Posts Tagged ‘drought’
Yard Pests
As the saying goes, “this is why we can’t have nice things.” Sure I’d like to have a smooth green carpet of inviting lawn grass to run my toes through as I frolic in the yard with our dog or play croquet and bocce ball, but no, I don’t want to exterminate a throng of burrowing pest to achieve it.
We pick our battles and this is one I don’t want to fight, so we live with the ongoing dirt mounds and raised tunnels of destruction scattered widely across all of our mowed areas.
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With so much real estate available for the critters to thrive, we willed the marauders to move on to open fields by stomping their tunnels and mounds in our yard last year, but as the snow receded and the topsoil begins to thaw, the evidence appears as if their numbers have tripled.
They aren’t getting the message.
The wind is blowing warm air our way today and bringing with it fire warnings because the ground is very dry this spring. Almost all of the snow has melted and we don’t have any muddy areas along our trails. The drainage ditches had water flowing in them only two times this year. It is surprisingly uncharacteristic compared to the previous 8 spring seasons we’ve lived here.
If we observe the yard at a distance, it looks just fine. There remains one dwindling pile of snow near the front door, but that’s about it. Today is officially the first day of spring.
Warm sunshine will beckon for us to romp in the yard and toss the old horse toys for Delilah to chase.
The season of mowing draws nigh, but we are going to need some rain or I’ll be able to trim the lawn with a pair of scissors.
Although, that might just be enough to drive the yard pests back toward the open fields. Either way, it seems we don’t get to have nice lawns.
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We’re Dry
During my commute home yesterday afternoon, I watched clouds thicken and grow dark to the south. When I exited from I94 east and turned toward the southeast heading to River Falls, the view looked a little threatening. Then the radio reported there was only one noteworthy storm worth mentioning. With possible heavy rain amounts, high wind, and hail, in Goodhue and Pierce counties, it included the communities of Red Wing and Hager City.
We live in Pierce county, a short distance north of Red Wing.
Good, I thought. We could use the rain. I just wasn’t fired up about driving in the pouring rain.
When I finally reached Beldenville, the road was soaking wet, but the rain was already done. It must have stopped just before I arrived.
We live a couple of miles north of Beldenville proper, and when I turned onto County J, the pavement was bone dry.
We didn’t get a drop at home.
I stepped out on the deck to take a picture of the drooping sunflower for a representation of how the plants are feeling about our long spell without rain.
As I stood there, I noticed there was a lot more than just the sunflower that would show up in the frame.
This sunflower made a surprise appearance, most likely growing from birdseed that fell from the feeder nearby. It shot up with robust energy at first. When the ground started to dry out, the growth stunted significantly. It hasn’t looked very happy ever since.
There used to be a big pine tree here. I’m guessing it might have been root bound, based on my recent discovery about the pines out in the field north of the driveway. We left it standing until it was good and dead, then I cut it down, leaving enough of the old trunk to have a nice support for a balanced rock. Using this chiseled stone for a base (probably a remnant from the construction of the field stone chimney on the house), I balanced a large rock that I was only barely able to lift up to the necessary height.
It eventually fell down.
I’ve yet to decide whether to put a different one up there, but I’ve definitely chosen to leave the too heavy one safely on the ground where it landed.
Even though the big tree died, the ground seems to be fertile for a new generation of pines sprouting in its place. There are at least three rising up around that stump, taking advantage of the sunlight available since I cut the big one down.
And where do baby trees come from? The number of pine cones remaining from the now-removed tree seem to offer plenty of clues.
Maybe if we come out of this dry spell, more of those seeds will sprout.
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Creatively Repurposed
We lost 8 long-needle pines in the last couple of years due to a combination of dry summers that sandwiched one long and very harsh winter. It was pretty obvious last fall that they were beyond recovery, but I just didn’t have the heart to take them down until this spring.
When the time came to finally face that chore, I decided to see if I couldn’t find some creative way to honor the memory of the pines. It just didn’t feel right to cut them all off at the ground. Of course, I have some history with this ploy of not cutting a tree to the ground and then using the remaining stump for something new.
At our home in Eden Prairie, I saved the 2-3 inch diameter trunks of a cluster of 3 choke cherry trees that had sprouted in an unwelcome spot of our yard, and then balanced rocks on them to create an interesting visual display. I liked the results enough to resurrect the concept again. In this instance, however, I have one item that will be more functional than a rock. It’s a birdhouse (Thank you, Mel & Greg!).
We have some really nice rocks here, so putting a few up on tree stumps is irresistible to me. While I was cutting down this tree which was leaning significantly, I discovered a twiggy young oak tree growing beside it. If that oak survives the abuse that some critter has enacted on the bark of its skinny little trunk, someday it may tower over the end of our house beside our bedroom in the spot where this pine was unable to survive.
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Third Try
I have not been mentioning the sad lack of progress toward my dream of having a transplanted maple tree growing in the center of our labyrinth, in large part because I’m choosing to avoid framing the previous two tries as failures. Basically, if I don’t talk about them or write about them, it becomes as though they didn’t exist.
However, failure is what happened, and I am obviously now writing about it, so it is not as though I mean to pretend it didn’t occur. I just haven’t been dwelling on it publicly. The attempt we made last year involved pulling a tree up by the roots and transplanting it “bare-root” to the hole in the center of the labyrinth. The shock of the transplant caused it to lose all its leaves, but before the summer was over, it had sprouted new leaves.
I’m not sure what went wrong, but after a while the new leaves drooped and then shriveled, and I figured we lost it. I held off on ripping it out of the ground last fall in the off-hand chance all the energy was being put into the roots so it could sprout leaves this spring in a return to the normal seasonal pattern.
That didn’t happen.
When I was mowing the labyrinth last Friday, I spotted the bark on the trunk was dried out and split open. Snapping off the end of a branch confirmed it was all dried out. No visible signs of life at all. I yanked the tree out.
Last fall, in preparation for the possibility I would need to try again —and while the trees still had leaves— I located another tree I liked in our woods. Following advice I received from my helpful landscape adviser, I flagged it for future reference. Yesterday we dug it up and transplanted it, taking as much dirt around it as we could in hopes of keeping as many of the small roots intact as possible.
So, number three is now in place at the center of the labyrinth garden.
I have a plan to bury a water line from the house down to the garden, where I will install a valve and a hose spigot. The length of tubing required was not stocked at the store, so I had to order it. I sure hope it comes soon, so I don’t have to lug a half-dozen hoses out on the hill to string together like we’ve done for the last two years.
I’d like the third time to be the charm, so I certainly don’t want the poor thing to go thirsty for any length of time. It’s feeling too dry around here already this spring, which is a sad problem to have since our main complaint for the two previous years has been that this time of year had been way too wet.
Thunderstorms rolled through last night, but we barely received a measurable amount of water in our rain gauge. It’s going to take more than that to satisfy all the growing things currently sprouting forth with gusto, reaching toward the sun.
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Be Careful
Be careful what you wish for. You just might get it.
We dearly wanted to improve the muddy situation that our horses face during the wet spring meltdown. Last fall we excavated an improved drainage swale, cleared out the overgrown drainage ditch along our southern property border, buried drain tile along the uphill borders of the paddocks, and applied several loads of lime screenings on the hill around the barn for improved footing.
We have been anxiously awaiting the thaw to see if our improvements worked the way we hoped. That thaw is almost complete now, and we are standing by to see how quickly the soil dries out.
What we couldn’t control was the amount of moisture we would be forced to deal with by the weather. Our mild winter left us with a below average snow cover and we have been without precipitation for over a week. The effectiveness of our improvements is hard to gauge because the ground is already too dry!
There is still plenty of time to receive some spring rain, but for the time being, we are experiencing what the meteorologists are phrasing as “pre-drought conditions.”
We wanted dryer conditions for the paddock footing, but this is not the way we would like it to occur.
It is interesting that the changing climate seems to be putting us at risk for dryer, drought-like conditions overall, while at the same time unleashing more copious dousings of precipitation from individual storm events. We get too much all at once and then not enough in between.
I am a bit concerned about how that will impact our intentions of growing hay. Over the last two years we have been unable to get more than one cutting in a season, because the spring and early summer have been too wet, and the rest of the growing season has been too dry. We haven’t had enough growth after the first cut to allow for a second batch of bales.
This year we are starting out dry. Who knows what we’ll get in the months ahead. I’m hesitant to wish for more moisture for fear of then getting more than we can handle. Wishes are not to be waved about carelessly. We should be clear about what we want and what we don’t want.
What are the rules again? I can’t wish for more wishes, but can I wish for a precise outcome? Not less than we need, and not more than we need.
Be careful what you wish for.
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Pine Love
I am deftly skilled at passing the same scenery day after day without really noticing details that are plainly visible. Last time I was mowing the grass around our home, the sorry condition of a few of our pine trees suddenly caught my full attention. I hate to think of how long I have been missing signs they were not making the best recovery from the harsh winter.
When spring finally arrived, I was greatly surprised to see almost every pine tree that turned brown during the winter ended up sprouting new growth, indicating signs of life. I had figured many of them were goners. As time passed, I failed to monitor their progress closely enough to spot the few who were having trouble keeping the new growth flourishing. I hope I haven’t missed a possibility of successfully nursing them back to health.
Yesterday, I took action to give the saddest looking trees some loving. Basically, they received a dose of horse manure fertilizer and a thorough soaking of water. We are hoping to be able to give all the evergreen trees around our house a regular watering through the fall this year to do everything we can toward reducing the stress they have endured for the last couple of years. It is hard on evergreens to enter winter without a good water reserve.
I did read that it is good to pause the watering in early fall, until deciduous trees drop their leaves, to allow trees to enter a transitional phase. After leaves have fallen, it is recommended to give all trees a deep watering until the ground freezes. Those evergreens will be losing moisture through their needles throughout the dryness of winter.
Meanwhile, despite total neglect, unwanted trees around our place, like box elder and common buckthorn, flourish and multiply. It’s just not fair.
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Relative Something 