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Spent most of Saturday and much of Sunday poking at the computer. Such a pile of digital to-dos! It did involve luxuries, like ordering take out for our Tuesday night, post biweekly house cleaning tradition.
I also spent more time on the stacks and stacks of digital backlog. All my rain entries are up to date in the national database. (I'm NC-CH-41 https://www.cocorahs.org/ViewData/ListDailyPrecipReports.aspx ) Saturday i tried to use the Jupyter Notebooks to help me massage my data -- identify where i needed to do multiday reports and where i had zero rain amounts for daily reports -- but i couldn't quite manage to sort out the appropriate manipulations. It would be nice to sort out how to do that.
Trees are changing. The dogwoods have a dusky red coming on (i am so very aware of their failing health). Tulip poplars, that begin dropping leaves in late July, now have a branch or two turning yellow. The cherries and elms loose their leaves with little fan fare, and are noticeably thinning. I'm noticing the green sprouts of bittercress, chickweed, and the annual bluegrass: i know this weekend is critical for getting some fescue seed out.
Sunday i managed to go through the orchard looking for all the stiltgrass, weed whack it out, and scatter new seed. Yesterday i scattered fertilizer around the orchard and fertilizer plus seed in the front, trusting that the rain from today would help it all make good contact. If it wasn't for the stilt grass, i think i might be happy to have the free Poa annua (Annual bluegrass) in the winter and the Eleusine indica (which we call goose grass) in the summer. Plus the Indian strawberries (where Indian means from India not native American) and clover. But perennial grasses are nice, and my hope is to someday have the native rosette grass, Dichanthelium laxiflorum, everywhere. Until then, yes, i committed the suburban ritual of lawn maintenance.
I tried mowing in the dusk. Probably not the best idea.
There are still blueberries ripening on one of the young bushes. I am somewhat mystified by the (lack of) productivity this year. I will continue to believe it was the early season -- the March heatwave that brought on an early tree canopy that shaded more of the area than usual plus the uncommonly cool May. I do suspect that disease reduced the tomatoes and that i may need to be a little more assertive in increasing soil fertility. I didn't have every cucurbit killed off by powdery mildew, but they were strangely lacking in female flowers.
I am thankful for yet another year where growing my own food isn't that critical. Plenty to learn.
I also spent more time on the stacks and stacks of digital backlog. All my rain entries are up to date in the national database. (I'm NC-CH-41 https://www.cocorahs.org/ViewData/ListDailyPrecipReports.aspx ) Saturday i tried to use the Jupyter Notebooks to help me massage my data -- identify where i needed to do multiday reports and where i had zero rain amounts for daily reports -- but i couldn't quite manage to sort out the appropriate manipulations. It would be nice to sort out how to do that.
Trees are changing. The dogwoods have a dusky red coming on (i am so very aware of their failing health). Tulip poplars, that begin dropping leaves in late July, now have a branch or two turning yellow. The cherries and elms loose their leaves with little fan fare, and are noticeably thinning. I'm noticing the green sprouts of bittercress, chickweed, and the annual bluegrass: i know this weekend is critical for getting some fescue seed out.
Sunday i managed to go through the orchard looking for all the stiltgrass, weed whack it out, and scatter new seed. Yesterday i scattered fertilizer around the orchard and fertilizer plus seed in the front, trusting that the rain from today would help it all make good contact. If it wasn't for the stilt grass, i think i might be happy to have the free Poa annua (Annual bluegrass) in the winter and the Eleusine indica (which we call goose grass) in the summer. Plus the Indian strawberries (where Indian means from India not native American) and clover. But perennial grasses are nice, and my hope is to someday have the native rosette grass, Dichanthelium laxiflorum, everywhere. Until then, yes, i committed the suburban ritual of lawn maintenance.
I tried mowing in the dusk. Probably not the best idea.
There are still blueberries ripening on one of the young bushes. I am somewhat mystified by the (lack of) productivity this year. I will continue to believe it was the early season -- the March heatwave that brought on an early tree canopy that shaded more of the area than usual plus the uncommonly cool May. I do suspect that disease reduced the tomatoes and that i may need to be a little more assertive in increasing soil fertility. I didn't have every cucurbit killed off by powdery mildew, but they were strangely lacking in female flowers.
I am thankful for yet another year where growing my own food isn't that critical. Plenty to learn.
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The wheat harvest here has been disastrous.
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