Around the house lately

Started by Paul Hoskins, May 18, 2020, 02:30:54 AM

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Paul Hoskins

I haven't been able to download pictures from my camera this month because windows 10 made changes in my puter & I can't see good enough to sort things out even if I knew how to do it. The tiny neighbor lady next door got me back in business Saturday.. She said they did the same thing to her. Windows 10, Microsoft & Google all suck. That's my most delicate description of all of them.

Anyhow, I've been trying to do a bit of gardening in spite of all the dratted rain. The bew 4 foot tiller I bought last spring hasn't even been used yet, It's still sitting on a skid   out back. I discovered it's too heavy for the little Kubota tractor. ( anyone wanna buy a tiller?) ......I found another 4 foot tiller a  week ago that is much lighter & fits up to the Kubota like it was made for it. It weighs 375 pounds compared to the other one that weighs 600 pounds. The ground was a bit wet but I  tilled the garden in 30 minutes. That's 25 x 23 yards. It used to take me all day using the Troy Bilt tiller. A few days later I tilled all of it again in 20 minutes. Looks really good & the ground is chewed up soft & smooth. I'm just getting too old & bummed up to use a tiller any more.

I still have the old 318 JD tractor. It has a sleeve hitch for various gardening implements but it's too light for much gardening chores. I bought part of an old horse drawn cultivator plow at the local flea market. All the wood parts had rotted away & I made a new beam from heavy wall square 2x2 steel tubing & a hitch for the sleeve hitch. I also bought a plow point  for laying off rows for 2 dollars. I removed the narrow cultivator point from the center and attached the furrow point. Turned the 2 outside points upside down & now I can lay off a 25 yard row in less than 30 seconds. Used to take around 6 or 8 minutes using  a garden hoe.

We have 4 dozen tomato plants out & 18 pepper & 12 cabbage plants  in the ground now. Next will be zuchinni, beans & corn & that'll most likely be our garden this year. The little lady next door wants to put out some tomatoes & she can use the rest of the garden for whatever she wants. Good kid & super nice. No wonder I love the little punk. .......Paul H

gitano

Wow! That Cherokee is NICE! Gonna be a heckuva 'garden'!

Paul
Be nicer than necessary.

Paul Hoskins

Thanks, Paul. I love the Cherokee too.

More stuff around here. Lots of birds nesting around the house. Robins, mocking birds, tree swallows, song sparrows, Carolina wrens and a variety of woodpeckers. The redheads are back & feeding babies, yellow shafted flickers (yellow hammers) downy's, hairy woodpeckers and red bellied woodpeckers. Saturday the baby robins bailed out of the nest. Muffin & I were sitting on the front porch & I spotted one of them in Muffin's vines on a trellis by my elbow. I can't see to take pictures very well any more & had  Muffin take a couple pictures of it. Ugly little varmint. Lousy driver too. It decided to fly to the driveway but crashed into the side of Muffin's Pathfinder. This morning it came back to the trellis while we were out there. It tried to fly to the driveway again & did pretty well till it got there but forgot to keep flapping it's wings & dropped about 4 feet to the ground in a belly buster. It's takeoff is pretty good but it's landing technique needs work. ......The tree swallows will be feeding young in a few days.

Most of the rose breasted grosbeaks have passed thru on their northern migration. There's always a few stragglers. Usually the males are first with females following but this year they seem to be together. I suspect males are first to establish territory but I could be wrong. They seem to be very social. I'll attach a few bird pictures of some of them.    .......Paul H

gitano

#3
That's a great variety of birds you have around your place, Paul!

Robins do fledge awfully soon, but the chicks grow so fast that they outgrow the nest! They have JUST started nesting here. We'll be seeing those clumsy fledglings here soon.

It's nice to hear the sandhill cranes calling in the morning and evening, but the variety of birds that CONSISTENTLY come to the feeder is relatively small: Northern juncos, black-capped and boreal chickadees, and nuthatches are the daily (hourly, really) visitors. Magpies drop by now and then. Hairy and downy woodpeckers now and then. Gray jays a few times a year, and of course robins, but they never come to the feeder. The yard is their 'feeder'. The cranes and swans fly over and nest nearby. Wilson's snipe nest in the swamp just a hundred yards north of my house and I enjoy their mating/territorial calling. And of course we have the yellow-rumped and Audubon's warblers. The Wilson's warbler that I posted pictures of earlier has not been seen since. They must have just been passing through headed north. Also, bald eagles show up every spring checking out our cottonwood trees as potential nest sites, but never choose them. I think it's because there is too much activity nearby. (Thank goodness! An eagle nest on your property draws the Feds. I don't want or need that kind of riff-raff around.) Occasionally, white-crowned sparrows stop by for a visit, and we have had pine grosbeaks, but I haven't seen a grosbeak in years. Oh yeah, the great horned and great gray owls show up in breeding season (February). Last, but not least are the grouse. They're a relatively rare sight. Ruffs in the spring when the chicks start running around with the hens, and an occasional spruce grouse in the fall. But I haven't seen a spruce grouse for several years now.

So the variety 'is there', but only on an annual basis. On a daily basis, the two chickadee species, the two woodpecker species, the juncos and nuthatches are the only regulars, with the robins wandering the yard and the occasional warbler flitting by.

Paul
Be nicer than necessary.

sakorick

Really looks great. You are going to have a bountiful harvest! I'm envious!
Talk to yourself. There are times you need expert advice.

Paul Hoskins

Paul, we do have a wide variety of birds here year round. Apparently I'm the only one for miles around that feed them daily. I quit feeding "wild bird seed: because most of it is cheap seeds that few birds will eat. Seems half of it is sugar cane seed & few birds will eat it. Cane is used to fill half a 50 pound bag & then the companies put in a mixture of "bird food." What the birds won't eat grows & becomes weeds in your lawn. We don't have many waterfoul type birds but we don't have ponds around the house. Local farms have livestock watering ponds & geese & ducks use them. After I cut all the big water maples in the yard down, we no longer have the horned owls. Haven't heard the little screech owls in years either. Junco's only show up around the first of December & bail out in early spring heading north again. ......I got a kick out of the pair of mockingbirds today terrorizing the blackbirds & bluejays over the suet blocks. They put on a show attacking anything interfering with their feeding babies suet. One of the most nimble & acrobatic birds I know of. Much like a roadrunner battling a snake. ......Paul H

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