Maché is one of the most cold hardy salad greens one can grow. They didn’t get planted this year, but that didn’t stop them from coming up anyway, since some of the plants in the above photo (taken late January 2018) went to seed.
Maché flowering in the hoophouse, and getting ready to reseed itself.Young maché plantsMaché in the salad bowl. (Taken on November 23, 2017, this was probably one of our first maché harvests, and everything else in the salad was also from our hoophouse garden.)
The main reason the maché didn’t get planted this year was because we were all too busy trying to keep the rodents away from some of the earlier winter crops that had been planted. Here’s a look at a few of the more intentionally planted crops in the hoophouse right now:
MizunaEscaroleMibunaTokyo bekanaA romaine type lettuce variety called ‘winter density’Mibuna
It has finally started to look like winter around here, giving me a chance to practice my ice and snow photography. Quickly dropping temperatures seem to be necessary for some of the tiny ice crystals I look for and the conditions haven’t been right for seeing them until recently.
Frost crystal on an icy puddle in the fieldFrost crystal on an icy puddle in the fieldIce patterns on the creekFrost crystal on an icy puddle in the fieldIce along the edge of the creekFrost crystals on an icy puddle in the field
For a couple years now, I’ve been taking pictures of the sunlight reflecting off of the snow, but none of them have had the colors I notice in the snow while taking the pictures… after a bit of experimenting I noticed that the colors only show up when the snow is out of focus, so I intentionally blurred a few pictures to test it…
Out of focus snow
An out of focus picture with specks of color didn’t seem like a particularly good end to that line of experiments, though, so here’s what I came up with:
Water horehound and sparkling snowWater horehound and sparkling snowWater horehound and sparkling snowWater horehound and sparkling snow
As I went out to close up the chicken coops this evening after they should have all been on their roosts, I was briefly startled to see one of the hens still out, and looking at me like she needed help. Then I remembered; the inner door to that coop had been closed earlier, and I’d forgotten to open it so they could get inside. Sure enough, there were the other two chickens that slept in that coop, at the top of the ladder in front of the closed door. One of them, the bantam (miniature) rooster, hopped down and came over to me as I came into their enclosure, so when I opened the door, only Little Wing saw it open and went in. The other two were still just looking at me, seemingly looking for help. I was just considering picking them up and putting them into the coop when I heard Little Wing calling them from inside.
Little Wing (darker hen) and Chezabu (the hen that greeted me first in this story)
Chickens have a specific sound they make to call each other, but it is usually used to call others to some sort of tasty morsel or food. It is used mostly by roosters to call the hens to a treat he’s found, or by mother hens teaching their chicks how to find food. Sometimes roosters also use it when they think they’ve found a good spot to lay an egg and want to let the hens know (and there’s another more specific sound they use for that as well).
The bantam rooster
After Little Wing called them, the other two found their way in fairly quickly.
My honey bees flying in late November after an early cold spell.
When it gets too cold for the honey bees to leave their hives it can be much harder to tell how the colony is doing. The hives look pretty lifeless on a cold winter day. There may be some dead bees scattered at the entrance. This is actually a good sign, especially if they are recently dead and as long as there aren’t too many of them. It means there are still live bees inside, and they’re cleaning out the dead. If there’s a warm day and the bees can leave the hive, they’ll clean off the entrance board of their hive and fly the dead bees away from it.
A dead bee dropped off into the snow by another member of her colony.
Another sign to look for when there’s snow on the ground is little flecks of yellow in the snow: bee poop. Bees do not poop inside their hive unless they are sick or it stays very cold for a really long time and they just can’t get out.
Bee poop on the snow
The snow also seems to melt a little faster right on the entrance board when the bees are doing well. Other than that, you can’t tell much unless you get a really warm day and are able to take a peek inside, or at least see bees flying around the entrance. But for most of the winter, the bees will be hidden inside their hive, clustered together around the queen, vibrating their flight muscles to generate heat, and eating the honey they stored away during the summer. And then, at some point, usually around mid February here (if not even earlier), the queen will start laying eggs and the bees will have to raise the temperature inside the cluster (to above 90˚F) because the larvae need it extra warm to survive.
Hi everyone, I have been having technical difficulties with my site recently and been unable to log in but I think I may have finally gotten it fixed! (I was even having technical difficulties with the tech support!) So, if you have been wondering why I haven’t been posting lately, or responding to comments, this is why. I should be able to get another post done soon, though, as I was halfway through writing one when problems started.
In the meantime, I also added another twenty photos to my shop site, since I was still able to access that because it is not directly connected with this site.
This time of year, after the last of the fall color has died away, but before it has started snowing regularly (or at least freezing the water in the creek and elsewhere into whimsical shapes), is pretty drab at first glance. There are always exceptions to be found if you look for them, though. Last year at around this time I wrote a post about rose hips, which are one source of color. This year, I’ve been finding myself taking pictures of mosses. They seem to like the cool dampness this season has to offer.
Moss at the base of a tree in the woodsMoss on a fallen tree in the woodsMoss and the bark of the tree it is growing fromMore of the moss growing from the fallen tree. I had photographed this same patch of moss before, and been satisfied with the picture, but the lighting was different on this day, and the color of the moss had changed a bit… and I wound up getting pretty different looking pictures this time around.This is one of the earlier pictures of that patch of moss.I spotted this clump even when there was plenty of other stuff to capture my attention, but it was different looking than any other mosses I’d seen… I’m sure it is a different kind, but I know very little about moss.
The snow is melting (for the moment) and I found the melt water dripping from the bridge into the creek. In one spot the drops were coming down very steadily, and I was able to catch the moment when the drop landed in the creek fairly easily. Here are a few of the pictures I took.
This is a close up of the photo above. I thought the pattern at the base of this one was really interesting.
We recently got nearly a foot of snow, which is unusual for this time of year, and made for an unusual mix of fall and winter scenery.
Snow covered autumn leavesSnow on autumn olive branchSnow on rose hipsA big oak tree in the woods during the snow stormLeaves from the big oak strewn on a path through the field.Snow on anemone seedheadSnow sticking to autumn olive leavesOak leaves in the snowMore snow covered autumn leavesFallen oak leaves in the snowIt’s kind of hard to tell what this is under all the snow. The leaves look like dogwood, but I hadn’t noticed any dogwoods with red berries before. (White and blue are the colors I think of for dogwood berries.)Snow covered oak leaf.
I have added a link to an online store I just created to sell my photography. (If you are looking at this site on a phone the link is all the way at the bottom.) Due to the limitations of the website I am using, I currently have only five photos on the site, but I am planning on adding more. If you see any photos on here that you particularly like, or if you have thoughts on what sorts of photos you would be interested in seeing, let me know!
I went for a walk in the woods yesterday, thinking it was about time to check on the witch hazel and see if it was flowering (it was) and kept getting distracted by other interesting stuff around. So, here’s a selection of what I encountered.
Maple leavesThis is a plant I had not seen on our property before. Now I have something new to identify.One of the biggest trees in the woods, an oak, next to an elm with still green leaves, and a maple.Witch hazel flowersIn previous years, the witch hazel flowers have appeared after the leaves had dropped, but this year, a few plants still had leaves on them and were flowering anyway. The cold weather started a little more abruptly than usual, and I wonder if that had anything to do with it.I found this little fuzzy ball growing from a leaf mixed in with the leaf litter. I have no idea what it is. Some sort of gall, maybe? And I found other strange growths on leaves nearby.A close up of the fuzz ball.This looks like an alder cone crossed with an anemone seedhead, but it seemed to be growing from a leaf in the leaf litter.Another strange growth on a leaf.A maple leaf on a logAnother angle of the big oak.This is some sort of fungus.Another shot of the unidentified plant.Barberry berries
