Coconut Fiber

I’ve been aware for several years that the use of peat is no longer environmentally acceptable.  Peat bogs form over thousands of years and we are depleting them faster than they can be replaced.  Yet, there wasn’t much out there that was quite like peat.

This spring I finally found it: coconut fiber.  I’ve started several seedlings in peat pellets and transferred them to coconut fiber, and they’re doing fine.  Now I’m really experimenting by starting my cucumbers (and one pumpkin variety) in the actual fiber itself.  I’ll let you know how it goes.

Been down with a cold and too lazy to write, but I’ll try to be around more.

 

Back to reality

Ah, it’s March again.  Never thought I would be relieved at the return of cold weather, but here we are…

After a long sleep

Since 2007 my life has been anything but fun with two jobs falling apart due to bullying, grinding me down to near poverty.  My health has suffered.  These days I only find peace in the outdoors.  Last year I was too distracted to return to this blog; this year I’ll try to be better about it.

This March in Chicago has been freakish.  I’ve been around more than 5 decades and can’t recall such a lengthy warm spell this early in the year.  Yes, we’d get a day in the 80′s here and there before May, but more commonly spring has been a long, damp, miserable haul.  Not so this year, when we were nearly at 90 degrees F on several occasions over the past week, with apparently more to come before long.

And so, out to the garden I went.  I removed the covers from the rose bushes the first week of March — it was already that warm.  Usually I don’t remove the covers until March 15 or later.  I’m glad I did.  They would have suffocated and developed all sorts of fungus problems under their Styrofoam covers during that hot, humid weather.

Too lazy to go look for the greensand, I instead plunged a stick of “organic” fertilizer into the ground next to each bush.  A few weeks and a giant, almost monsoonal rainstorm later, the bushes are fully leafed out.  I don’t see buds yet, but I won’t be surprised to see the bushes blooming by mid-May.  Normally they never bloom before the first week of June; the earliest ever was the last week of May.

Winter approaches

I am down with a cold, and never got outdoors much again after the mosquito plague of last summer because of a back problem.  LOL it’s becoming excuse after excuse, so I am going to turn this blog toward the one thing I generally do a lot of — gardening.  As of Spring 2011, you’ll be reading about more of that and less of the wilderness.

It’s now impossible…

After record rains (and heat) for, I think, 2 months straight, it is now impossible to wander in the wetlands or woods, or even the garden, without being covered in mosquitoes.  I’ve had twice as many bites so far this summer than I’ve had in all the summers in the past decade combined.

Because I hate mosquito bites — I’m a bit paranoid about them — all outdoor activity except gardening will cease for me until the first frost.  Meantime I’ll report here on storms, harvests, and whatever.  Actually the mosquito plague is what stopped me from posting in July, so I may not be around much at all in the next few months.

Reasons never to leave your camera at home

A goldfinch eating seeds from a dried lavender flower.

A retriever plucking a cucumber off a vine, then playing with it.

A naughty bunny who keeps eating your stringbeans (got a picture of his nose).

A far-off anvil cloud (I actually got a shot of the whole thing).

June 18 Storm

Couldn’t have had any better “happy Friday” gift than what we got…of course during rush hour…last Friday.  Here is a picture or two:

This was a “bow echo,” a bowed line storm with embedded thunderstorms.  These can contain funnel clouds, and we our tornado sirens went off twice during the storm, which lasted about 20 minutes.

Sobering night

My area was in its usual Chicago Split zone and all the storms that approached us fizzled out before regaining their strength over Lake Michigan (3 radar-indicated waterspouts in one day…in JUNE).  Many areas far to our south weren’t so lucky, as is illustrated in these YouTube videos:

Associated Press

June 5 2010 Elmwood IL

A better photo of that bog plant

Finally got a better photo of that bog plant at the Wetlands.  Now to find its name:

6/7/10 update: the flowers of this plant seem to be somewhat similar to those of the “button bush,” a common wetland plant.  It’s the leaves that don’t match, and so far I haven’t found much information about habitat outside of the fact that this plant likes water.  I’ll have to go back to the wetlands and take a closer look; the leaves must be hidden.

Suddenly July

I’ve been freezing for about 3 weeks.  I go to bed shivering and can’t get out of bed in the morning because I’m shivering.  This in-between weather does that to me; particularly with baseboard heating, which doesn’t work very well in temperatures above 40F, and the outside temps in the 50′s and 60′s, there’s been no way for me to escape that feeling that I’m about to freeze to death.

Until today…all of a sudden we’re socked in with high humidity and temperatures that may have exceeded 90 degrees this afternoon.  The heat and humidity are continuing overnight (this almost never happens anymore, even in July).  It’s supposed to be like this again tomorrow.

It is not supposed to be like this in May in the Chicago area, mind you.  It gets warm sometimes, even very warm, but not with this kind of humidity, and never continuing through the night.  Like I said, this is July weather — or at least, it once was pretty routine July weather.

Something is holding the rain back, or storms.  I don’t know what it could be because I don’t know enough about the weather to guess.  So what we’re left with is this sauna.

But I’m not complaining because I’m not shivering.