Day of Discoveries

We bought a lemon tree shortly after we moved to the farm, and even had a few lemons that first year (early 2010). I had no sign of lemons last year, and this year, I lost all the leaves all at once early this spring (since the tree was near an exterior wall, a good ways from the heater, I figured the tree was chilled).

We went to a party on Tuesday, and I noticed a magnificent potted lemon, with a beautiful fruit growing. The next day, when the tree owner came to visit, I asked her to look at my tree.

"Oh! That's scab. I've never seen such a case," she said.

Scab, apparently, is a type of insect that looks like a little dot. As I understand it, scab attaches to the tree and poops or dies, and sucks the juices, and ants come and eat (something like aphids). Since I hadn't known what to look for, the tree just looked like an odd bark, but once Rachel started to scrape the insects off, I could see how flakey and covered the trunk was. Disgusting.

I cut it back (perhaps not far enough), and we will see whether the tree lives. Sometimes you just don't know what you don't know.

It was very fun to have Rachel visit. She looked at my garlic and said it looked great for this time of year. That was a relief, as I have wondered if the soil was well-enough prepared.

And I mentioned that the few blueberries that I had imperfectly heeled in hadn't shown signs of surviving the winter. But when Rachel bent down, she said, "There's buds on this one!" And sure enough, there were buds on all I checked. Marvelous!

Rachel also mentioned that her bees swarmed early last year, much earlier than she expected. In fact, she thinks maybe in March. With the early spring we've had, I would not be surprised to see a swarm soon, so this morning I took my empty hive apart, scraped off propolis and any comb in the wrong spots. Generally, I just wanted it to be ready for splitting (or, less desirably, swarming).

I don't think I'm a day too early: a mass of bees clustered around the entrance, and stayed there well after dark. The energy coming from that hive was intense: the buzzing louder than normal. Apparently bees hang out on their "front porch" when the heat and humidity are a bit much in the hive, as well as when they're about to swarm. Since it was only in the low 80s today, and since the noise was more than normal, I think swarming is a definite possibility.

Another thrilling discovery centered on my nightcrawlers! I had a small container for night crawlers on the table in the motor home (which we don't use for eating during the cold winter weather). Whenever I've found an unusually hefty nightcrawler, I put it in my little container.

But with the warmer weather, I want more nightcrawlers, and a larger home. So I found a large container and filled it half full with manured hay, then covered that with clay soil. The new home dwarfs the old (set inside temporarily for comparison).

I emptied the worm container handful by handful, which was so fun. Joe watched, and he would exclaim over the size and activity of the big worms. They had generated a marvelous pile of castings.

Especially compared with what the soil looked like to begin with: hard, unstructured clay.

But the best bit was the discovery of the worm eggs. I had looked for them before without success, but today, with casual searching, I found perhaps a dozen. Once I saw one, I couldn't miss the others.

They are luminous, vaguely translucent, and reminded me of little glass beads.

I have seen them, very occasionally, when digging. What a pleasure to know that each little sphere holds the promise of new worm life, and with the worms, new castings and fertility, new soil structure, new protein for chickens. Worms are awesome!

To continue the recital of wonders, I am thrilled to see some almost white daffodils now popping up among the yellow. Although lovely, daffodils don't have a very long shelf life. A week into the blooming period, we feel like we're on the tail end already.

The redbuds grow more glorious by the day, their purple spray a backdrop for the happily grazing sheep. The sheep haven't finished grazing one section of cover crops yet, after three days, but in a few places we have the perfect "lawn mower" look.

I have peas poking up through their heavy mulch. I think perhaps the chickens took out a few along the side, but only a very few.

And in the uncovered greenhouse, I have leaves on the blackberries. As bad as they looked last fall, that's a wonder!

The greenhouse itself perhaps has gotten away from me. Phil commented a few weeks ago, "We should probably have sown a green manure." We'll keep learning.

In the midst of all these wonders and discoveries, Phil sprayed a tank of rootlet growth spray on the cows' pasture next door. (The chestnuts there are leafing out now, too!) He also did a fairly massive clean up and site renewal around the RV, because we had friends come for dinner (although, truth be told, the real draw was the puppies).