Open up!

We now have at least three woodpecker families coming to our suet feeders. A few days ago I found a baby downy woodpecker hopping in the garden. It didn't seem right because of the way it was hopping and the minimum effort it seemed to be putting into announcing its location. It was easy to pick up and I put it into the thickest growth in the garden, a mix of flowers and vegetables, to provide it as much cover as possible.

Later that day the father and a baby downy appeared on one of the feeders and the dad proceeded to feed the baby, right there.

Our windows aren't really that dirty. The birds aren't real neat when they're picking at the suet.

There's only one channel!

OK, this one's got nothing to do with Greene View Springs, but I just had to post it. One of our grandsons was fascinated with our front loading washing machine and sat down to watch it for almost 10 minutes.

The return of the tree frogs

The frogs have been making a racket for the past week. Yesterday Sandy was working next to our large trough which I have lined with billboard tarp and this little frog showed up. We think he or she is checking it out for a place to deposit eggs as they did last year.

There are a four "pond" choices this year up here near the barn, though only two of them are "safe" right now - the pictured trough and the plastic pond above the driveway. One of the down spouts on the barn goes into a smaller trough, but it overflows heavily during a rainfall. The fourth is the larger pond I am digging but I can't work on it when it's wet, and it's been wet for the last three weeks! Until it is finished and lined, water seeps completely out of it in less time than a tadpole can mature.

Stand by for egg and tadpole pictures if I'm home to take them.

The garden so far

I took a few shots of the raised garden we've been building. All of the sides have been made from used lumber scavenged from an old barn that was being torn down within two miles of us. The first picture is taken from below the archway we were given.

Just below the satellite dish you can see the large plastic "tote" in a metal cage I got at an auction for $30. I added about $6 worth of fittings and connected it to a garden hose. It holds over 350 gallons of rain water that drops in from the south side gutter. Now we get water on demand by just squeezing the hose's nozzle. The pressure is low, just whatever gravity provides, but one doesn't have to run to the outlet to turn it off when done with it.

Last week I found a source for more totes and bought two for only $10 each. They need to be cleaned out and I need to buy more fittings to make them useful. Then they will be "installed" on the north side of the barn as high on the hillside as possible so they will provide a lot more water pressure.

The pathway between the upper and lower beds is slanted to the east and to the south and dries off quickly after a rainfall. The upper beds themselves slant a bit to the south and a bit more to the east so water that comes off the gravel and large rocks above gets distributed without help from us.

The lower beds are a bit more level, though that was more by accident than by plan.

The second picture is the same hillside but from more toward the west end. In the middle, next to the archway, are two persimmon trees that fruited last year. Also in the center are two metal grates with peas climbing them. Our hummingbirds are back and we can't keep the two feeders filled. I'm trying to find a large jar that will screw into the feeder openings so we could put out two or three days' worth of sugar water.

Rainy day, but two firsts

May apples have cropped up all over the place. The first bloom appeared in a clump that came up right in the path between the pole barn and the proposed house site.


















Today has been wet and mostly cloudy, but we've had a few new birds come to visit. Here's one, a rose-breasted grosbeak, on one of our suet feeders.

Save the Frogs Day

Today is Save the Frogs Day. They don't seem to be disappearing here at Greene View Springs, but we are worried about them world wide.

The folks at Save the Frogs are working to educate people about the problem, and their site has some great background "music."

Our frogs have been active since late February this year. Each night we can hear them, sometimes even with the windows closed. I saw some at the pond yesterday while I was planting some bald cypress trees and water irises.

They include gray tree frogs but we haven't seen one yet this year, just heard them. The University of Michigan's Museum of Zoology has a page of pictures. Note how different they can be.

I'm trying to get the small pond finished before the tree frogs come looking for a site to lay their eggs like they did last June when they laid them in a 3-ft tall, tarp-lined trough.

They don't get any closer

Unless, of course, they come through the front door!

Today Sandy called me to the window to see what was outside. I took a handful of pictures which speak for themselves.




Then a dog barked across the highway and off she flew, out of camera view.

Three more pictures

Here are few miscellaneous pictures from yesterday's walkabout.



The first is a crayfish mound. This is what they build when it rains a lot, apparently to keep the water from running down their holes. This one is about 6 inches tall.





This is just one multiflora rose bush. It is about 9 feet across. Nothing grows under it. You can see why we are trying to get rid of them.







Another invasive I've been cutting out is autumn olive. I cut this one last summer. You can see the stumps at the top of the picture. In the foreground is what used to be a very large pile of trunks and branches from it. All but the thickest branches were consumed in the accidental fire a month ago. This is another benefit of the fire that I wasn't expecting.

Early spring walkabout

Though it was a drizmal day, it wasn't a bad time for a few pictures of spring trying to catch on. Instead of a big long post with each picture described, I thought I'd let Picasa create a collage.

I haven't had time to look up the names of these plants, but I'm going to start an on-line album with plants we've found and I'll be sure they're all named before I put them into it. In the mean time, if you recognize any of these, let me know.



Beginning with the upper left corner and going clockwise, ending in the center, the pictures are a small red bud tree, May apples, mint plants in the creek, flowers farther down stream, new leaves on a young tree, field pussy-toes, more, but different yellow flowers, small shamrock-like leaves, and a large grouping of spreading lichens.

Well that didn't take long

It's been two hours since the previous picture and it rained for about an hour during that time. Here's the hole now.


It looks as though there will be enough water running this way to make a pretty decent pond. It has already overflowed the original level on the downhill side. When the water goes down I'll work on it some more.

Notice how much clay is in the soil there. It may take a few days for the water to seep into the ground.

The slope of the hill can be seen on the far side of the pond compared with the level water. It's not steep, but a lot of area drains through this spot from the highway on down. By expanding the pond and the diverting swales a very large amount of water can be captured here. This can help a lot with watering the fruit trees since our emerging orchard is at least fifty yards from any other water source.

Holes

Over the last week a lot of holes were made. The easiest two were for two bluebird boxes. These are attached to 1/2" electric conduit pipe. The pipe was pounded into the ground with about 6' sticking out. The boxes are mounted as high as possible on these without being too high to open and clean out. This should keep squirrels, raccoons and snakes out of them. Both are oriented so they can be seen from the apartment windows. One can be seen in the first picture below.

On Friday night we went to the weekly auction at Dinkys. I picked up five more apple trees to go with the three from the FFA auction the previous week end. Each of the eight trees is a different variety. Let's hope they each have at least one tree to pollinate them.


We have piled dead rose bush trimmings and cut off grape vines around most of the trees. Soon they will all have their own deer-deterrent brush piles. These will be maintained until the trees are tall enough, and have enough leafing branches, that a few deer munchings won't be a catastrophe.

While I was moving soil from the large pile the county left me to the apple trees I noticed that there was a very large wet area below the driveway. Water was actually seeping from the ground, and it's been more than 2 days since it has rained.

Well if there's that much water running down the hill, thinks I, why not try to catch some of it above the apple trees? So I started digging a depression. I'm not calling it a pond yet, because I may quit digging at any time. It's not much to look at so far, but you can get the idea.


The berm will hold the water and I'll extend it east and west forming a swale that will direct water toward the hole. Maybe our neighborhood tree frogs will find it a better place to lay eggs than they chose last year. If it gets enough water, and I won't know until after a nice rainfall, I may line it with a piece of billboard tarp so it will hold water longer.

Finally, something colorful outside

We finally have something with more colorful than grass outside this spring. We got these daffodils on sale last fall and it looks like every one of them came up. There are still many that have yet to bloom.

New growth

It hasn't been that long since the grass fire burned about half of the hillsides south of the barn and home site. We hoped it would encourage vigorous growth since it was very early in the year. It seems it has.


I'll continue to post updates as the season progresses, but it is already looks as though the burned area is growing better than the unburned area. Some of that may be an illusion since there is no brown grass left to obscure the view of the new grass. In a few weeks it will be clear if it's actually growing better.

What does spring bring?

Turkeys!

Just as we arrived home with two of the grandkids, Brandon approached the door and cried, "I think there are raccoons!" We all looked to see three turkeys scrambling and gliding away from the east end of the barn. One took to the trees and I got this picture of him. He's smack dab in the middle.


We see lots of turkeys along the road much closer to Bloomfield. We've never seen them even within a few miles of here. Let's hope they stick around.

Preparing a garden

Last year I tried to grow some vegetables but failed miserably. The soil near the apartment is mostly clay, and hard and dry. I planted tomatoes and grape tomatoes, peppers, brussel sprouts, cabbage and cucumbers. All were bought as starts.

Though we did get maybe twenty cherry tomatoes, the other tomatoes barely survived until late September when a few of them started to produce. I brought one that was in a pot inside for the winter and it is now blooming again. About 10 tomatoes that were on it when it came inside actually ripened, so we got maybe 25 altogether, all late in the season.

We got about 8 peppers and two plants that were in the same pot are now producing again inside.

We got zero cucumbers, no cabbage grew large enough to be worth bending over to pick, and the few brussel sprouts were about the size of peanuts.

This year I decided to do something serious. Using a few truckloads of soil dumped by the county from the ditching work along the property, and a bunch of lousy old wood from a nearby barn that is being taken down, I built some terraces and filled them in with real soil. Here's how it looks so far.



Look carefully, just below the large rocks, and you'll see the first plants that Sandy has transplanted. Transplanting sounds so easy. Not here. She had to use a pick axe to get through the hard clay and the gravel nearest the barn. Then she carried the clay away and replaced it with soil. Finally the plants could be set in place. Some we had in pots brought from Indianapolis, some came from along the county road on our property where the ditch was cleaned out, and some from a neighbor's overgrown iris plots.

Inside I've started spinach and a few other plants. Next time we go to town I'll get some peas which can be planted outdoors now. The archway has some new grape cuttings at its bottom. Finally, when I clear a path to them in the barn, I'll pull out the dozens of other seed varfieties we've saved from plants we've grown, seen or eaten and see if we can get the entire hillside growing.