January 27, 2014

plant shelves are up!

Today I assembled the lights for my seedling shelves. I searched and found the light holders in the shed, hung them on the shelves and added 4 new plant lights. To start the process, I put my little sweet potato sprouts on one of the shelves. My first sowing should be mid-February – 2 more weeks – when I plant my onion seeds. Don’t know if I’ll be able to wait that long….

January 25, 2014

January larder

I have a pretty minimal larder this year. Mostly because I spent more time cleaning the house and seeding the grass so we could sell our house last summer. The good news is – we have a beautiful new home. And the bad news – I have to go to the grocery store a lot more than I’d like. I have a good supply of garlic – I got that crop in the ground before we started the home-selling stuff. Its really nice, with big cloves and holding fine (even…

January 19, 2014

American robin in the snow

January 18, 2014

snow on my future garden

That clearing in the center is where my new garden will be. I can imagine a rows of vegetables, a large bed of tomato plants, lots of potatoes, roses climbing on an arch, all sorts of greens ….

January 16, 2014

fox!!

A red fox walked through my backyard today not 20 feet from the window where I was. It was heading toward the chicken coop. I wish I’d gotten a picture as it was a beautiful animal, but I jumped up and ran yelling “Stay away from my chickens!” Now that the local wildlife has found my hens, I’m wondering now if I should add that layer of chicken wire I’d been meaning to add at the base of the run to protect against digging predators. The main predator of chickens…

January 6, 2014

cuteness

How can you get any cuter than a tufted titmouse?

January 6, 2014

BTW, no eggs yet…

January 5, 2014

more birds at my feeder

I took pictures of a few more birds at my backyard feeders today. A song sparrow, house sparrow, downy woodpecker, mourning dove and a chickadee. Added to the 11 species I saw yesterday, that’s 15 total. I think that’s almost all of the birds I commonly see here at my new house in Lincoln MA. Other common ones that I didn’t see this weekend are American robins and white-throated sparrows, though I suppose neither of these are feeder birds. I did see a big red-tailed hawk hunting in the yard…

January 5, 2014

fruit tree planning

I’m working on deciding how many fruit trees I’ll have room for and what varieties to get. I’d like to get a peach, a pie cherry and several apple trees. Along with the peach and the cherry, I think I’ll have room for 3-5 apple trees. I don’t know whether to plant dwarfs, so I can spray, pick and prune them without a ladder, or semi-dwarfs, which I think are hardier, longer-lived and produce more fruit. From my quick measuring of the space, it looks like I have room for…

January 3, 2014

birds at the feeders after the blizzard

I filled the feeders this morning and the birds went crazy! I’ve never seen so much action and so many different types of birds. We got about 10 inches of snow in the blizzard that came through yesterday and last night. Less than the 2+ feet some areas near us got. But the birds here were hungry! I counted 11 different types of birds: blue jay, Northern cardinal, Carolina wren, black-capped chickadee, chipping sparrow, American goldfinch, house finch (or purple finch?), slate-colored junco (also called dark-eyed junco), white-breasted nuthatch, red…

weeks and counting until my last spring frost

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