April 2017

All Month

Violet woodsorrel is still flowering.

April 1, 2017

I discovered a lone specimen of the plant Pennsylvania cudweed (Gamochaeta pensylvanica), but it took me a few days to get an identification. I later saw a photo I took of the cudweed on April 14, 2014.

April 3, 2017

I got onto my roof and took pictures of the back yard and the roof itself. I wrote about the roof for the website.

April 6, 2017

I picked several carrots.

April 7, 2017

I pulled up the collard plant that had multiple stems from the top tip of the S in the S bed. The main stem was cracked, and I have so many large collard plants already that I decided it would be better to plant something else in that space. I threw the plant in the west nook because I already had collard leaves in the fridge in addition to all the plants in the garden.

April 8, 2017

In the morning, I saw a Freecycle post offering a branch saw on a 12 foot, extendable, pole. I picked it up on the way to a Tai Chi event.

I watered the garden in the early afternoon, making sure not to water areas that were already damp under the mulch.

The additional cantaloupe seeds I had sowed in the trellis a few days before bed started to emerge.

I discovered shepherd's purse in the back yard near the southern end of Bed 1. The delicate but globally pervasive plant was hidden below a small common sunflower.

In the late afternoon, I used my new branch saw to gut off a big portion of a 

Chinese privet growing between the fences near the western end of the lot. When it fell, it hit the western chain-link fence of the house behind mine and pivoted into the next lot to the west. The section of tree was quite large, but the trunk itself was heavy enough to do much damage, especially with the smaller, upper branches cushioning the landing. Nonetheless, I felt obliged to walk the short way over to the next street to tell the neighbor what happened. I met the woman of the house first, who looked and then got her husband to come out. He said they would take care of it, and he agreed with me that such invasive trees should be removed. He then took me to the house directly behind mine, where an old woman lives with her invalid daughter. The woman came to the door, and we talked briefly there. She said it would be okay for me to go into the space between the fences and remove all or part of the trees there. Even though it's my property, it's on her side of the privacy fence, so it could be perceived as an intrusion. After we left, the man said I should ask the woman if I can go through her yard to get to that area since it might be dangerous for me to go over my privacy fence.

After that I went back to my yard and broke or cut the top, leafy portions of several goldenrain tree saplings between the fences, which it very easy to do. Then I extended the branch saw pole to about 16 feet, and cut a long tall branch off the Chinese tallow tree. As it partially fell with a small portion still attached to the tree, it got tangled in the power cables. I pulled on it a bit, but it wouldn't come free. When I cut the rest of the way through the branch, the bottom fell into the woman's yard and the top leaned over the privacy fence.  I was able to cut upper sub-branches and incrementally work the rest of the branch over the fence.

Finally, I went to the tree at the eastern end between the fences. I had never identified it before for some crazy reason, and later in the evening I determined it was a live oak. The tree was covered with star jasmine, as is much of the space between the fences, and I spent some time removing the vines from the tree and the area around it. There is still some higher up in the tree, but it is no longer connected to the ground. 

April 10, 2017

This morning I pulled up all of the acorn squash plants from the area in front of the trellis where I had planted seeds, and brought all the fruit indoors. Some of the leaves had turned yellow and were falling apart, much like I have seen cucumber leaves often do. I then made a mound with my dwindling supply of leaf mould and sowed seeds of American Burpless cucumber seeds from Botanical Interests. It will be good to have newer cucumbers coming up when the previously planted plants fall apart, as cuke plants tend to do. I also extended the mound to make it continuous between the two cucumber trellises.

I trimmed my front hedges using the electric hedge trimmer I recently ordered from Amazon. It worked quickly, but it would be good to use a manual trimmer for final touchups. The electric one doesn't always snip everything that pops up. After I put away the cord and trimmer, I realized I hadn't done the hedge on the west side of the driveway. I decided to leave it for later, but I did trim back the dead azalea in that area. It will be hard for the remaining azalea in that hedge to grow in that direction and replace what was there. I might have to buy a replacement or put something else there. I also found a Chinese privet growing out of that hedge and cut it down at its base.

I watered the parts of the beds with seeds or seedlings, and it rained briefly a couple of times during the day.

I got a decent video clip of a carpenter bee, apparently a female.

April 11, 2017

It rained hard much of the day. I went to College Station in the morning and got back home around 5. I had my radio show that evening, and I didn't do anything in the yard.

April 12, 2017

I pulled a lot more carrots, especially from Bed 3, to clear more room for the cucumbers and canteloupe plants even though they are sill very small.

The eggplant is growing well, but something is eating the leaves. I need to go out at night to see what it is.

I made a smoothie with parsley and fennell from Bed 3.

After the heavy rain, the cucumber, canteloupe, and squash plots all have many seedlings.

I took a picture of a garden tortrix on the back fence.

I found what I think was a new jumping spider, but I wasn't able to get a good enough photo to identify it. It was on a winter kale stem, and it hid either on the underside of the stem or behing a leaf when brought the camera close to it.

The Common Sowthistle (Sonchus Oleraceus) had a full fluffy achene ball.

I put a paper bag over one bunch of tomatoes as an experiment in preventing caterpillars and other insects from eating holes in them. I wonder what will happen when the bags get wet, and how much trouble it will be to check the tomatoes now and then.

I found a fly of the genus Neodeceia.

It rained a little in the afternoon.

April 14, 2017

I shredded a lot of the remaining leaves in the unshredded pile, which is getting small. Between shreddings, I used the big shovel to consolidate the leaves a few times. When I slid the shovel under the leaves, it exposed some bare dirt and scarab beetle larvae (grubs). I videoed one gub digging to get below the surface of the ground again.

April 16, 2017

I had a sign-painting party at the house this day. In the time leading up to the party at 2 pm, I spent a lot of time cleaning the house and tidying things up in the yard. 

In the front, I swept the front porch's walls and floor, then swept all the hedge-trimming waste from the front walkway to the driveway. I moved all that waste to the unshredded mulch pile in the back yard.

I went on the roof to sweep up the catkins and sticks that accumulated there since I swept the roof and cleaned out the gutters on April 3. This time, I was able to get almost pure catkins, which I added to my existing pile of catkins in the northwest corner of the back yard.

I swept the walls and floor of the breezeway as well as possible, and swept the back patio.

I gave a few tours of the back yard once the party started. One friend found a late-instar black swallowtail caterpillar on my fennel plant.

I noticed that the cotelydons some leaves on my squash and cucumbers had a lot of tiny light dots on them. I hadn't seen any the day before. I think I might have overwatered a bit.

I made at least three pitchers of smoothies for my guests. In the process, I went in the back yard to get fennel and parsley. I also used some small collard leaves I already had in the fridge.

April 17, 2017

I pulled out the two buckwheat plants from bed 3 while they were flowering as part of the effort to clear space for the canteloupe plants as they grow.
I photographed a black and yellow mud dauber that flew into the kitchen.

I fund a small paper wasp nest hanging from the eave over the back porch. Two wasps were protecting and constructing it.

I finished shredding the leaves I had collected in the late winter and early spring, moving them to a "shredded" pile as I went along. Several june beetle grubs were visible once all the leaves were gone, and they immediately started digging into the dirt.

I turned over the log in front of a trellis by the west fence and discovered a colony of small ants, who immediately started carrying eggs to presumable safer places. One of my hands was placed where they could get to it, but didn't get stung.

I saw the first fully bloomed flowers at the top of the common sunflower plants, which have grown to about 10 feet tall this year before flowering.

April 18, 2017

It's raining in the morning.

A robin is picking over the shredded leaf pile for insects.
The neighbor across the street gave me some bags full of shredded leaves.

April 19, 2017

I connected my tomato cages with string to make them hold each other upright.

I found the stemmed polypore, Polyporus arcularius, I had found earlier, but this time the stems were shorter and the caps wider. A few were growing on one stick.

I videoed a kind of white twirler moth dancing on a satsuma leaf.

I found a chanterelle under the live oak in the front yard and brought it in to get a spore print. It had a subtle but noticeable aroma that I couldn't associate with anything in particular.

In the morning, I saw "Unidentified Fungus #2" on the same side of the oak as the chanterelle, but on the opposite side from where it was when I saw it in January. When I went back in the afternoon, it had fallen on its side before it had a change to lighten its color and open up like it did before.

I knocked off the snail shell that had been on the outside of my kitchen window for ages.

I videoed a Cyarda planthopper on the kitchen window.

I pulled out the rest of the fava bean plants, most of which had some kind of disease, and harvested all the remaining bean pods. The new bush bean plants "Contender" and "Roma 2" are growing quickly and will cover the area where the favas were.

April 20, 2017

I watered all the beds.

In the morning, when I just got up, I found a moth and took its picture.

I tore out some sweet potato spinach that was encroaching on the I bed and threw it on the logs in the backyard nook.

I moved two squash seedlings from a place where there were too many to a place where none of the seeds had emerged.
I noticed a small bat flying in and out of the air space over my back yard at dusk. I sat in my lawn chair and watched it for a while.

April 23, 2017

I ate the first sweet pepper of the year, a giant marconi. It was very good.

I watered the garden where needed.

I popped off some sunflower branches near the back bird bath to make it easier to wlk back there.

I removed the one paper lunch sack I had put on a cluster of growing tomatoes and found a moth larva inside.

I emptied the remaining bags of shredded leaves my neighbor had given me.

Sedges are popping up in the bare area where the unshredded leaf pile had been.

April 24, 2017

The cluster of ruellia has a few flowers.

April 27, 2017

I added water to the bird baths

I pinched off some diseased bean leaves.
I harvested some of the last of the carrots, which were mostly in bed 4, plot 1. Many of them were large and well formed.

Some of the bean plants under the trellis are tall enough to coax onto the trellis.

The bush beans have many blue, pink, and white flowers.

I moved a watermelon seedling from a place with too many to a place that needed it.

I removed two artichoke plants to make more room for the watermelons.

I watered everywhere it was needed.

I cut back the clover to ground level with scissors everywhere it was growing in the raised beds.

A woodpecker has been performing mating "peck" calls for over a week.

I noticed blue jays courting and heard mating calls.

I ate the black krim tomato I had picked a couple days before.

A redbanded hairstreak flew into the house, and I took a photo of it.