Lotsa Pictures

Today was my first day (well, half day) of the season working out in the garden.  Wanted to uncover the garlic and rhubarb and free the chives from their debris, and clean up the asparagus bed.  I got a good start on the asparagus bed, but that was it since I didn't get out there until afternoon after a morning of wood work.

This was the asparagus bed when I started.  All the old, dead stalks and ferns needed to come off.

I managed to get everything in one big garden cart load.  Now I need to take out all the weeds that have already started to grow, till between the rows and add some compost over the mounds where the asparagus spears will emerge.

We've had a bald eagle hanging around our place for about a week now.  I don't know why, but he/she hasn't bothered any of our poultry . . . yet anyway.  Don't know what we'll do if that happens.  The eagle seems mainly interested in a pile of old mulch I have at the end of the garden.  Flying down and landing on the pile, he/she gathers as much as possible in his/her talons and flies off with it.  It's no doubt for building a new nest in the area somewhere.  And I'm losing a lot of mulch!

Here I caught him/her high up in a tree breaking off branches and flying off with them.  The branches, presumably, are for the nest building also.

Sadness and woe, it looks as though we may have lost four or five of our newest fruit trees.  We've never had this happen before, but even though we had screening wrapped around the bottom of the trunks, we think it was mice or voles that stood on top of the snow and completely girdled the trees.  They do have buds on them, but girdling of this extent usually means the tree is done for.

A couple of days ago, Papa Pea spotted what he at first thought was an immature grouse in our chicken yard.  On closer inspection it seems to be a quail.  (Are you missing any of yours, Susan?)  He's been peacefully existing (and eating) with the rest of our poultry, moves like the Energizer Bunny and is extremely hard to capture in a picture.  Where did he come from?  Good question! 

With only five days left in the month, there's no way we're going to have all our year's wood cut, split and under cover.  Not by a long shot.

This pile already cut but not split is about twice as big as what you see.

Our weather has not been cooperative for our wood working month.  Lots of rain (and snow) which makes working on the wood not only a bit dangerous, but very messy.  There's still standing water that has run in a stream under the pile of logs.  We've done the best we could, so we'll have to settle for getting it done when we can.

We've had two days in the 60s now so we're thinking winter is actually over.  If we don't get any more rain, I'll be back in the garden tomorrow and might even get my handy-dandy tiller out to work up some of the raised beds!