Garden thoughts

Because it's been too damn cold to actually work out there

Winter returned to the mid-Ohio Valley last week, dashing my hopes of planting pansies and cool weather veggies. This week is much warmer and I'm holding onto my goal of harvesting broccoli this year despite the spell of snow and sub-freezing temperatures. The local garden center has stepped up and is now displaying flats of lettuce and cole crops. Usually these starts arrive later in the season with the main shipment of tomatoes, peppers, squash, etc, which is several weeks too late. The trick for a spring crop is to get your cabbage and broccoli in at the earliest possible date and harvest before the hot weather turns them into ornamentals. I think I have a shot this year. I'll keep you updated.

I'm glad our garden center is finally getting this right. There have been other, stranger things I've noticed in the last few years where plants are sold. One of the dumbest is the fact that pea and green bean starts are offered. There can be no possible advantage to buying a bean plant when a seed will sprout in a couple of days. Plant vendors are just taking advantage of newbie ignorance. Perhaps carrot starts will be soon be available for sale. I shouldn't make fun of people who don't know that it's impossible to transplant carrots — perhaps the joke is on me and later today I'll read about intrepid innovators doing that very thing.

Meanwhile inside the house the chicks are feathering out and have conquered their waterer. Due to their natural inclination to seek out elevated roosts for safety, we often find them perched atop their feeder and waterer, surveying their tiny domain. If the weather cooperates they will soon move to roomier quarters in the barn.

Another interesting behavior exhibited by chickens is a tendency to stick with their own kind. A typical naptime configuration is evident in the photo below. The chicken yard often mirrors a prison yard, with hens segregating themselves according to breed. It's easy to project an anthropomorphic view onto the birds, imagining them separating into ethnic clans, but such behavior may give them an advantage. Smaller animals grouped together may appear as one large organism, and complex patterns can confuse predators by making it hard to pick out individuals. This tactic is known as disruptive coloration. I don't know if this is the reason chickens instinctively stay with their relatives, but I haven't heard any other explanations.

A third of the chicks are destined for a different home about 2 miles away. Our friend Tim is building a mobile chicken pen to move them around his ample backyard. For the raw materials he's hand milling lumber from a multi-trunked cherry tree that came down in a storm last May. I don't know what the final design of the coop will be, and Tim might not either. He's skilled enough in building to figure it out as he goes. I'll include updates on this interesting project in future posts.

Winds are definitely getting stronger here. The gust that took down the cherry uprooted it entirely, along with several small pawpaws growing at its base. The resulting cavity was large enough to lie down in (I didn't) and provided some variety in the landscape. It created a space for animals to shelter, or perhaps get a drink after water collected during a rain. These positives were what I hoped for after the sad negative of losing a mature tree.

About nine months after the storm, Tim came by to glean logs for his chicken tractor project. I happened to be standing on the porch, looking toward the area of the woods where the downed cherry lay when I saw a tree stand up. Yes, you read that right. Was I hallucinating? Perhaps age and those parties back in the eighties were catching up with me.

Upon investigating it became clear what had happened: When Tim removed the thick upper trunks of the fallen cherry tree, the weight was released, and the roots still in the ground pulled the main trunk upright. It's a mundane explanation for a magical occurrence, but it makes for a good story. And it gives me hope: If trees can be resurrected, perhaps next I'll spot some gnomes in the woods. I'll keep you updated!