Helicopters
In my yard there are subseasons to the seasons. For example, you are probably aware that right now it is spring in the Northern Hemisphere. In my yard, there are three distinct subseasons to spring:
1. The tree in the front yard blooms. As seen here, third picture from the top. This the exciting, anticipatory part of spring. The metaphorical Friday night of spring. When all things are possible, all good things lie ahead and work and care are far from your mind. Of course, every Friday is inevitably followed by a Monday which in this case is.....
2. Attack of the green slime. Though this year, the green slime wasn't too bad. The green slime comes from one of the neighbor's trees (or it might be one of mine, I'm not sure) and is actually green dust or pollen. Until it rains. Then it becomes a layer of crud the consistency of over-whipped runny mashed potatoes that coats everything and makes one slip on the sidewalk. This year the slime season passed quickly and without incident, I'm not sure why but I am grateful. Once the slime has oozed off the patio we start to get....
3. Helicopters. That's the phase we're in now. That's where enormous amounts of those seeds with the single wing-shaped leaf spiral out of the trees at the slightest puff of wind. You may call them something else, growing up we called them helicopters because as they fell they spun like helicopter rotors. We'd pick up handfulls of them an throw them in the air to watch them flutter around. Hey, life was tough before my dad bought me my first pong setup.
Fortunately the helicopters are not discouraging our garlic as you can see from the last picture. That harvest, alas, belongs to summer so no garlicky goodness yet.
Comments
Can I hazard a guess at what comes after #3?
Cleaning all of that eco-litter out of the now clogged gutters and plucking all of the Acer saccharum sprogs that sprouted in every last bed, box and container before the squirrels go all commando and dig up the entire yard looking for a taste of maple yum-yum?
Me? Bitter? No, why do you ask?
And just curious, did you and the Mrs. stop reading the specialty garlic owners manual before you got to the part about spacing the cloves 6-12” apart? No? Okay then.
Anyway, you might want to give them a sprinkle of Espoma Garden-tone right about now. They gonna be getting’ hungry soon.
http://tinyurl.com/4qpnqg
The Mrs. keeps the bird feeder pretty full so that keeps the squirrels from digging too much. We also sometimes get squirrel corn. Believe it or not, the theory that "if they don't have to work for food they won't" works for us. Of course, the SI critter population is much smaller per capita than the true suburbs.