Nature's Surprise

I've got some more pictures to share with you from our working weekend and start of the week.  The weather has been gorgeous (if not hot at 84 degrees yesterday) so we've been out in the yard most of the time.   The roofing crew has been here replacing all of the trim on the dormers with Azek ahead of the new roof.  Unfortunately, that has to be reschedule for next week because we've got rain coming.

 

On Sunday, Domino was sniffing like crazy in some grass by one of the basement windows and we discovered this little soul:

Meet Daisy-Bill the baby dove.  When I asked our adorable 6-year-old neighbor, Emily, what we should call "him", she said "Well, Daisy if it's a girl or Bill if it's a boy".  And then we decided that, since we can't tell which, we'd split the difference and give it both names.  Ah, to be a 6-year-old again.

 

This little chicklet appears to have either been thrown out, jumped out or fallen out of it's nest in the crook of our gutter. Mama dove took over an abandoned robin's nest and made it her own after we neglected to get it down last year.  Note to self:  remove nest this year!

 

I think this little baby is about 10 or 11 days old according to some quick Googling.  His pin feathers were just drying out and he appears to be losing his baby feathers.  The weather is warm and everything I've read is that the mama will find the baby and continue to feed it, so we are opting to let nature take it's course.  Of course, I'm agonizing over that.  The good news is that the baby is sheltered in our yard from dogs, cats, etc. as the yard is mostly fenced in. 

The Honeycrisp apple tree we planted last year is blooming!

One of the tasks we had this week was dig up the apple trees that we got from Home Depot.  Our new trees arrived from One Green World so we needed to get them in the ground as soon as possible.  As you can see in the pic above, the silly Honeycrisp that we planted last year is blooming.  I think you're suppose to pinch those blooms off the first year, right?

 

It was actually easier than I thought it would be to dig up the Stayman's Winesap and Honeycrisp trees and we put them into some huge 20" containers that I picked up at Home Depot.  These will be their permanent homes, as dwarf trees do fine in containers.  But we may take them up and plant them permanently on the farm also.

The unused potato bins provide a place with ready made stakes for the container trees.

Then we started digging.  And digging.  And digging.  And it was hotter than Hades.  The two new apple trees (a Braeburn and a Honeycrisp, both grafted on M-7 stock) went back in the holes that the others came out of.  By the way, you can read about different rootstocks here.


Little Braeburn apple tree all happy, happy in it's new home.

Then we had to dig two new holes for some NorthStar cherry trees.  These are dwarf trees on Colt stock and should provide some nice pie cherries in a couple of years.

Next up was getting the tomato and peppers in the newly-topped-off raised beds.  So far, we have 2 Early Girl hybrids, 2 Cherokee Purples, 4 Romas and 3 red peppers.  I need to go pick up some more Romas, as that's not nearly enough plants to make a good amount of sauce.  And we still have the other bed to plant our squash, green beans, watermelon, etc.



And, finally, we turned our attention to the strawberry bed where I was surprised to find them blooming since it's been colder than normal.  I spent the rest of the day pulling Bermuda grass out of the bed until my fingers hurt.  Have I mentioned that I HATE Bermuda grass?

One more surprise and it's not a good one.  Mr. Weatherman is predicting we're going to get a cold snap starting tonight and the next 3 days will be highs in the 40's with a dip tomorrow night near 36.  Gak!  Not what I wanted to hear now that we have tomatoes and peppers in the ground! We'll be covering everything tonight with tarps.

 

Is Spring EVER going to be here to stay?

I've shared thist post with this week's Down Home blog hop and Home Acre hop. Go check 'em out!