and I think it's called a Garden Bing Cherry. The aphids go really go for this tree though, at least until they die off in the summer heat. I've looked occasionally at other sweet cherry trees, but any Bings I've seen are either extra-dwarf or need a pollinator. I might have to try a Sweetheart Cherry - they're supposed to be a really late bloomer and self-fruitful as well. Anyone have any experience with them - especially in zone 5-6?

I also have a Montmorency pie cherry tree, and this year's crop is looking pretty good. They're just starting to color up - it'll be time to start picking in a few more days. So I needed to get the bird-scare tape out there. If you get the tape on the tree too early, the birds get used to it; too late and they'll clean-pick the tree just before the cherries get ripe (notice in the bottom photo: the earliest-ripening cherries, in the top of the tree getting the most sun, are already almost gone). Scare tape is a flexible shiny 1" wide tape; some red on one side and silver on the other, this particular roll is silver with holographic angles that flash different colors in the sun (beware: 8-year old neighbor girls find it fascinating - they'll be asking to steal the tape right off your tree).

I headed out to the tree with the tape and some scissors. The birds have started on the upper-most cherries - only bare pits left clinging to the branches. But I find it a bit odd that the ground underneath the tree is also littered with pits - birds don't usually drop the pits. Cutting long strips to flap and flash in the sun, I tie one end (with a loose overhand knot - I reuse the tape all summer, moving the pieces to other trees as their fruit ripens) to outside branches all around the tree. Then I duck under the branches, adding a few more strips hanging down the inside. I step back to see if there are any glaring tape-free sections. And am a bit startled to notice a ground squirrel, high up, clinging to a thin top branch, holding perfectly still. I've been out there at least 20 minutes - I can't believe he's been swaying over my head all this time.

He was still holding so still - not even blinking. I got a stick and reached up to tap him to make sure he was still alive. That was enough to scare him down out of there and off into the brush. I don't mind sharing my harvest - the birds will get the cherries above where the scare tape is, and there should be enough this year to put out the "free u-pick" sign for the neighbors too. But I've found that once ground squirrels (not cute fluffy-tailed tree squirrels - these are more like rats with scruffy tails) get a taste of something, they won't share with me. So I put the little plastic owl in the lowest crotch of the tree, hung a few mirrors on the bigger branches, and got out the box trap - time for greedy squirrels to go bye-bye (and since yesterday, I've "relocated" three to over by the creek away from any other houses - plenty of cover, natural food and water). Oh boy, cherry time! Dried (my favorite!), pie, flavored vinegar, and maybe even enough to try making some hard cherry cider?

No More House Lizards!

The cat brought in another live lizard a couple of days ago. I heard him mumbly-meowing in the living room, went to see what was the matter, and was just in time to see him spit out the lizard and away it went.

I saw it once yesterday, running across the living room; and then could hear some scuffling behind my desk last night while at my computer. Then, this morning when I sat down and reached over to turn on the computer, the lizard was looking at me from atop the computer tower. Ack! I startled and so did he - he ran over the top of the computer and back down behind it. I could peer over the top and see him back down there amid the cords and dust bunnies, but had no way to reach him. Later, this afternoon, I saw him a couple more times up on the guest bed but wasn't fast enough to trap him (too nervous to pick him up bare-handed - I flinch and he's gone again). But with persistence (buoyed by the fear that a lizard is going to run across my face in my sleep), I managed to turn the coffee can I keep on my sewing machine as a scrap catcher into a lizard catcher - trapping him atop the pillows, slipping a magazine underneath, and gently transporting him out the front door. No more live cat toys in the house! Do you hear me, Albert?

Lizard's Alive

I'd just hung the big laundry items out on the clothesline, and came back in to get the little collapsible rack to set out on the patio for the socks and underwear. Albert, the cat, met me at the bathroom door with a mouthful of lizard (see last paragraph of April 27th post). He promptly spit it out, but this time I was faster. I scooped up the lizard and took him back outside (the cat is still looking for it in the bathroom). Most of our lizards are a dull dark color, but this one was quite pretty, light and dark grey with some almost iridescent turquoise scales on his back (and with his tail still intact). Let's hope he's learned to stay away from the cat!

In Pursuit of Peas

I garden in a pretty harsh climate - it can freeze any time until early June, and then the daytime temperatures can be up in the 90's overnight. Nights cool down to the 40's so using mulch too early in the season cools the soil too much for effective germination of many seeds. We average only seven inches of precipitation annually, and most of that in the form of snow November to March. Most years, we have no rain at all from May through September so everything has to be artificially irrigated. Afternoon winds and hot daytime temperatures make spray watering wasteful, so I use 50' soaker hoses on my wide garden beds.

The land also slopes downward towards the east so instead of long rows, I've free-form shaped each bed into a flattened "S" shape to create a terraced effect on the slope, and arranged the four "S" shapes of the main garden into a decorative four-square. With wider paths between the beds and a small central circular flowerbed with a sundial, my garden is attractive as well as productive (bottom center on the aerial photo of our lot; the grey roofed buildings are our neighbors' below us). I rotate my crops around through five beds, so don't have any permanent structures as part of any one bed. Everything gets taken apart and stored at the end of the season, and reconstructed anew each Spring. And this year, I've resorted to something different in my ongoing pursuit of peas.

Fresh-picked home-grown peas - nothing like what you buy in a store: memories of shelling English peas in the backyard as a child; flat Chinese pea pods still crunchy in a stir-fry; grazing on raw Snap peas right there in the garden. I love peas, and haven't had a decent crop for years. The past couple of years, I was able to protect the young plants with wire until they got tall enough to survive assaults by bugs and birds, but wasn't getting many peas. Finally, I caught the guineas in the act of stretching up to eat the flowers before they had time to set fruit. And then this year, sparrows or quail got under the wire to the little pea plants as soon as they emerged from the ground (they got all the lettuce seedlings too, and almost destroyed the spinach that overwintered). Desperate for some fresh green things myself, it was time to take desperate measures!

It's getting late in the season for pea planting - if I wait too long the summer heat sets in, and that's it for the pea plants. So before replanting my pea patches, I soaked the seeds overnight and then kept them wet down with paper towels a couple of days until they started to sprout, then planted the sprouted seeds (I reseeded various lettuces too). My pea support trellises are t-posts pounded into the ground and then wire fencing wired between them - strong enough to both support pea vines and withstand our afternoon winds. And then, something desperate - I draped netting, originally designed to cover an entire fruit tree, over the entire "S" shaped bed, supported by the pea t-posts plus a few more here and there, held down with rocks and bricks. I think this just might work! I can leave the netting in place, and sit underneath when it's time to harvest. As long as the wind doesn't tear it apart, or a late heavy snow rip it down, I just might get good crops of both greens and peas. The heart of a gardener is ever hopeful.

Countdown to Denver

I've had so many different things going on lately, I feel like every day is just something more to cross off my list of things I have to do. I'm planning on taking off for a week to go visit my Mom in Denver, so I'm also trying to get garden things onto automatic pilot so Aries won't have to worry about plant stuff while I'm gone.

Saturday, the Democratic Women put on our annual fundraising Spring Luncheon and Fashion Show . In previous years I've been one of the models, but the past couple of years we've had local celebrities as models instead, so I was part of the raffle prize committee (which involves begging prize donations from local businesses). Sunday I spent in Reno at the Soroptimist Region Conference, with a few hundred other women from 60 clubs throughout Nevada and California.

Today, Aries helped me finish getting compost spread and dug into the last of the garden beds. I dug the last of the leeks from last year, put a few into the leek nursery bed to make more leeks for subsequent years' plantings, put some down into the cellar to keep for a bit, and made potato and leek soup for dinner (with cellared Yukon Gold potatoes, still keeping nicely down there, and my last stored garlic bulb; plus One-Hour French Bread). I thinned some of the seedlings I've got under lights in the guest room, and am debating whether I want Aries to start setting some of the cole plants out to start hardening off while I'm gone or just wait until I get back to do it myself. It snowed night before last, so there's really no hurry.

This year's four new little chickens - I guess they'd be called pullets now - are fitting in with the rest of the flock and spending their nights out in the coop. They still come back up to the dog run in the evening, so I catch and carry them down to the coop each night and then they go right in. Pretty soon, the dog run will be taken over by guinea Tweedit and her clutch - she's still patiently setting on her nest in the Oregon Grape out front. I hope she waits until I'm back from Denver to bring in her babies.

And one more thing: the cat brought something in the house this afternoon. I had the doors and windows open, and could hear him meowing inside when I was outside. I went in to see what was wrong, and he was squatting down with his back to me in the living room. I thought he might be sick or something, but when I came up to see if he was ok, something (not sure if it was a mouse or a lizard - I'm thinking the latter, I haven't seen mice around here since the owl moved into the pine trees across the street) scurried away from him and under the couch. So now I'm paranoid that I'll find out what it was when I go to put on my shoes in the morning.

Good Day, Bad Birds

I spent the better part of today working a garage sale. A little over a week ago, my Soroptimist Club decided to put one together as a fundraising event. We all needed to do some Spring cleaning anyway, and one of the members had an empty rental house we could use to stage it in. So, this past week we've used her empty garage to gather all our donations and get everything priced and sorted and ready. We made $1,200 to put towards our next year's Service projects! And we have the local domestic violence shelter coming by Monday to pick up everything left for their thrift shop.

When I got home, I went out to check on the early plantings out in the garden. The peas were (notice the past tense) all just starting to come up, and it's supposed to get hot the next couple of days so I turned on the water on them for a bit. This evening, when I went out to turn off the water, NO PEAS! They were covered with 2"x3" wire, shaped into boxes a few inches above the plants - just in case one of the the chickens got into the garden, they wouldn't be able to reach the new little plants or scratch in the wet dirt. But something (I'm thinking quail), got in under the wire and ate up every little pea sprout! Arrrrggghh!! I really want fresh peas, and haven't had much of a crop the past few years. I really thought the wire would do it, but now I'm thinking I'll have to try some kind of netting. I want peas!

Longtime readers of this blog might remember I occasionally write about my concert-ushering adventures with my sister. I expanded that idea for my most-recent post over on the SGF Co-op blog - lots of ideas about free fun by finding volunteer opportunities in your community; spending time instead money. Check it out!

A Quick Update

Just a quick update before I turn everything off for Earth Hour. Nevada is notoriously slow to get on any bandwagon, but amazingly enough, it said in the paper this morning that the Capitol will go dark (and the Las Vegas Strip - that should be interesting). Carson City itself does not plan to do anything - not too surprising. Aries is resistant to turning off the television, but I think I can get him to do it again this year anyway. I have to confess, despite turning everything off in the house, we're not really cutting our electrical use down to zero. As with last year, I think we'll be out in the hot tub. It's the biggest energy-sucker in our household, but with the night temperatures below freezing I don't want to take the chance of cutting the switch on it and having it freeze up overnight. Oh well, at least it makes it easier to get Aries to turn off everything else. I guess we all have our justifications.

Missy was dead in the nest box when I went out this morning. We can't really remember how old she would have been - at least 10 - 12 years, and we think closer to 15. We buried her out in the sagebrush part of the lot.

The four baby chicks are all feathered out now, looking like half-size chickens. They spend the day out in the dog run, but with the nights still so cold I'm still bringing them into the dog crate in the living room each night. To try and get them on a daylight schedule, when I bring them in at night I've been covering their crate so they'll settle down and sleep. Maybe next week they can go outside for good.

More of my daffodils are blooming, the grape hyacinths too. There are a few more blooms on the apricot each day, but I'm not sure if they're surviving our night temps in the 20's. There were a couple of honeybees and one big black and yellow bumble bee working the blooms early this morning before the wind came up, so we might, just maybe, get apricots this year. Once the flowers get fertilized and set fruit, the fruit can take colder temperatures than the blossoms can. And I know winter isn't through with us yet.

A Lovely Day

Today was a nice day. After having weather nice enough to get the baby chicks outside for a few hours a couple of days ago, we had an overnight snowfall, yesterday a miserably cold, cold, cold wind, and then a low of 15F (-10C) last night. Today was chilly but no wind, and the sun was shining. I had planned to sit down with my garden seeds and start planning this year's garden, but decided I needed to be outside instead.

So I bundled up and went out on an inspection tour around the yard. The crocus that were flattened yesterday by the snow had perked back up and were looking lovely. There are buds starting to form on the earliest daffodils, and a few tulip leaves starting to poke up through the dirt. The buds are starting to swell on the apricot and the plums. They need to be pruned, but the nights are still too cold to start on them. The apple trees should be pruned now, but I didn't feel like tackling any of them today. But I did prune the Reliance and Himrod grapevines back to their four-arm kniffin shapes (note to self: I should write a post about taming a grapevine).

I wandered over to pick up the eggs, and had to go back up to the house for a basket. Nine eggs today! Aries got home from work, and I headed out to meet some friends for a walk. After getting some blood tests taken at his Employees' Health Center a couple of weeks ago, I'm now under doctor's orders to get more exercise and lose some weight, or face the possibility of having to go on medication sometime in the future. I don't even like taking aspirin - exercise it is! So I've been lining up exercise buddies to make sure I get out and do something.

This evening's hour-long walk was over at the Silver Saddle Ranch - a 700-acre ranch from the 1920's now part of Carson City's open space. The ranch lies east of Prison Hill, with the Carson River running along its eastern edge. We walked from the parking area outside the gate up around the ranch buildings and then on a trail along the Mexican Ditch, now part of our city trails system. At Carson River Road, we started to cross the road to continue on the ditch trail farther north, when a car stopped to tell us there was a bald eagle in the field just a bit farther east. We walked over to see - I'm so sorry I didn't have my camera along. The eagle was standing about 30 yards from the fence, a cow with a new-born calf still unsteady on its legs standing nearby. The eagles come here to feast on the afterbirth during calving season. As we walked back up the road to the trail, another car stopped to let us know about the eagle - this town is so friendly that way. Later, as we continued our walk, the eagle circled overhead, eventually disappearing to the south along Prison Hill.

Looking for Eagles

It's a grey day, and looks like it's snowing in the Sierras already. But the storms hadn't come over the mountains yet this morning, so we took a little Sunday drive to look for eagles.

As bald eagles start their spring migrations to the Pacific Northwest, many stop off here for a snack. Just over the ridge to the south, the Carson Valley is still home to quite a few cattle ranches (Carson City is in the more urbanized Eagle Valley - confusing to newcomers). The end of February is calving time at the cattle ranches. Eagles can often be seen out walking around in the cow pastures, looking for the afterbirth - evidently an eagle's idea of a tasty treat.

Some of the ranchers move their pregnant herds into pastures close to the roads, giving folks around here a better chance at spotting an eagle. Others have joined together to provide tours of their ranches and barn areas, educating the public about eagle habitat preservation in the process. We didn't spot any eagles this morning. Many cows have already had their calves, so we might have been a week too late, but I'll still keep an eye out whenever I'm out and about - the weather will probably keep the birds around for a couple more weeks. It's really a thrill to see one perched on a neighborhood telephone pole.