May Day!
and the bees are buzzin' and flowers bloomin'!
April started off the month trying to be early March. Cold, blustery, and just downright bleh. Then, around the 15th, she did a complete turnabout and decided she wanted to be late May instead.
No wonder spring is always portrayed as a woman!
Things around here started coming to life fast; indeed, I’m convinced we are at least a week early.
I had so hoped my plums would make it, but April’s early capriciousness included a cold snap with below freezing temperatures. I was out in my yard today, taking a look at the trees, and while I see several small plums forming, we will see if any of them make it to ripe in August. I’m learning that plums tend to form a lot of baby fruits in the spring, but cast most of those before harvest, so its hard to determine how many I’ll actually get, if any.
The apples bloomed later, but we got another overnight cold spell and woke up with a light frost, and while I also have baby apples, the same issue applies - we will see how many fruits make it to harvest. Which reminds me - I need to get the fruit sprayer out…..
Our fall planting potato experiment seems to likely have been a failure. We’ve been watching eagerly for potato sprouts for a month now, but have no signs at all. I dug into a hill last week, found a potato that looked to be okay, but still no signs of them coming up. I did find a volunteer from last year that I missed that is growing, so I know the ground is warm enough.
Ah well, it was worth a shot! My husband thinks he did something wrong, but really, there is no wrong way to plant potatoes. My money is on either mice used them for winter feed below ground, they got too cold and rotted, or they are just being REALLY late. In any case, if they aren’t up in about 3 weeks, I’ll till the spot and plant new. We have plenty of potatoes left from last year’s crop to act as seed potatoes this year.
The carrots didn’t really do well, but boy howdy, do I have the pretty little row of parsnips! I have never gotten parsnips to take and come up that well! So I’ve learned - plant parsnip seeds in the fall when I plant garlic (which is looking lovely as well)!
For some reason, my red bud blooms at least 2 weeks later than all the others in the area, so its still pretty and pink, blooming beside my dark mauve lilac and my pink lilac. The white lilac bloomed well last year but only has a few on it this year, and my classic light lavender is still coming into its own, but hopefully next year it will bloom out as well. And my snowball bush is loaded - its going to be beautiful this year!
The cold snap got the top blooms of my poor little magnolia, but it is still trying to at least eek out a few last blossoms. I had a wild raspberry come up near it. I thought “why not?” and have been using the magnolia as a raspberry trellis for the last 2 years!
My peonies rode through the cold well, though! Speaking of peonies - I’ve learned that they are called different things in different regions. When I was growing up, I knew them as “pie-nees”, but when I moved to PA for a few years, I found ladies up there called them “pee-nees”. My husband, from Wisconsin, calls them “pee-uh-nees”.
Ah well, a peony of any other name will still smell as sweet!
While I was walking the yard last week, cleaning up winter’s debris so we could get the grass mowed, I was delighted to find a little patch of bluets in my yard! Also known as Quaker Ladies, the little rugged flowers with their four light blue petals and white insides (though some patches don’t have any blue at all), are known as Houstonia caerulea in scientific circles (according to Wikipedia) and are native to the eastern half of North America. Here in WV you’ll find them growing wild even in places with rather poor soil, in open woodlands or along the edges of brush in shady to partial shady places all over. My parents have a camp set up along a river bottom land, and the bluets form a veritable carpet all around down there in the spring!
I’ve always loved these little flowers and I warned my husband about the little patch my yard - he was a good fellow and humored me, making sure to be very careful not to mow them over. Sweet guy!
Meanwhile, the chicks are growing so fast! These chicks are way more active and curious than our previous lot - my husband had one succeed in escaping their little confined area when he checked on them yesterday! I’m working feverishly trying to get their new coop built, if the weather would cooperate and when I have time. Working full time really cuts into my hobby projects, let me tell ya!
These are my buff orpingtons at 6 weeks of age now. I had to separate them into 2 different pens because they got too big for the one and were fighting a lot. Separating them out seems to have helped, though I somehow got all the roosters into the same pen!
These chicks I’m pretty sure are all hens:
however, these chicks below? I’m betting there’s 3 roosters in this bunch - I’ve been told a rooster’s comb and waddle will redden up and be larger than a hen’s will. And while I wanted a rooster since I free range my chickens, 3 roosters may be a bit more than my girls can handle! We will see - since they are raising up together and I have a wide open yard and mountainside so there’s plenty of space to stay apart, it may be okay. I’ll just have to keep an eye on the girls for wear and tear and possibly keep a separate “rooster time out” box once in a while.
I’m having a blast building this coop. It may not be pretty, but its the first major construction project that I’ve done pretty much all on my own. Usually when I have a project, I ask for dad’s help, and it ends up being dad building with me helping, but he’s been sick of late, so I did the work on my own. I love the smell of fresh cut wood, the whirl of a circular saw, and the thump of the air nailer. If things had been different in my youth, perhaps I should have gone into contracting instead of engineering school.
In any case, I have all 4 walls built and set and I’m ready for the rafters. That’s going to be the hard part an the one place where I may need to see if I can find some help. I am a rather hefty girl and I don’t do ladders as a result (doesn’t help I don’t like heights). I start getting nervous at the 3rd step of a ladder, and going higher than 4 steps is pretty much a no go. This thing will have a shed style roof and I know I can handle rafters and sheeting and roofing at the bottom, but at the top? that’s where I’m going to need help.
I hope to have this thing done by Memorial Day. In fact, I gotta have it done by then - the chickens are making my house smell like a barn!
And I STILL need to get some sewing done - which I hope to do tonight since its going to rain and I can’t work outside. The WV Renaissance Festival is fast approaching, and we need to make sure we have everything ready to vend the first weekend!
So all this long winded treatise is to say “this is why I haven’t written much lately!”
I knew spring would be this way, so I don’t really have any active short story anthologies to get into. Though I am tickled pink to find that my story “When the Hoot Owl Calls” was accepted by Raconteur Press for their next weird west anthology! That was my brass ring goal and I am very excited to make the cut. I’ll pass along more information as soon as they have it ready, but the tentative date for publishing is May 16th, so stay tuned!
(It’s Debbie Reynolds from over on Discord) Wow, what a post! And you are definitely in a warmer planting zone than I, although I agree, all of a sudden things are EARLY! I was expecting a late spring, we only just mowed for the first time last week, the spring bulbs were barely out—and now the lilacs are budded up! Two days ago I saw no color (other than leaves) on our apple tree, today it’s a little white! Peonies were one of my grandma’s favorite flowers—my MIL as well, and she grew “tree peonies”. We say PEE oh KNEES here. Mine have buds, the ones up next to the house, anyway. Before we know it, it’ll be high summer!