Tag: Lurkey

2020-05-12 log

snailshellthicketLeave a comment
We started the day with The Mystery of Delilah’s Purloined Food Bowl. It was a heavy duty black rubber livestock food bowl and it was left upside down and empty on the animal food prep table in the shed yesterday morning as usual.
I checked all the normal places I’ve seen possums drag promising food items, but did not find it. I looked in abnormal places as well, but did not find it. I remain baffled.
Here is Delilah having her breakfast, supplemented by butternut squash peelings and scraped-out innards, from another container I found in the shed.

 

Delilah eats from a bowl in my lap
Delilah has her breakfast from a different bowl

While he did appear to spend the night in the woods across the street, Lurkey was back to his normal routines today.

It was a very long work day and I had to pry myself away, as I was deep in interesting data problems, so I got started on outside tasks later than usual.

I watered and lightly mulched the Elymus hystrix (Eastern bottlebrush grass) I transplanted out last weekend and the Panax quinquefolius (American ginseng) that has begun to come up. Then I removed some Cynodon dactylon (Bermuda grass) from a small area in front of the woodpiles that has been tarped for quite some time.

I think that is all. I also sat on the ground and stared into space a lot because I am quite tired and it will be an early night.

 

2020-05-11 log

snailshellthicketLeave a comment

This morning I confirmed the trees outside the far end of the goat pasture are some type of Rhus (sumac) and not the dreaded Ailanthus altissima. That’s good, because I’m going to be battling the suckering hell of the Ailanthus (tree-of-heaven, my ass) in the back treeline forever.

Today fiber was laid up to the side of the house. The workers dug up a hosta, which I replanted this evening. They also moved my wintersowing containers around, in some cases stacking them up, which was not really ok, but I moved all the containers around the Shed Bed soon and detected no damage.

The workers also hit (and repaired) two separate water lines (apparently there is a right mess of current and old conduits between my house and shed), and dug in a bunch of directions trying to avoid them. The lead guy apologized and reassured me they’d fill, seed, and straw-cover it. I asked, “Seed? As in grass seed?” He confirmed. I said, “PLEASE DO NOT. I am trying to get rid of grass! I don’t want more!”

After work, I worked on bermuda grass removal in the area between Squash Mountain and Blackberry Bar.

Inkpot laid an egg in the front daylilies.

Lurkey flew into the neighbors’ chicken run at dusk and got scared by their dog, which caused him to fly out, and across my back yard. He landed in the side yard between house and goat pasture, and ran across the road and the field over there. I last saw him entering the treeline. This will be the first evening he hasn’t roosted in the giant sugar maple behind my neighbors’ house since December.