Midsummer, and the living is hot…

A lot has happened since I last updated this blog – some successes, some losses… and some interesting critters. Oh, and I’ve met my new neighbour! He’s bought the other lot that was for sale when I bought my piece, and wants to use it just for hunting. Turns out that he used to hunt my land too, and so could tell me something of its history. The trees were harvested only about 20 years ago, but I don’t think it was completely clear cut – just the trees with valuable timber. Mine is a relatively young forest, then, and the bit near the road has some wild persimmon trees too. The neighbour begged me not to cut those when I make room for my access road. There’s no danger of that. Cutting those trees, I mean. The access road will happen soon, I hope. Just waiting for a call back…

And so on to the successes and losses. We’re talking plants here. Remember all those sweet little seedlings I was nurturing in the spring?  Some have made it, but most struggled badly, withered and bit the dust. It could be the poor soil, it could be the meagre rainfall recently. It won’t have helped that I had to leave them to fend entirely for themselves for two and a half weeks while I traveled on business. But I’m blaming it on critters. I haven’t seen these critters as yet (though I’ve noticed droppings), but I’m guessing rabbits. The new neighbour reckons it could also be groundhogs. He also said that we have coyote and BOB CATS!!! Really excited at the thought of seeing a bob cat… even if they were the ones who ravaged my cat mint plants. Do bob cats share the culinary tastes of domestic felines? Anyway, to get to the point here, of all the plants I grew from seed (fennel, tomatoes, basil and holy basil, oregano and thyme, chamomile, catmint, borage, echinacea and marigolds) only the tomatoes, basils, marigolds and one of the thyme plants has made it. And maybe a borage, but only by a stalk. The tomatoes are coming along well, though – all varieties as far as I can tell. Matt’s Wild Cherries are doing particularly well, but there will also be radiator charlies and arkansas travelers and an heirloom variety (from saved seed). I fed them all today, and checked them for any signs of trouble. How can they not be happy after that?

before the rabbits came… tomatoes in the background
matt’s cherry tomatoes doing well

It’s hellishly hot here at the moment (100 degrees as I write this post). The heat wave arrived on Thursday, but it had been dry before that for several days. Storms are promised for next week. Let’s hope they materialize, because I’m getting worried about the water level in my rain barrel. (Dreaming of a little cabin with another rain barrel on the side…) The last few visits to the land have been all about watering things. I bought two more plants – an echinacea and a wild indigo – and fitted them in to my bee garden. That was a week ago. It was a bit of a squeeze, but the ground is so incredibly hard, there was no chance of me enlarging the bed. When I went back today, the indigo looked good, but the echinacea is only just hanging in there. Something’s been eating it, I think, and it needed water. But here’s another success story: I planted edamame in the hugelbeet and half the veggie bed last weekend (was it only last weekend?) and most of the seeds have now sprouted! *Really* hoping nothing is going to come along and eat them too.

midsummer planting of edamame emerging from the hugelbeet

Critters, finally. Not the invisible rabbits and groundhogs, or the fabled coyotes and bob cats, but snakes and interesting insects. I saw the snakes on visits in May.

black snake number 1
little snake number 2

My parents helped me identify the first one as probably a black racer. Harmless. The second I discovered sheltering under weed barrier fabric in the vegetable bed when I went to plant my seedlings. I think it’s also a black racer but juvenile. And how about this for an insect! My bee garden is doing everything it should – swarming with different sorts of bees and butterflies (see also below) and this: a hummingbird moth!

hummingbird moth!!
gorgeous butterfly (to be identified)

just before imbolc

daffodils!!

Already, daffodils in flower. This picture was taken a couple of weeks ago, before the end of January. This time last year these daff clumps were nowhere near as far along.

My last post of 2011 was such a downer that I can’t believe I’ve not updated the blog sooner than this. It’s not like I haven’t been up to the land, just not as often as I’d have liked because the weather has been so miserable and rainy. We haven’t had snow yet… I’d love to see the forest touched by snow, but driving up to it might be a bit of a challenge. Anyway, it’s been a year since I bought the land, so it is time to think about what has been achieved. The homestead site may not be at its most inspiring in the middle of winter, but it is easier to see the progress without all the tall vegetation that hides everything in summer. I’m thinking of all the bags of trash I’ve cleared away. Ancient trash, some of it… the bottles and cans, the scrap metal and barbed wire, the bunches of socks I’ve found. Yes, socks. They are still a mystery. Anyway, I look at this photo and see the potential!

clear and open and waiting for a cabin...

I’ve also started to dismantle one of the tumble-down buildings, amassing a large pile of firewood in the process. There is also quite a lot of wood that looks solid enough to reuse. Some of it would make great sides for my new vegetable bed. I’m not going to post any images of the dismantling yet, because it’s at the point where it looks worse than when I started. When the job is done, it can have a post all to itself… maybe in a couple of months, and after I’ve had some help moving the old corrugated iron roof.

Anyone following me on Twitter will know that I’ve been suckered into using one of my window boxes as a bird table. (At home, that is, not on the land, where I don’t yet have a cabin or any windows). Actually it’s a pretty good arrangement. I’m on the first floor (that’s the second floor for Americans), so the birds are perfectly safe coming to feed. And they are all just outside my window, mere feet away from where I sit and work most days: cardinals, chickadees, house finches, white-throated sparrows, red-bellied woodpeckers, white-breasted nuthatches, tufted titmice, towhees, yellow-rumped warblers… It’s amazing, and distracting, and I can’t not feed them now. I’ve also bought a new feeder for the land, and can’t wait to find out what is coming to it. No doubt it’s already empty, so there’s another reason to get back to the homestead soon.

the new bird feeder