Monday, March 30, 2009

Pictureless Monday

On Blotanical, a brilliant collection of garden blogs, and an interesting, fun community, there is a tradition called "Wordless Wednesdays". It features lovely garden photos on each of the participating blogs. While I enjoy the beauty, I've not participated. My photos are not that good and I usually don't remember when I'm writing. So, in the spirit of Wordless Wednesdays, I am having a Pictureless Monday. There were some things today that I'd loved to have photographed. The camera somehow didn't make it out of the bag. So, I'll try to describe some of the bits, and you will have to use your imagination to fill in the details. I'm sure it will be lovely.

The birds were noticeable today. I think they really like all the ground we disturbed over the weekend. They didn't have much time at it yesterday because it rained most of the day, but today was beautiful. We had robins, red-winged black birds, grackles, starlings, sparrows, and pigeons all over the lawn. We also had a minor war going on at the blue bird house. A pair of sparrows were trying to take over the house. Mrs. Bluebird put up a valiant fight, and seems to have won for the time being. Mr. B didn't make much of an appearance. The soggy lower pasture was filled with black birds, kill-deer, and various small birds I couldn't identify from a distance. The sky was full of vultures, hawks, and crows. Everywhere I looked the birds were out and active. As I walked to the barn, I spied one bird that really brought a smile. The first of the barn swallows was perched on the wire as I walked by. We usually have around 20 pair nesting in the lower part of the barn. I love watching them swoop and dive for bugs.

Besides bird watching (which could have taken the whole day), we spent a lot of time prepping for the week. In the greenhouse it is planting time. Things were moved out of the propagator and soil was prepared for tomorrow. We will be filling it again. This time we will use mini blocks (about the size of a sugar cube). The propagation mat I have holds 5 flats. That is 250 plants. Using mini blocks I can fit 280 plants in a flat. That lets me put 1400 plants in the propagator at one time. Much better use of space. They germinate really fast because the little blocks stay the correct temp better than the big ones. Today we sifted the soil block mix so we had enough fine mix for the mini blocks. I'll have pictures of tomorrows activities.

Around the house we spent some time finishing some trim work, doing school, and ordering materials for the next stage of the potager construction.

It should be a fun, busy week.

3 comments:

Rosengeranium said...

Pictureless Monday! Brilliant!

Barbee' said...

The pictures were beautiful and so were the bird sounds.

jack-of-all-thumbs said...

Although I get to spend less time than I like home (and listening), the sounds of spring birds never fails to remind me of how lucky we are to have carved out our little niche in the country.

Thanks for the reminder.

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