Tuesday, June 22, 2021

miscellanea


Some of you may remember I bought this little peach tree years ago, at least 5, maybe 6. When I planted it I decided I had sunk it too low and instead of digging it out and lifting it I just pulled up on the trunk and heard a distinctive pop. Well, fuck, I snapped the root. I expected it to die but it didn't, neither did it grow. For the next three years In the fall it put out a meager few new leaves and one or two blooms. Then last year in the spring it started to really grow and bloomed but none of the little fruits survived. It grew even more during the summer and this year it bloomed in the spring and put on new growth again and has given me two nice sized peaches! Maybe I'll have a peach tree after all.


I guess it had been a while since Minnie and I walked this way. This poor snake didn't make it across the road and now it's skeleton is embedded in the tar and gravel of the road surface.


Two of the 12 butternuts growing on the vines in the compost pile. Two more little fruits had open flowers on them.


Baby toads still scatter with every step. This one's a little bigger, not quite an inch.


The recent broken limb seems content to not die as it's not completely broken off and since it has developing pecans on it I'm curious to see if they will continue to grow or fall off as the summer progresses. At any rate, a dead limb is much easier to cut up than a living one so it can stay for the time being.


A couple of weeks ago I pulled out the bottom compartment on the stove to see a little mouse jump out and scurry off behind the stove. Oh great. Obviously it has been mice that knock my little bird skulls around and push things off the shelf above the kitchen sink. I have in the past tried live traps and never once been able to catch a single mouse even though they set the trap off and normally I don't kill things just because I can or because they are annoying me but I have to be able to catch them to release them and there are things I do not tolerate in the house, like mice. And so I bought a package of traps which I prefer over sticky pads, which are cruel as the mice will chew their own feet off to escape, and poison, also a cruel death. If I have to kill the mouse to get it out of the house I want it fast and as painless as possible. So I loaded two traps with peanut butter, put one next to the stove and one under the buffet. The first night, neither trap set off but all the peanut butter had been licked clean. Drat. So the next night I crammed a piece of pecan into the part that holds the bait and the next morning one of the traps had caught it's prey. Since there is never just one mouse I left the other trap in place and a few days later caught another. I've set a third trap by the stove in case there's more.


One magnolia flower declining into the previous magnolia flower.


A butterfly in the making.
 


Remember when I cut down and cut up the dead banana trees and threw the pieces as far as I could in the wild space/poison ivy? Now I have four banana trees growing back there.




20 comments:

  1. You can't put a good banana down, or keep it down, either. Tree ripened peaches! I hope they are as sweet and juicy as you want them.

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  2. There are so many good prompts for story telling here- This would be great for a writing class. The peach story is the best , mouse , not so much. Snake, intriguing! You certainly live on fertile ground!

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  3. I love the banana jungle! And I envy you the snake skeleton.

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  4. Look at you! The peach maven! It's a commonplace to say that a whole lot in nature requires patience, but sometimes it takes more than we expect. I sure hope the tree thrives. Maybe next year you'll have enough peaches for a pie!

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  5. Things just do want to live, don't they? Whether peach or banana. I've never had any rootings from the bananas I've cut and tossed. I'm sort of amazed at yours.
    Poor snake. It looks like an ancient symbol of some sort now.
    Nope. No mice in the house. Please. I don't blame you for wanting to be rid of them.

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    1. the banana trees probably came from the the what i thought was rotten root bases I dug out to reclaim the border of my flower bed but I chopped those suckers up into manageable pieces. nature rules for sure.

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  6. Things really do like to grow there. Good soil, good sunshine, plenty of water. It's perfect.
    The snake bones in the tar and gravel is such a compelling image. It looks like fossil embedded in stone.
    Mice have to go, whatever it takes to get them out of the house.

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  7. Sometimes the things that I want to grow, will not flourish and grow. Of course, the things I don't want are usually blooming and spreading everywhere. Nature is in charge of my yard!

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  8. I love peaches but I need lots of luck to get a good peach in my state. I hope your peach tree provides many good peaches to you in the upcoming years:) That's so funny about the banana tree that really wasn't dead. ha!

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  9. Seeing that little frog reminded me of the baby lizard I saw while watering our garden railroad yesterday afternoon. It was barely 1" long and all gray looking. Quick as all get out... hard to see once it dove into the groundcover I was watering. I looked for others but it was the only one I saw. Don't care for lizards, spiders OR snakes, but especially mice! Ugh! Congratulations on catching yours -- although I'd leave those traps set in place for a while. There may be mice relatives coming to visit!

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  10. It seems like you can throw anything on the ground and it will grow. Mice are so bad. We would get them in the storage bays of the RV, but they never made it into the living space. All entrance points had been seriously spray foamed.

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  11. That is a determined little peach tree! And those banana trees! We have mice here, all year around. I don't mind them, as long as they don't poop in the kitchen drawers.

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  12. Love the peach tree, we can grow only the little red furry type here which is hardy and survives winter. But only good for jam making and baking.
    Fair dues to the sturdy bananas. Also, excited to see what butterfly will be born there.

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  13. I find powerful lessons in the peach tree, the broken pecan tree branch still hanging on, and the sprouting banana plants. Nature is hardier than we know.

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  14. The little Peach Tree that could!

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  15. Ooo - your peaches look lovely! And I LOVE the snake skeleton - it kind of reminds me of Prince's name when he used a symbol instead of actual letters.

    I'm pretty sure we have mice, but I haven't seen any evidence. We are both entirely too squeamish to deal with them so I guess we'll coexist until they chew up my dish towels or something. Sigh.

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  16. You seem to live in one of those magical places where you can just discard anything (banana debris, squash seeds) and have them grow! I'm glad your peach tree appears to have survived. I draw the line at mice in the house, too -- I don't want to kill anything but we've set traps in the past and killed plenty of mice. I can't use sticky pads either. Those things are awful.

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