new habitat?

got a dog...a terrier with an inherent avocation for digging...she has dug a trench along one side of the yard, although she has mostly abandonded it for a new interest in mole hills, the abandonded trench is not dead...

it has become habitat for at least three nests of ground bees...this is the first time i have noticed them in the yard and i am inclined to believe they have been attracted by the trench since they are digging nests into the trench wall...they are not aggressive, they were buzzing me as i took photos but no one even seemed interested in stinging me ( although they can sting )...so they can stay as far as i am concerned...an auxiliary to the leaf cutters that will arrive next month...

april was "unseasonably warm"...or, perhaps, simply the new "seasonable" and my rain gauge recoreded 4.7 inches of precipitation which exceeds the 2.52 inch average ( yes, i know, averages lie ) for the "normal" april...and with a shade over an inch of rain already in may it seems destined to continue..we will keep an eye on that...

the surviving tesointe plant that has been in the basement most of the winter...

has flowered...i will be keeping an eye out for any swelling in the stem below the flower and for any sign of silks where the leaf just below the bloom meets the stem...seems unlikely to me, however there is hope...

and in other zea news, one of the ten or so zea mays parvaglumis seeds i planted in a container ( remember the digging dog? ) has germinated...i will be watching this and the seed i planted last week on campus as well...more as it comes up.

unmet expectations...

which may be my responsibility for entertaining them...life's like that sometimes...

it is a spare lookng bed i have going on here on campus...

i am afraid there is no life left in one of the alfalfa transplants...time to take it out...

the other alfalfa plant is verdant and obviously working on building a root system given its height compared to what is in my back yard...

still, up and running...

beyond that it gets a bit sketchy...this is the extent of the emmer wheat that is up and , like in my yard, the einkorn has completely failed...

the barley seems to be in little better shape...

while the containers out in my back yard are looking lush...so the seed is good... so i planted...

two more rows...where the einkorn has failed...

as well as a row of teosinte for which i have zero expectations...

some of the asparagus has begun to "fern" which is fine...feed the roots...

while some individuals are harvesting spears by simply snapping them off which displeasess me for more than aesthetic reasons...so i cut them off below soil surface and will continue to do so as i maintain the bed

wheat barley asparagus alfalfa ramps...that's enough for one day

temperatures here are down out of the seventies ( fahrenheit ) and into what you could call a more "seasonable" range...

and two tenths of an inch of rain brought the total for the month so far to one and six tenths inches of precipitation...

combine that with a day off and it seemed a good time to make a run out to campus to take care of a few things...

in the one bed i am working this year i found...

a total of seven spears up and running...not nearly ready for harvest which is a bit behind last season...

the transplanted alfalfa on the west end of the bed is doing fairly well and i would suspect putting most of its enegry into re-establishing roots...not unreasonable and an explanation for the sparse green...

unfortunately the alfalfa on the east end seems to be failing...when i pulled it up i found the roots still moist and supple so we will leave it for now and hope...

i turned and hoed the back side of the bed...

and, despite james scott's injunction and the faddist dietary hoo-ha, i planted rows of einkorn and emmer wheat as well as barley...if it goes well there will be cereal grains by mid-summer...

back home in the east bed there is asparagus up as well...

some of which has escaped the bed...

the barley i planted back there five days ago is germinating...

as is the wheat, albeit more slowly...it may not be cool enough for its taste...

one of the container planted spuds i put in last month has broken surface...a russet i believe...

i have four stands of alfalfa back there all of which are looking greener and more lush than the campus relatives...then again they have not been moved twice in five years and are well established...we will be feeding the bees and providing the solitary ones with nesting material..

i am always pleased when ramps begin to pop up in the bed on the north side of the house...i am hoping some flower this season and produce seed...we will see...

and, finally, jerusalem artichokes have begun to appear...a few days earlier than last year...and those were earlier than 2022...and the earlier arrivals can be regressed a few years to the point we are almost a month earlier than they were in the past decade...a native to these parts it is worth watchng their behaviors as a climate marker...they usually bloom in august...it will be worth noting what happens this coming july

the jerusalem artichokes are unquiet

over that past ten years or so the jerusalem artichokes have broken soil surface in the first few weeks of may...this particular specimen was up at the perennial garden project at iun on the twenty-first of march 2012...that was an exceptionally anomolous month in terms of weather with consistent warm temperatures, at times reaching into the eighties ( fahrenheit ) and was followed by a seasonable april and a summer long drought which did not do this plant much good at all...up early and starved for water...at least in terms of rain...and the heat radiating of the nearby ( within ten feet ) walls of hawthorn hall didn't help much either...in 2013 the sunchokes were back on their usual schedule of appearing in may...

out this morning rooting around with marigold...

i discovered that, in the past week, not only have the tubers continued to root...

the have clearly begun to sprout...perhaps a sign that the inordinately warm winter wil have them making an early breakthrough...there are still a little better than thirty-two days until may and they were not usually up on the first...we will see what happens in april.