Wednesday, May 1, 2024

Photo(s) of the Week: Iowa & Nebraska Tornadoes of April 26, 2024

 Credit where the author is known.

Elkhorn, Nebraska

Bennington-Blair, Nebraska

Bennington-Blair, Nebraska

Omaha, Nebraska

Omaha, Nebraska

Minden, Iowa

Harlan, Iowa

Harlan, Iowa

Harlan, Iowa

Harlan, Iowa - Adam Orgler

Harlan, Iowa - Adam Orgler

Mount Ayr, Iowa

Afton, Iowa


Sunday, April 7, 2024

Garden update: It's been awhile...

Because there isn't much garden work that can be done in Iowa in the middle of winter. The first sign of Spring came on February 1st when my daffodils began pushing up through the mulch. Some of them are now in full bloom.

The best of the group

Angle 2

This afternoon I went out and planted seeds for several cool season crops: radishes, carrots, peas, and onions. I also planted onion sets for the first time. Those are in a separate section so we'll see how they turn out. I'm also going to try my hand at: broccoli, cauliflower, spinach, and kale. I had no success with those last year so I'm starting them indoors this year.

For warm season crops I'm planning on corn and sweet potatoes. I've saved three ears of corn from last season and am hoping at least some of the kernels will be viable. I really liked the sweet potatoes I grew two years ago and this time I'm going to try creating slips to overwinter indoors.

For non-food plants I've saved two heads of bee balm and planted seeds from those in about ten jiffy pots and planted those out in the garden. I hope these work out because bee balm smells wonderful and is right up there with lilac in my opinion. I also sowed seeds from cup plant last fall to try and kickstart a 'native' garden.

The biggest news is I finally got around to planting my year-old apple sapling outside on Friday. It looks a little worse than last summer but it still has green leaves. It was quite windy today and still gets chilly at night so I put a tomato cage wrapped in cloth around it to protect it. Hope it survives but if it doesn't I've got about twenty seeds chilling in the fridge that I could try.

Better times last summer


Monday, April 1, 2024

Milestone

I've reached a milestone recently: no posts on Facebook since February 18th. Of course that was helped out by people not interacting with me. But I'm beginning to accept my station in life. The next challenge will be going on a year, and then ceasing altogether before maybe disappearing from the web entirely.