Unexpected surprises
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| Bittercress. Exact species unknown. |
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| Crocus. Is the plural "Crocii"? |
Cutting the grass
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| Bamboo. The ladder was used to clear gutters but was not needed to cut bamboo. |
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| Between 3% and 5% of what I need to cut. A lot of tomato stakes and fishing poles there. |
Walnut roots
Last fall I had a gentleman use a trencher to run between the tree-line (which is mostly walnuts) and the orchard. It takes the roots several years to die and they keep pumping out juglone. I assume it is in reduced quantities as their metabolism runs out of reserves, but I don't know that.
Yesterday's "stem count" were one grafted Silk Hope mulberry, one grafted Illinois Everbearing mulberry and and five grafted Harrow Sweet pears over Pyrus betulifolia roots. I also stuck about 30 Salix purpurea cuttings on the windward side of a faint depression on an east-facing slope.
I cut scion from a male Morus rubrum, Lehman's Delight persimmon.
Raccoons
I had a live trap in the barn (Eaton Rapids) for a month-and-a-half. During that time I caught three possum and no raccoons. I suspect that we had a die-off, either because of Canine Distemper or due to our brutal January.
I did see raccoon tracks in the mud at the bottom of the Hill Orchard. I set some traps.
Raccoons are devastating to my young mulberry trees. They climb out on the limbs to get the sweet morsels and tear them off the trunk. People growing fruit where there are bears have the same problems. Bears love apples and peaches.
Do any of my readers who feed birds have any sure-fire ways to stop raccoons from shinnying up the pole? Stove pipe? Collars/barrel-top type blockers?
Bonus images (distribution of blood pressure by age)
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| Men, systolic (larger or first number) |
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| Men, diastolic (smaller or second number) |
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| Women, systolic |
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| Women, diastolic |
I was conversing with a gentleman of about 65 years of age and he told me that his doctor kept talking to him about his blood pressure. He claimed that he had a BP of 230...which sounds unlikely. I wonder if he was confusing cholesterol numbers with BP.
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| Percent of study group, siloed by age and sex, and class of drug therapy they were receiving |
You don't say what kind of pole. Sometimes just liberally applying Vaseline to 2-3 vertical feet of the pole (a couple feet from the ground) deters crawling things from climbing. This is one time it is okay to be liberal because it works better. Surprisingly, it works after dust, rain storms and blowing grass, dirt etc. It may last more than a year and you will probably have to wipe it off.
ReplyDeletesam
I need to put something around the trees while they are young. Stovepipe is not cheap but it is removable. Flashing is cheaper but not as convenient.
DeleteSO, is three feet the optimum number or can I use a two-foot length with the bottom edge a foot from the ground so they cannot stretch and reach up to where they can grip?
My very-slightly educated opinion: a systolic of 230 would be very bad, like admission to administer drugs bad and also a whopper of a headache. So, yeah, probably cholesterol.
ReplyDeletecoons? i ended up putting an electric fence wire around mine. one odd thing though. after the wire stopped all but one coon i ended up putting one of those $1 solar lights from china-mart at the base of the pole. works like magic ?
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