Yay Summer!

[helwen]

Late Spring/Early Summer is such a busy time!

There's what you plan and what Mother plans :D

Did some trimming/thinning of some of the Apple trees. Lyle helped with some of it, and even so we won't get this year's marked work done. Still, some is better than none.

Greenhouse is now open at the west end so the greens won't roast. Doesn't stop them from trying to bolt, of course. Currently have enough greens that we're giving some to a young family that's helping out at our place from time to time, and I should get a bag of the Swiss Chard to another friend too. She loves the stuff, but also she makes up a bunch of soup for the folks fighting the pipeline.

Jennie and Gavin (parent of young family) helped with getting the rest of the tent poles out of the barn and into the trailer, as well as getting the Ginger plants from the living room - and the table they were on - onto the porch. I moved most the rest of the Ginger and other plants in the house onto the porch the next day or so. Only the black Petunias and the Lemongrass are left but I need to make a little space first... might be time for the Rosemaries to go outside :)

And of course dealing with what tent caterpillar nests we could was in there somewhere...Jennie spotted some in one of the branches we were trimming down for parts and then we were looking at the trees to find any nests that were still in the trees. I started up a fire in the fire pit and we put all the nests we could reach into it. Lyle helped with some of that, as neither J nor I are adept with the pole saw.

Super tired yesterday but figured I'd trim a couple of the cut branches, break some of what we have down into different sizes for trellis/fence-building materials. Ended up only doing one, because it had tiny tent caterpillars crawling around on it. *sigh* So instead of an easy clip-and-sort, I had to examine every piece I cut and kill any caterpillars I found (yay for wearing gloves).

And, I managed to get some fiddlehead (Ostrich) ferns, too. Should have been looking a few days ago, but at least I got some.

Ache all over, but doing better today despite that -- yay for more than 5-6 hours of sleep.

Comments

[oakmouse]

Do you get jays in your area? Because if you can encourage them to come to your land, they LOVE tent caterpillars and will gleefully tear the tents open and eat the contents like a little kid going for a bag of Cheetos. When we lived in Maryland we had no worries at all about tent caterpillars; the jays ate them ALL, every last one, within a week or so of the tents first appearing, and that was it for the year.

[helwen]

We have some Blue Jays up here. Not sure how to attract them, but I'll look it up. Thanks!

[helwen]

Ah. Apparently sunflowers attract them - well, that was easy :D We'll be planting some this year anyway.

[oakmouse]

Yes, they like the seeds. They also love peanuts, so if you scatter some sunflower seeds and peanuts around the trees with tent caterpillars that might just attract some jays to the area for snacks. (Might get squirrels too, but jays have good radar for their favorite foods.)

[helwen]

Great idea, thanks!