notes from the country yard

I guess it's been awhile since I shared some of the country life around here. We had some amazing sunsets in January, at least when it wasn't overcast which was most of the month.

I started pruning the roses back yesterday. The conventional wisdom for pruning roses is to do it on Valentine's Day. If I wait that long, it will be too late as they will already be putting buds on. Flower buds. And whereas that might not stop some people, I can't bring my self to cut off branches full of flower buds. You might remember I didn't cut them back at all last year after the terrible freezing winter we had, they were the only green thing left in the yard. These are heritage roses, very sturdy, very thorny. Picking up the cut branches, I'm not holding onto them so much as they are holding on to me.

Did I say it was an off year for pecans this year? Was that me talking? I have already picked up 68 pounds of pecans (and these are the ones I kept, am shelling and do not include the months of picking up the immature nuts that fell and went on the burn pile) and I have a 12” x 12” x 12” box that is full to overflowing that I haven't weighed and the ground still looks like this...

This has actually been a good year for pecans. Well, maybe not for the cultivars, the big ones (I'm getting about 25% good ones off my trees) but the natives paid high prices this year (avg. $1.40 a pound) and the buyers bought tons of them. Apparently they have become all the rage in Japan.

I only have one native pecan and it's at the back end of the property on the property line. This is the first year it has had any nuts on it since my neighbor poisoned it two years ago albeit inadvertently. Like most country folk, he sees no harm in using heinous herbicides on the back of his property next to mine where he has his storage buildings. He sprayed right before a rain and then that area had standing water and the tree just soaked up the poison. Nearly killed it.

Speaking of dying trees, we think the small maple is dying. You might remember that we built the new shop long and narrow to spare the two maple trees. The top third of the small maple died during the drought the summer of '09 and the other day it finally broke off and fell during one of our strong winds. The section that fell was hollow inside which we think does not bode well for the whole tree. It was slow to come out last spring and the big maple already has swelling buds on it. Nothing so far on the small maple. Well, if it does go, it will allow us to build out from the side of the shop which would be nice. That is if we ever get the first part of it finished. We're in another holding pattern on that.

I have spied two daffodil buds shooting up! I think they must be planted in the sunniest part of the yard this time of year. The other daffs back behind the new shop are just starting to poke up and no sign at all of the ones in the front yard. It's been a warm several days, temps in the 60s and the next several should get in the low 70s. Hmmmmm. I may have to go looking for spring.

Winter will be back next week though and I just saw several Vs of geese, at least a couple of hundred, flying low and still heading south.