Several cacti are now blooming, including an Old Man of Peru and a very spiny Prickly Pear lookalike. The local Prickly Pears have many buds, but have not yet bloomed.

This has been a big year for aphids. Many of the early blooms on the roses have been damaged, either by the little green insects or by frost and wind (both of which they have endured).

The cottonwoods are ominously bearing their seed pods, and I suspect that it will not be long until we are inundated with cottonwood seeds flying about.

Finally, Sherm scored some cushions for the bancos in the courtyard. Harry seems to enjoy them, and between the cushions and the indoor plants moved outdoors for the season, it is really looking quite quaint out there.

In other news, Roomie witnessed a hawk swoop down and subdue a mourning dove under the pyracantha. By the time I got there, the desperate coo'ing was done and the hawk was merely preparing to fly off with a substantial meal. The aftermath consisted of two small piles of feathers and a 2*3 inch pool of dove blood. It has been a good year for goldfinches, which discovered the feeder early and have since been frequent visitors.

Oddly, the water began flowing in the Chamisal Lateral (the next irrigation ditch to the north) several weeks ago. Perhaps it takes some time to get everything working properly.

Roses (notably the Austrian Copper below the mudroom window) have begun to sprout leaves.

Saturday, warm and sunny. Sunday, cold and windy. Monday morning: a light dusting of fresh snow. I think whatever snow we see from here on out will be increasingly ephemeral.

Before the goldfinches arrived, a couple of robins were spotted leapfrogging their way around one of the Tingley elms.

In other news, Roomie and I spent the day yesterday pruning some major and minor limbs off the pear and apple trees. For bonus points, I hacked off a couple of low-lying branches from the large Tingley elm at the northwest corner of Troy's. The elm branches had been annoying me for a couple of years, and now there is significantly more light in that corner of the yard. Also, I may not have so many branches hit me in the face whilst mowing there.

Other harbingers of spring are the tulip, daffodils, and garlic sprouts coming up around the roses. This prompts us to begin watering around the roses.

]]> http://WWW.mayoreric.com/higgelty/2008/02/spring_planting.html http://WWW.mayoreric.com/higgelty/2008/02/spring_planting.html Fri, 22 Feb 2008 07:53:47 -0700 Last year in advance of the casita building project, we had a large "Tingley Elm" removed chopped down. Most of the lumber was cut into sections small enough to split. One large piece was the base, which was about three feet thick and four feet long. The crew that cut the tree down said that the piece had too many nails in it and it had already ruined a couple of chainsaw blades. The hunk of wood was moved with a Bobcat to edge of the vegetable garden.

I have from time to time hacked away at it, cutting it with the chainsaw and chipping away at it with a sledgehammer and a pair of mauls. Today, I cut up the rest of it, making new cuts to avoid the place from which sparks flew last time round. I then rolled the pieces to the back wood pile, where dozens of blocks of wood await splitting.

Meanwhile Roomie is stacking the piñon I split. The unsplit piñon is be a relatively easy chore to complete, but even easier when I next rent a splitter. Place is slowly getting ready for spring and irrigation.

The produce basket looks pretty much like

• Heirloom tomatoes
• Chiles


• Beans


• Peas


• Squash


• Zucchini


• Melons

Roomie prefers growing tomatoes from starts, but I am partial to the idea of starting them from seed and bartering for more variety. I hope that we are able to start scheduling when the various plants go in; I have heard that the squash and zukes are more of a late summer thing, ie after the squash beetles are no longer a threat.

In any case, it is hard to fault Johnny's timing.

Stump grinding is really hard work. I seem to forget between grindings just how punishing rotating the fast-moving teeth back and forth across a stump can be. I did get at most of the giant elm we removed when building the casita, and I took care of the peach stump by welding shop fence. I also touched up some of last year's stumps, an apple stump and an unidentified one by the back gate. Finally, I remembered to attack an old plum stump. All in all a good day's work.

When I went to return the grinder, the splitter had come back. I rented it, and once home proceeded to begin splitting the pile of logs in the driveway. Sunday, I pushed the splitter behind the studio and went to work splitting sections of the old elm, whose stump I had been grinding the day before. I split wood more or less continuously until I had to return the splitter to the Depot.

I would very much like to own a splitter, if only I had a place to put it. However, I think I will in the future leave stump-grinding to the professionals.

I was unable to completely split either wood-pile, but there is now enough room alongside the studio that we can install some wood racks, once our welder-neighbor is done fabricating them.

Still no verdict as to whether we are going to put in early season vegetables, like peas.

The idea is that come spring we shall till in the green manure before it goes to seed.

I am anticipating that we will invest in a small cultivator in order to chew up the grass that will surely grow between the plants.

One of the public officials likes to discuss irrigation, and he informed me of a program to assist farmers to improve the irrigation of their property. He said the government paid 80% of the cost of laser-leveling and irrigation pipe, all to conserve water.

Yesterday, I checked it out. The program is through the Natural Resource Conservation Service of the USDA. It requires that we register as farmers, promise to maintain the infrastructure they help us pay for, and that we produce a minimum of $1000 worth of goods each year. Since we are "new farmers" we need to compose a spreadsheet with an estimate production for each crop we intend to grow and sell. Also, the match is now 50%. Before we put ourselves on the hook for any or all of this, we need to obtain a few estimates from the laser-leveling and irrigation experts.

The implication is that in 2007 we may be filing a Schedule F if for no other reason that we are making use of this government program.