Signs of spring!
One of the peonies that I bought a while back, and planted (bareroot, from Lowes) is growing! Notice the lack of mulch or anything… just a bare hole in the lawn. We have a really old peony in the lawn that doesn’t seem to care about the grass, and Ron usually mows it down when it’s finished blooming. Crazy! I will probably go out and mulch it tomorrow. We are expecting anywhere from no snow to maybe 10 inches of the stuff over the weekend. Sheesh!
It was an absolutely fantastic day outside today. Nicer than yesterday, where I spent a bunch of time getting ready for going into work at noon and then got there to find out that I wasn’t needed after all. They did call me and leave me a voicemail on my cell phone. Thing is… I never look at my cell phone unless I need it… and usually that is to check the time or something, not to talk on it! LOL! I was a bit annoyed, it’s quite a drive and a waste of gas… not to mention I couldn’t even pick up my paycheck as the boss had just left and hadn’t signed them yet. So I went shopping, then came home and puttered around. Planted my latest addition to my new vineyard.
This morning I went to Lowe’s with the truck. Twenty bags of mulch for my grapes. I over-estimated, I’ve got 5 bags more than I needed at this point. I put down landscape fabric, then about 4 or 5 inches of mulch. When we get a calm and dry day I’ll go out and use RoundUp around the edges of that. Have to stop the bermuda grass and weeds so that the grape roots won’t have to struggle. Oh, and besides my Muscadine grapes, I also picked up a seedless table grape locally last week. Vanessa, which is a red seedless. I was VERY impressed with the roots when I planted it… they were HUGE! The Muscadines I bought online had very wimpy tiny roots. Lots of em, but tiny. The Vanessa grape had long fat roots winding around in the pot. I unwound them planting, of course.
All nice and mulched…. but you can’t see the vines in all that mulch. I did try a few photos, but decided they weren’t worth uploading. Basically, aside from the trips to post office and Lowe’s… my day was spent mulching the grapes.
I dumped out the dirt in the “window” boxes a while back, and used the potting soil I’d bought end of season last year to fill them back up about a month ago. Planted radish seeds in one, then forgot to water it! It was too cold right then, so after about a week I remembered about watering and watered them, and now I have baby radish plants, growing VERY slowly. Radishes are pretty much the fastest and earliest veggie you can get out of a garden… and I love em. Here is a photo of them… I had a duh moment today and moved them to where they get full sun all day today.
Because I had a second box that didn’t get full from that bag of potting soil, I finished filling that up with potting soil out of one of my tomato buckets… and planted more yesterday. The baby chicken wire and hardware cloth on top of the boxes is to keep the darn cats from digging and using them as toilets. I watered both of em yesterday, too.
I tried to get photos of buds of lilac, but my camera wouldn’t focus that closely… it has macro mode and I couldn’t get it to work. Can’t see the screen in bright sunlight, can’t read it anyhow without glasses sometimes. Oh well. The lilac needs some major pruning… sections of it are dead. We will wait until it’s done blooming, but the Althea might get lopped down this weekend. Needs it even more than the lilac. The floribunda rose in the yard needs dead wood cut out, too.
More signs of spring… Our neighbor Brent came up with his tractor and disced our garden area… and then came back a few days later with his tiller attachment and tilled it. It’s WONDERFUL! But Ron thought I should have asked/told him to do more of the garden area… even though what is done is fine for what we usually grow. So, being Ron, he decided that he would get his own tractor out and do it himself.
I don’t know how long he’s had this tractor, but it hasn’t been used in the 4 years I’ve known him. He got a new rototiller since I’ve met him… but never bothered with his old tractor. He said all it needed was a battery. But it ended up needing filters cleaned and gas put into it… the gas had evaporated! Gaskets had to be made… New terminals for a battery… and finally today he had to go get hydraulic oil for the transmission and lift.
The tractor is running, but the lift is not working, and that makes it pretty useless as a tractor. You need the lift to keep the discs out of the ground while you are driving, turning, etc. Or whatever you are pulling behind. You can’t just be dragging it all the time. Have to lift it up.
Anyhow, I took a photo of it today, parked in front of the garage. Then, before I started this post I looked up just how old the darn thing is. Shocker! It’s older than I am! It looks it, too, lol… but figure those are probably the original tires on it… dang!
That’s an 800 series Ford tractor and they were built from 1954 to 1957 in Dearborn, MI. This one looks like it still has original paint, too… what’s left of it. I hope Ron can figure out what’s wrong with the lift, he spent most of last weekend messing around with it and it looks like he’ll be spending this weekend messing with it, too. I’d rather have him help me with other stuff! LOL!
Finally, because this is also a sign of spring around here… kittens! There are only 3, and I only did close ups of two of them. They have different mothers, but the mother in the first picture decided to take em over when we moved the other 2 out of the cold. She’s not a very good mother, let 2 of her own die… I guess her mothering instinct is just slow working and she’s taking good care of all of them now. Big size difference… they are only a week apart! Kittens grow fast, the tiny ones are already getting their eyes open, not a week old yet.
This is Patches III….
And finally, a sort of tortoiseshell kitten…
Too cute! They didn’t even yowl at me when I picked them up to take their pictures! Itty bitty babies usually howl and holler… and are super hard for me to photograph, they wiggle too much. I just lucked out, I guess!
hugs,
Vyx
I forgot to mention…. I’d rather use newspaper or cardboard under my mulch, rather than landscape fabric… but it’s almost ALWAYS horribly windy here and I just can’t see how to lay that stuff down. The fabric stuff is on a roll, and held down by the roll…. and then I dump mulch on it. Can’t see doing that with a good layer of newspaper… the paper would blow away before I could do anything. So… landscape fabric it is.
as always – love it! when u said u didn’t know how old the tractor was, I was thinkin’ that it looked like Uncle Cap’s old tractor; is it? If so, I’m 52 & I remember that tractor back when I was a pup. Also, read an article the other day that weeds & what nots will penetrate thru the rolls but NOT thru wet, shredded newspaper. If that helps. Hugs Peggy Jo
Peggy, no… this isn’t Cap’s tractor. That got sold after he died, I guess. Ron had his own tractor but that burnt up when his barn burned down. So… this antique is a replacement. Anything older than me is an antique! LOL!
I would rather use newspaper as a barrier… if I could figure out how to lay it down when it’s mostly windy here. We have plenty of it, too… Maybe next year I can take up the fabric and put down cardboard and newspaper.
hugs,
Vyx
Gotta wet the newspaper down as you’re laying out to keep it from blowing away. Even then you’ve got to move fast.
Fun read! Thanks.
Maybe a sack of newspapers with all the ads and stuff taken out… and a bucket of water to dip them into? I’ll have to try that for the tomatoes, altho for tomatoes I really prefer black plastic. Warms the soil and both keeps the weeds out and retains moisture better. But I have 4 of those red trays that are supposed to be so great… and they would be, if I put down something around them to control the grass and weeds. So, perhaps newspaper and mulch this year for 3 plants… and the others will get the black plastic. I kept records last year, no difference at all between black plastic and fabric mulch cloth… except that the fabric shredded over the winter and the plastic did not. But the plants liked both pretty much the same. (I didn’t put mulch over the fabric or plastic)