Today is the first day of spring but not without winter grudgingly trying to hang on a little longer.
I drove up to the house to check on a few things right before the start of spring. I enjoy going outside at night to listen to certain night critters and try to figure out what they are. Of course the guy two parcels down has a couple of cows and chickens so they are very easily identified, I'm still working an many of the other mysterious sounds.
When I saw the moon rising through the trees with it's huge moisture ring I knew it might be wet in the morning. A tripod could of produced a more memorable photo but this will have to do.
Sure enough when I woke the following morning not only was I greeted to a wet start to the day...it's was mostly still snowing on this, the 19th of March. From what I hear in town we will have a few more of these storms before it starts to dry out.
This was a good day to stay in the garage and plant some begonia bulbs of many different colors, they are Donna's favorite flower and plant. I bought some hanging baskets in Spokane so if our bulbs produce healthy plants I'd like to train them in the baskets.
It was also an opportune time to soak my onion sets that my brother Jack sent me from San Diego. The ground has thawed and I believe I could of planted them today (they are fairly frost resistant) but we have not fenced in the garden yet...besides, I'll let the ground warm up a bit more.
Later in the day all the snow and rain moved on and we were left with a beautiful prism of color.
As evening started to unfold I am having some doubts about just how many bulbs in the bed behind the deer see the light of day. Their hungry and although I did plant "deer resistant" bulbs in that bed, folks say if they are hungry they will eat just about anything.
You would hardly know it from the day before but this spring morning has finally "sprung". This is 9:00 am March 20th, the sun is out and weather is wonderful...a good day to do some yard work. As you can see there are still a few lingering patches of snow that haven't realized it is....SPRING!
This is what's left of about 12 or so bales of alfalfa that were not eaten by the deer this winter. While I don't profess to being an outdoors type, I believe they ate the nutritional parts leaving what amounts to straw. Since hay is a great insulator, I found that under the hay was a slab of 4 inch thick ice. Once it dries and before it gets too hot I'll burn it to ashes.
In the foreground is a new alfalfa bale, of which I am trying to lure the deer away from the planted vegetation...probably won't work but worth a try. Behind the bale is horse manure, behind that is a compost pile and then further back is the straw mound.
Just short of my 66th birthday and this is the very first mound of hay I have ever made, which looks pretty good if I do say so myself. Think I'll throw a needle in the haystack and ask Donna to find it...ha ha
The garden soil is just waiting for me to finish putting up the deer fence before the "big" planting season starts.
Here, with the help of the dogs, I will send to the garden its own dedicated water line. I've talked at great length with my older brother on just how to set up system. I have 15 mounds, each about 12 feet long and I should have the ability to water all, some or none, my choice... with 15 shut-off valves in place.
I hope to have the fence up this weekend and if I do...the onions are the first to break soil.
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