Today I put my Mason and Leaf Cutter Bee larvae. I put the tubes in a box in the fall and keep them with my Dahlia tubers because their wintering requirements are similar. I finally ordered new bamboo tubes which I placed in the bottom of the box. Then I placed a piece of corrugated on top of them to divide the new ones from the old ones. After a length of time when I feel that everything that will hatch has hatched out, I will remove and set aside the old tubes from the top and add more new nesting tubes.
I transplanted my indeterminate tomato seedlings. They were sown ten days ago on April 1st and were just starting to show their first leaves.
When I checked the tray for water I noticed that one variety, my Amish friend Elsie's Tomatoes, which are very vigorous plants their whole lives, was sending roots through the drain holes. They were ready to be out of their baby cell.
They never look like much the first day, but give them three or four days and they will be off and running. When they are sending out their first leaves they are in a growth spurt and now they have plenty of room to root. Tomato plants respond very well to transplanting. In my opinion, it is better to bump them up gradually from small cells to small pots, then maybe a larger pot before they go out to the garden. I have heard it is true in house plants and am coming to believe it is also true for vegetable plants. They do not like their container size to change drastically. They would rather the stages were more gradual. If I had planted these babies in, let's say 6" wide pots, they would shock and stall their growth. Because Tomato plants send out little roots along the stem, they can be submerged quite deeply and they will send out more roots along the stem.
I have room in this tray for two more 6 packs. I plan to use these for Marigolds or maybe Lettuce. I have a difficult time discarding extra seedlings, so I left some in the seed tray under the light just in case one of the others doesn't thrive. The Dwarf Eagle Smiley plant was transplanted too. He has a buddy. A second seed (on the left) germinated in a much quicker and less dramatic fashion.
In other News...
I use this blog all of the time to figure out when something happened. Today will be known as "the day Big Bird flew through the neighbor's upstairs window."
I was in the house sort of napping when I heard what sounded like a van door slamming shut. You know, that sliding track sound that comes with UPS and some Amazon trucks.... 1980s minivans... wwrrrroooooshhhCRASH.
I noted it as being very loud and unusual, but we live close to a busy intersection and if I went out and investigated every weird sound I'd neve get any rest. About 20 minutes later our next door neighbor called in a fairly high state of agitation. She wanted us to come over and "have a look at the upstairs window. It's shattered all over the driveway." We knew her husband was away for the day but the situation wasn't making much sense over the phone and to be fair, it wasn't making much sense to her either.
The upstairs attic window was shattered. Below is a photo of the house from back when my husband lived there. We went over there and surenuf, there was glass on the driveway and the window pane was gone. She said she had heard a whooshcrash and thought maybe we had cut down a tree nearby. But it didn't sound right so she looked around the house inside and out. That was when she saw the glass. We went up in the attic expecting to find a dead bird up there. There was a lot more glass in the attic, a few drops of blood on the floor right below the window and a dozen or so big, black, breast feathers blowing around.
We cleaned up the mess. We took pictures with her phone for her insurance agent. My husband screwed a piece of plywood over the window. It was a double pane insulated window and there was nothing left of it. Glass was scattered across the attic in a twelve foot arc and I even picked one shard of it out of a rafter. But no sign of a bird. It had to be a BIG bird. There are only a few Christmas decorations in the attic and we panned a flashlight into every corner. There was no more blood or bird.
The feathers were black and wide with a metallic band. They looked sort of like turkey feathers. Google Image agreed. The first thing Google came up with was wild turkey too. But what the heck would a turkey be doing way up there? I could imagine that maybe a turkey vulture, which are common here, dove after a song bird that was scoping out the widow and flood light for a nesting spot. But even that seemed a little far fetched.
Later on, I was outside working on my bee nesting house and the neighbor's husband called me over. They had gone back over their security camera footage and they believed they had a picture of the culprit. The camera view didn't go up as high as the attic window, but it did catch a reflection in one of the lower windows of something standing in the driveway along the fence.
That there is a big ole wild turkey. With a beard.
What the hell was he thinking?
We walked around the driveway again looking for blood or feathers and didn't find a thing. Apparently Big Bird made it out alive. That's one lucky bird. And I think we were lucky too. No one needs a big, bloody turkey dying in their attic. It was nice to have photo evidence as an explanation. Quite frankly, I don't think the insurance agent would have believed the story without it. I mean how often does some one tell you "A wild turkey flew through my attic window and then disappeared."
No comments:
Post a Comment