Oh, fie, you fickle Spring, you

[elainegrey]

It's just below freezing out there. Poor little green solar panels that have pushed through the heavy red clay. What'cha going to do?

I pondered thinning the salad mix, but decided that the taller sprouts (ooh, here's one with a real leaf!) would shelter the shorter.

I wish i could believe that many ticks were dying and all the sprouted stilt grass was withering -- i'd give up my (pop)corn for that. I don't think, though, that any of the three will be harmed. Or the salad sprouts, to tell the truth. I've not planted anything early per the charts for piedmont North Carolina, and perhaps the collards will even like the crisp weather.

The peonies -- one from the previous resident, one from Christine's maternal grandmother -- had set buds, so i've covered them up. And a friend had given me pepper sprouts: i covered those with domes from grocery cookies etc.

I'm not sure what's happening to the apple trees. They were butchered at some point -- topped -- and i pruned the snarl of water sprouts dramatically in early January. The leafing out is highly irregular, tufts of leaves in some spots, tight scales in others. I don't see anything like flower buds. I wonder about investing time in the trees, but i figure i can make mistakes on these trees before making them on new trees.

Thinking back to the corn, it's time to get my scare"crow" up. Except it's to scare deer. I don't think dog hair works, but i'm going to mulch the collards with a bag i collected yesterday. It might scare mice?

Comments

[randomdreams]

I have considered animatronic scarecrows that do some primitive motion-sensing.
If it freezes slowly, insects don't seem to mind. They have ways of coping with that. It's rapid freezes that kill them.

[elainegrey]

Being less handy, i pondered getting some used motion sensing holiday decorations -- eg: a light up cackling witch -- as part of the discouragement. Right now i have a tripod with a balanced cross arm with pie pans at the end which moves with a breeze. I have a helium balloon to add as well.

I think the motion activated sprinkler will be my first real investment (pie pans were hard to consider an investment.)

Oh, and i saw a great water driven scare crow somewhere: a pump filled a bucket on a counter balanced arm and, when full, the arm lowered, emptying the water into the pool, rising back up to be filled again. Need power for the pump, but could be interesting.

[randomdreams]

Yeah, motion-activated sprinkler really seems the most direct and quickly accessible tech solution to this.

There is a dipping crow that doesn't require power, but it can't lift anything. It's driven by the weight of evaporation, so takes extremely delicate balancing.

[amaebi]

Do you like peonies?

I have never planted any, but keep getting them along with houses.

[elainegrey]

I'm not sure that i do or don't. They're long lived and not invasive, so that's a plus. I have seeds to send you -- sorry for the long delay! I was making progress right when we were discussing it until a spider spooked me. I moved the seeds to where critters could exit and haven't quite gotten back to it. But it's on my list!

[amaebi]

That is so very kind of you! Thank you!