Gardening With The BeesWatch our garden (and knowledge) grow!

We have snow again. Seventeen inches of the stuff. I was too depressed to take an updated photo of the yard, but just imagine solid WHITE and 3-foot snowbanks and you’re nearly there. We already had the plow off the truck for what we thought was the last time this season. Little did we know. Needless to say, this will set our gardening back a few weeks. Sigh.

Today’s Report from the National Weather Service:

“A late-season winter storm produced heavy, wet snow and occasional thundersnow across parts of central and northeast Wisconsin on March 22-23, 2011.  During the two-day period, many locations reported over a foot of snow.  Green Bay officially recorded 17.8 inches.  That’s the highest snowstorm total in over 120 years of weather records; only two storms produced more snow (29.0″ in March 1888 and 23.1″ in January 1889).  In addition, this storm is the third one this season to produce 10 inches or more of snow in Green Bay, the first time that’s ever happened during a winter season.”

If you’re curious, click on the thumbnail to see more lovely details. I’ll think I’ll go seed shopping to improve my mood.

Today I heard the call of a mourning dove for the first time this season. I also saw FIVE chubby robins pecking around the backyard. Spring is on its way!

This has been a very wet spring and early summer so far here in Wisconsin. Wow! We haven’t had to manually water our garden a single time. I snapped these pics of the ditch near our driveway one evening after yet another rainstorm.

(First looking west, then looking east.)

Don’t look now, but the back of our house looks… not good.

A combination of unfinished siding, unfinished painting, unfinished landscaping, and a triple-access mound system makes the view a little rough. In an effort to improve the look of the mound system, but still allow pump-truck accessibility, I started the first steps of a natural visual barrier.

Removing sod is always a fun time. Because of this, I try to work it into all my yard projects. As done on other sod removal occasions, I continued to transfer all removed sod to the trench valley in hopes of someday filling in the shallow ravine left by a 2005-ish mound system installation.

In the process, I found a home for some donated hostas from friends. I repositioned the hose reel stones to better accommodate the spigot, and repositioned the circular stepping stones to make a path to the future dining patio.

Sadly, this is as far as I got in 2010. I hope to continue this endeavor in 2011.

I’ve been wanting a new mailbox post since the first day we looked at this property in 2007. The task finally reached the priority list today, and we picked up a pre-made post (saving us lots of time, not to mention it was on sale) and made it happen.

Thankfully, the old mailbox milk jug thing was not anchored in cement, so this made removal easier. Using a measuring tape, the hole was dug deeper, deeper, deeper, until the mailbox height was in compliance with USPS mailbox guidelines.

In standard fashion, I removed a layer of grass and brought in compost in preparation for a flower bed to cheer things up. I have morning glories sprouting, which will soon be ready to climb that new pole.

With the surprising 64-degree weather, I took a walk around the yard today with the dogs to see how things fared the winter months. Here are some observations:

• All five of our blueberry bushes were nibbled down to within an inch of the ground. Yikes! Stay tuned to hear if they come back. I’ll have to read up about protecting them from hungry creatures. I found it funny that whatever ate them completely ignored the forsythia plants interspersed among the blueberries.
• My tulips are already four inches high! Wow, last I looked they were just peeking out of the soil. Suddenly their wide, thick leaves are fully formed and reaching for sun. Likewise, the thin leaves of the daffodils have shot up around ten inches. The sunny warm location must be the trick. I greeted them all with smiles and removed stray twigs and bark to help them feel comfortable.
• No asparagus sprouts observed yet.
• Although no green buds yet, the first-year grape vines feel flexible. I hope they made it through their first winter in the ground.
• Need to decide if we will spray the fruit trees this year or let them be “organic”. The buds on the trees are definitely more obvious than last time I looked. Can easily see the bud size difference when comparing a pruned/fallen branch to a live one. Exciting!
• The irises are already back to life, with flat triangular spikes poking up all over.

Joy.

So the asparagus patch is looking rather rough.  I thought it about time that I weed and fertilize the bed properly.  Turns out it is a LOT of work!  Is anyone familiar with asparagus maintenance?  I need to investigate.

I was very pleased to find several wild rose bushes on our property this year.

Here is a photo of the one I found heading down the trail to the creek.  We found others up by the road near the apple trees.  They smell wonderful!

We spotted this nest situated inside a pallet on our bonfire wood pile.  I took the photo on the left on May 3rd.  The photo on the right was taken today, May 17th.  I’ll try to gently check in on them every few days.  Too cute!

Tonight Ryan spread all the remaining pine branch wood chips under the pine trees in our back yard.  Took a long time, but looks a lot better!  No sign of hostas yet.

This was a great use for these particular wood chips, because they would not be as attractive around flowers or bushes.  The pine needles and cones look natural here.