After a much more seasonal week the scurs set their sights on the third week in April. Will the cooler temperature trend continue or will we return to the St. Patrick’s Day heat wave? Starting Wednesday, partly cloudy with a slight chance of showers in the forenoon becoming mostly cloudy by afternoon. Highs 65 - 70 and lows around 45. Cloudy on Thursday with a good chance for showers especially in the daylight hours. Highs of 50 - 55 with lows of 35. Partly cloudy on Friday with highs of 50 - 55 and lows near 35. Partly cloudy Saturday with a slight chance of a shower. Highs around 55 and lows near 40. Sunday, partly cloudy a warming trend into next week. Highs of 60 and lows of 40 – 45. Mostly sunny on Monday with highs near 65 and lows of 45. Mostly sunny and warmer with highs of 65 - 70 and lows of 50. The normal high for April 21st is 60 and the normal low is 38. The scurs will be having a weenie roast with all the sticks and branches from the highs winds now that the trash fire police have lifted the burning ban.
Progress in the fields was localized with some completing corn planting, some getting a start and some holding off. Who is right? Everyone potentially. With ideal corn planting dates from now until the end of the month, everyone has a chance to cash in on our good fortune in the weather department. Rainfall has been more abundant especially to our west but with all the showers added together, it tends to average out. It has continued the tendency of spotty rains with accumulations of an inch or more being the exception and not the rule. Sunday’s sky and weather were definitely threatening in appearance although when looking at some of the suspicious low hanging clouds they were scud clouds with no rotation. On Friday there was rain off to our west that had a dickens of a time getting here as the air was so dry, much of it was evaporating as the moist air was meeting the drier air over the top of us. Now we have overcome that to some extent and it will be interesting to see if we’ve primed the pump or merely given ourselves some hope that timely rains will come.
The spotty rains did allow me to get the rest of the early garden planted. The potatoes didn’t make it in the ground on Good Friday but did this past Saturday along with Don’s onions, some sugar snap peas, lettuce and a packet of free radish seed. Oh, I’m sure I paid for it in the order somehow but it’s always fun to plant something you wouldn’t have otherwise tried. That’s part of what makes raising a garden so entertaining. You never know how it’ll turn out until you plant it. Take the first planting of radishes for instance. Planted the day after St. Patrick’s on ground with a south facing slope that has countless loader buckets of composted sheep manure, they emerged in less than 5 days. A slam dunk to have radishes in 23 – 25 days just like it said on the package, right? You are wrong, brassica breath. They responded negatively to the cooling temperature trend and the frost bleached the leaves to the point that it looked like they’d been sprayed with something. They’re alive, but in order to truly thrive they need to string together more than a day or two at a time with high temperatures over 60 degrees.
Frost did a number on some of the trees and other plants around the yard too. The rhubarb was a little droopy but has since recovered to its former grandeur. Likewise the apples appeared to have taken it better than initially thought as did the pears. There will be some fruit mortality but likely there will be some fruit set. Some of the trees really didn’t bloom that much this spring anyway after bearing heavily last year coupled with a dry late summer and fall. The wildlife may be the biggest loser in all this and it may translate farther than just our yard. The bur oak tree was just starting to leaf out and flower when the frost hit. All the leaves the size of a squirrel’s ear froze off and within days were crispy reminders that it was seriously cold. The story was similar on the northern red oak and pin oak although there are signs on some branches there may be some buds that weren’t completely damaged. On some larger trees, it appears in the upper stories that the frost didn’t hurt them as much. In other words the oaks may have taken a hit and that could translate into fewer acorns available for things like squirrels, deer and wild turkeys.
It’s doubtful the birds and squirrels will suffer too much at the ranch. The ear corn gathered last fall was virtually untouched so it should keep fine until it’s needed. The birds of course always have sunflower and thistle seed to snack on so they’ll be fine too. Speaking of birds, some new arrivals here in the yard as well as by the pond. A Brown Thrasher was doing his best Jimmy Page impression, hidden in the leaves atop of one of the poplar trees. Actually I think Jimmy Page probably does a brown thrasher impression with his guitar but I digress. A pair of Sandhill cranes made a brief visit, their eerily primitive sounding call echoing from the hollow below the hill. There was one more egg in our pet Kestrel’s nesting box at the edge of the pond. It appears five is all she’ll have. That’ll be plenty of little mouths to feed once they hatch. I wouldn’t want to be a small rodent out in the open during that timeframe.
Ruby had another big weekend as it was time for her annual pilgrimage to the vet’s office for vaccination and heartworm checkup day. There were doggies and owners of all kinds and it was good for her to get that exposure. She’ll remember it’s necessary to behave and listen in that scenario even more the next time out. Ruby did about as well as one might expect a two-year-old Border Collie to do. Her attention span isn’t perhaps what it could be, but there were other dogs that wanted to play and it’s tough to resist that urge with an active dog. Perhaps the best part of that day was that Ruby got to meet Agnes, one of my faithful readers. While she didn’t look like I’d told her she would, Ruby liked her anyway. On Sunday as a reward for all of the good behavior, Ruby spied leftover French toast and pancakes from another Lions Pancake Feed. She gobbled the first pancake down, tail wagging, sure in the knowledge that there would be many more to devour over the course of the week.
See you next week…real good then.