Why not be Amazed!

King Alfred Daffodils

"It's the most wonderful time of the year," was really written for the wrong season. It really should be a Spring song (of which they are depressingly few) rather than a Christmas song of which there really are plenty. Besides, Spring celebrates that other magical season, Easter. Spring brings with her all the hope that's been pent up for the winter. Everyone who has planted a bulb or bush last Fall has been waiting for this.



Parrot Tulip

Bloodroot


















Pulmonaria















Wood Anemone





















Hybrid Narcissus































Copyright 2010 by the Stargeazer












Helleborus

Why Are You So Skeptical?

Gardening Time has Begun









GARDEN - Get At Raking Dirt Evenly Now.

It is that time again and it has come so early. Even with that you just can't predict what you're going to see in the garden this time of year. Whether you're checking out the pansies, the daffodils or the blood-root you never know what you might see.

Even the flower buds on the fruit trees are breaking open and that might spell disaster for the fruit crop. If we get a hard frost it will kill the flower buds and that means no fruit. And no fruit means no fruits of our labours. All the maintenance of the fruit trees will be just that, maintenance.

Sour cherries come on quickly and need to be pitted before being frozen.

We really enjoy making our own apple sauce and cider or freezing apple slices from the Lodi apple in August for those late Fall apple pies. Pears are tricky to pick at just the right ripeness but keen observation and perseverance reward the grower.

So, it's hard not to be skeptical when such odd things are going on all around. I don't believe we will get a fruit crop this year no matter how much we wish it. This year may be an anomaly but this may also be another situation influenced by Global Warming.

But it's hard not to be skeptical about so many things going on today.

But, I am not skeptical about a Conservative cabinet minister going rangy over a simple security check. I am not skeptical about her husband, a former MP trying to peddle his influence, such as it may be, to friends and associates from his wife's Parliament Hill office.. No skepticism here about that.

You may be skeptical about the garden gnomes you see here. I may be brought to wondering what was in my pre-dinner Scotch and skeptical about the reputed origins of the liquid but I am not at all skeptical about the shame and disrepute these people bring to an institution which, for the most part is made of honest , hard-working and well-meaning people.

Why Are You So Flightly?

Living in the country puts one through a particular experience city-dwellers don't usually have to face. This is the scourge know as CLUSTER FLIES. As the name implies, when conditions are right  the sun heats windows, doors, frames and trim on the warm days of False Spring and Indian Summer,  Hundreds of flies emerge from wherever they happen to have been hiding  and buzz around  on windows in huge clusters.  During the day when they emerge their metabolism seems to accelerate so much that most are dead before afternoon tea.Then there's the problem of cleaning up all those dead and many not-so-dead  flies. Usually the vacuum cleaner does a good job of that.


For the first time, a few years ago, we had virtually no cluster flies for at least two seasons in a row.  Instead we had hundreds of Ladybugs or as they are more properly called, ladybird beetles. But it seems that these benign and even friendly looking beetles are an imported species run amok on this continent after some well-meaning entomologist set them loose on some unsuspecting prey.  Apparently it is possible to tell the foreign species  from the domestic by the number of spots on its back. I have seen beetles with 0, 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10 or more spots and I don't have the foggiest notion which might be the domestic variety. There was one that seemed to respond to "bonjour" but that could have been domestic or continental. It is apparent though, that when the beetles are around the flies are not or at least the flies appear in much, much smaller numbers. It seems that the beetles do the job for which they were imported, to eat the eggs and larvae of the pests. Purists would say that all the foreign beetles should be rounded up and deported  but they should be welcomed and encouraged with  a hearty "bon appetite!" Anything that helps control those cluster flies is welcome in my country.


Copyright 2010 The Stargeazer

Why Are You So Disappointed?

False Spring

"April is the cruelest month," T.S. Eliot wrote in his 1922 poem, The Wasteland. Eliot did not know about global warming so it is only possible to speculate what he may have thought of, "March is the cruelest month." Whatever the month surely its cruelty is in what it seems to promise, a warm sunny Spring  but then rips away just as we begin to savour it. 

The snowdrops are  just about open at the base of the red maple. The silver maples have that reddish haze over their crowns. 
Crocus and daffodils near the south end of thee house reach for the warmth that is both collected and reflected by the stones of the foundation. Robins are finding worms slowly creeping out of their thawing tunnels.Boots and parka have been moved to the hall closet and have been replaced with leather shoes on the mat and a windbreaker on the coat rack by the door. The windshield scraper is in the trunk along with the empty container of windshield washer fluid. All these and temperatures in the mid-to-high teens are sure and certain signs of spring that have been with us for at least four or five days now. And the snow is virtually gone! The thermostat has even been turned back a few degrees.


Then  you wake and feel chilled. It's dark still since Daylight Savings Time just started a few days ago. But looking at the window blind there seems to be more light  coming in around the edges than there should be. If you don't look it could be that the 10 centimeters of snow aren't really there. You don't need more than slippers and a windbreaker to go out to get the scraper and washer fluid. That snow is really cold on the feet as you try to get to the car so it can warm up a bit.  The robins are at the bird feeder making do with sunflower seeds and millet. All the would-bloom flowers are covered in that white blanket.


It was just one of Nature's cruelties, False Spring, those five days of hope. It doesn't matter what month it strikes, March or April. At least each False Spring brings us that much closer to the real thing 

Copyright 2010 The Stargeazer