Yah, more rain!

Lengthy absence caused by vacations & spending too much time on computer at work!
My vegetable garden experienced a sudden growth spurt this past weekend, over the 4th of July. Returning from a three-day absence, it was surprising to see how so much growth had occurred over such a short time. Squash tendrils are beginning to snake through the garden, peas are nearly ready to pick, and more & more spinach is ready to harvest. Radishes will soon be ready, as will the greens I planted not long ago. The cabbage worms haven't found my cabbage yet this year which I'm marveling at - by this time they've always been chewing away for some time. Weeds aren't out of the ordinary so far even though we've had a bit of rain.
My raspberry plants in the north part of the backyard are steadily growing taller and will need to be trellised soon.
The milkweeds in the "shrub garden" are expanding their range and may need to be reined in a bit - maybe next year.
Tomatillos are my experiment this year, never having grown them before. The two plants that survived the seedling stage are doing better than my tomato plants.
Our nighttime temperatures this summer so far have seldom gotten out of the 40's, not great for peppers and tomatoes.
Another experiment I'm trying this year is to start batches of spinach & radishes & lettuce later in the growing season to see if I can get a harvest in late autumn, using a small hoop structure to protect them against the cold/frost. It'll be fun to see how that goes!

Owls, heron, deer

Went for a walk over in the Rio Grande State Wildlife Area the other night. The great horned owls were hooting from nearly every direction - I probably heard four to six individuals. At one point, I was walking on entrance road to the wildlife area, and had a sudden urge to look up. A large great horned owl was sitting up in a tree about 20' off of the ground staring at me. My eyes felt riveted to hers/his. It was such a neat experience!
Then we saw the great blue heron that seems to like hanging out around the Empire Canal. Again, I wonder how it survives the winter.
And on the way home, strolling through the Veteran's Center, the deer were out on the lawn feeding and pooping (Caddy loves to eat the latter).
It has been fairly mild here during the day lately, in the 30s and 40s. Today, however, signaled a change in the weather with steady snow beginning around 11AM or so, and continuing through the evening, at least. Mountains (eastern San Juans) are getting hit hard with two to five feet of snow! Blizzard warning in effect for the mountains, and Highway 160 over Wolf Creek Pass was closed at 6PM today due to poor driving conditions.

Flicker at the birdfeeder

Last weekend a pair of flickers appeared in the backyard - one female and one male. They even attempted to perch on the finch feeder perches, and looked pretty funny while doing so.
Most of the yard is still snow-covered but with temperatures some days in the mid-30s, it won't be for long.
Nights have been in single digits, both above and below 0.
Snow up in the mountains is piling up quickly; we've had a few days of high-quality skiing and snowshoeing already so early in the season.

Frozen water barrels and everything else

I've been absent for a while for work, and have returned to water barrels that have thick layer of ice on top. It probably would be a good idea to empty them or I'm going to suffer cracked barrels. Nighttime temperatures for the past week+ have been in the low to mid single-digits, and highs in the 40s. There is still snow left in all shaded areas from the snowfall we had over a week ago. I'm sure the soil is drying out already, and the forecast through Thanksgiving is more continued dry conditions.
The sparrows and a couple chickadees are attacking the suet outside.
A great blue heron has been hanging out over at the Empire Canal, and deer are making a strong showing at the Home Lake Veteran's Center next door. Our front yard has small piles of deer scat; that's their calling card from eating the fallen crab apples from this fall. T'was a great crop of apples.
We alpine skiied at Wolf Creek last Sunday, and conditions were excellent--they couldn't have been any better, remarkable for November 15. Though there were a few covered stumps and rocks, their presence paled next to the amount & quality of the fresh snow, and few people.

New alpaca poop

Buckets & buckets of alpaca poop to nourish my compost and gardens! I made a trip today to the corral of co-workers who raise alpacas. It had been a while since I'd been there, and there's an addition of a couple more poop-producing critters since my last visit.

A convenient feature of alpacas & llamas is that they concentrate their poop versus scattering it all over the corral, so it's fairly easy to fill up a few wheelbarrow loads in a short time span. The poop was mixed with a little straw (great addition), and I think was also wetted by the animals' urine. That too is a good additive for the compost-heating process.

To mark the acquisition of fresh manure, I turned the contents of my Earth Machine, and added some new manure mixed with old grass clippings and a bunch of leaves. With the addition of water & time, I should see a pretty good jump in temperature in a few days. I also emptied the contents of my tumbler composter since it was mostly finished, sifted it, and then put it on my rearranged raised beds and the tomato bed. Then I added a bunch of alpaca poop, old grass clippings, leaves, and water and spun it a few times.

Alpaca/llama manure is not extremely high in nitrogen; its carbon/nitrogen ratio is between 15/1 to 25/1. Compare that to poultry and rabbit manure which can have a ratio of 4/1; it's extremely high in N and can really heat up a compost pile when mixed with a bunch of carbon, or brown, items. But my experience both in Wisconsin and here is that it's not as easy to acquire quantities of poultry and rabbit manure, as it is that from larger, hooved animals like horses, cows, and llamas/alpacas. Alpaca/llama manure can also be directly mixed in with garden soil with little concern for harming plants; this practice is not recommended for higher N manures.

Monarch caterpillar is back!

Last year I didn't have any Monarch caterpillars come to my purposely-planted milkweed patch. T'was very disappointing. But tonight I went out to the milkweed to do the usual inspection of the undersides of the leaves, and what do I see?! A very juvenile caterpillar munching away! It seems pretty late in the summer, and if history runs true in the case o f past butterfly/caterpillar metamorphases(?) I've experienced and been fortunate enough to view here in my garden, this little creature will not make it to the chrysalis & then butterfly stage before cold temperatures set in. I'm going to try to faithfully track its progress & growth as August & September continue.
I wonder why the Monarch butterflies seem to wait until so late in the season to deposit their eggs. Actually, I haven't even seen any Monarch butterflies here in my yard anywhere this season, so I suppose I should be somewhat surprised to see the caterpillar. They are more than welcome, and I wish I could help them extend their seemingly-limited lifespan.
I feel like I offer an oasis in the pesticide-desert when I see these little critters here.

Frost damage on August 9th ??!!!!

Holy cow! Got home Sunday evening from a weekend absence; went out into the garden to check up on stuff, and found frost damage on many squash leaves and a row of beans! What a shock & surprise that was! This is a first for my summers in this area - to have to be concerned about frost damage (thus, no output) this soon. Usually I wouldn't think about it a lot until early September.

I think a harbinger of this has been the cool nights we've had much of the summer; very few nights in the 50's, most in the 40's. And not high 40's either - many low 40's.

The photo to the right is of one of my summer squash with the frost-damaged leaves.

Everything else, except the one row of bush beans shown left, looks OK. At this point I don't know how much impact this will have on production. There are still lots of good, intact squash leaves; not sure the same can be said of the row of beans. They had just started producing small beans; this cold bout may slow that process down enough that production of fully grown beans won't happen.
Plus it takes a while for the plants to recover in the morning from such cool nights; that too will slow production.
The low temperature at our house August 9 (yesterday morning) was 36.5, this morning the low was 37.5. I suspect the actual low temperature 150' away (from the outdoor thermometer) in the vegetable garden was a little lower.

Onion bulblets planted

Tonight I planted the first garden plants of the season - about 40 or 50 small garden bulbs of Walla-Walla onions. They went into the newly sifted raised bed that I changed a little bit this year (extended in length and shrank in width, the latter to ease access). The planting instructions recommended each bulb be about 4-5" apart, and rows separated by about 10-12". Until I set up my drip irrigation system, they'll be hand-watered

about an inch a week.

The cool weather we've had the past couple of weeks slowed all growth down - the green shoots that had been coming up all over outside are just sitting in place, probably waiting for warm temperatures again.

Even the indoor seedlings aren't doing a whole lot; every day after work I rush into the plant room to see if anything shows noticeable growth - what I see is mostly NO. Maybe too cool? Seems like in the past there's been a visible spurt of growth not long after they're transplanted into bigger pots.

More patience is needed!

Wildlife woke up today!

Saw the local fox tonight for the first time in months! On my evening dog walk it was warm enough not to wear a jacket or vest, for the first time since last fall. Sooooo warm. Home Lake has lost almost all its ice; remaining are only two big soggy-looking ice sheets out near the middle. Tonight truly felt like spring, though astronomical spring (i.e., the vernal equnox, or March 20) is still a few days away.
Though astronomical spring is yet to come, the onset of meteorological spring has already passed - see definition of the spring season below from the Glossary of Meteorology (underline emphasis mine):

spring—The season of the year composing the transition period from winter to summer; the vernal season, during which the sun is approaching the summer solstice.
In popular usage and for most meteorological purposes, spring is customarily taken to include the months of March, April, and May in the Northern Hemisphere, and September, October, and November in the Southern Hemisphere. Except in the Tropics, spring is a season of rising temperatures and decreasing cyclonic activity over continents. In much of the Tropics, neither spring nor fall is recognizable, and in polar regions, both are very short-lived.

ENJOY THE SPRING, "WEATHER" ASTRONOMICAL OR METEOROLOGICAL!

Icy sheen on all snow surfaces

It feels like an abnormal January weather-wise here, but I just looked back at my temperature records for the past four years (January '06 through January so far) and it's not that abnormal. I'm aware that a scant three or four years of records means little, but it's still fun comparing year to year. No averages calculated yet - that'll be next.
In January '06 we had mostly 30s and 40s as our daytime temps, and single digits below zero all the way up to 34 degrees for nighttime temperatures.
In January '07 my outdoor wireless thermometer bottomed out once (-21.9, can't believe it bottoms out at that temperature!) and only five nights were above zero. Daytime temperatures ranged from 11 degrees to above 40.
In January '08 temperatures were very similar to last year, with the thermometer bottoming out twice, and daytime temperatures were in exactly the same range as '07.
This year is wienie compared to the past two Januarys. Thermometer has not come close to bottoming out - the lowest has been -11.1. Our daytime temps have not gone below 20. Personally I'd rather have blistering cold than what we have, though this year is still better than having bare ground showing. Still too cold to ride the bike to work, though.
And as today's blog title says - the thawing and re-freezing we've had nearly daily has made all snow-covered surfaces look as shiny as a bald pate.