Ambient Temperature: 63°
Soil Temperature: 66°
Time: 6:30 p.m.
Date: March 28, 2009
Several weeks have passed since my last garden update and today was a glorious wonder of warmth, light and relaxation in the garden.
This past week, the state of Mississippi absorbed no less than four individual storm systems in the same number of days. Several tornadoes touched down causing moderate damage and multiple injuries, but luckily no deaths. The rest of us, well, we only had to suffer through a lot of rain, thunder and lightning. By my count, we received over 7 inches of rain, much needed, but the ground is saturated and should remain that way for a couple of days.
This, however, did not stop me from cleaning up around the garden as best I could considering the sloppy conditions.
To date, and with Beatrice's earlier help, I've managed to plant 6 tomatoes, 6 collard greens, several red potatoes, and 4 sweet peppers. There is considerable clean-up to be done in the four remaining garden beds and still left to plant are other varieties of tomatoes, cucumbers, squash and zucchini as well as Swiss chard, wild garlic from my brother's garden and whatever else I haven't thought of yet.
In between dipping a hook in the water and sitting on the front step watching a pair of Canadian geese that like to hang around here, I was able to get a handle on all the weeds that took over the garden beds, fence and just about everything else during my extended absence last year. I must say it feels good to have an orderly garden again. Not much left to tame really, except for a few persistent fire ant colonies. Stubborn little buggers I tell ya!
I was able to harvest four leeks that popped up over the winter. As you can tell by the bulging root bottom, I left them in the ground a wee bit too long, but they will taste delightful nonetheless.
The "sprunging" of spring brings with it countless variety of critter. Some beneficial, others pesky and some downright disgusting. I noticed today that we've had a bloom of caterpillars and generally they are harmless, interesting creatures until you notice several hundred of them loping along in their undulating, rhythmic lurching. I watched one trundle along the steps out front as I was watching the resident geese. He stopped on the leafy part of some weeds I've been trying to eradicate and burned through several leaf segments in a matter of a minute or two. Hhhmmmm.
Better stay outta my garden little buddy!
Bobcat, kill the bug!
How about you Wildcat? You game?
Lazy cats!
Another of nature's creations that reappear with the warming weather are snakes. Mississippi has it's fair share of poisonous and non-poisonous snakes, some 40 species, 6 of which are poisonous and some of them can be rather large! Last summer, I was driving on a desolate back road between Port Gibson and Highway 28 through a uninhabited game management area when I saw a snake crossing the road. His body stretched from the road edge to the centerline stripe. That's ten feet roughly. I tried to speed up ahead and take a photograph, but it was summer and I'm sure he didn't want to wait around on the scorching asphalt very long.
This afternoon, after pulling the leeks, I was turning the corner of the house when I looked down to see what I thought as a knobby piece of wood in the freshly cut grass. Much to my surprise and good luck, I found a little snake. So, as any good naturalist would, I went into the house, got the official snake-scooper-upper and captured the beast.
Thankfully, we've had a couple of nights of cold weather and the snake was more than happy to oblige. I'm glad he wasn't moving too quickly because poisonous or not, no one wants to mess with the business end of a snake.
When I first removed the lid, he threw his head back and opened his mouth. I knew then I was dealing with a dangerous critter as his fangs descended from the roof of his mouth. I tried to get a picture of him in this position, but as a reluctant model I guess he didn't understand me when I requested the he "pout" more.
Alas, what do you do with a poisonous snake? Most people would have killed it, but not me. I toted him out into the pine thicket as deep as I was willing to go into the woods. He seemed quite happy when I dumped him out on the carpet of pine straw and he snaked his way through the straw, flicking his little tongue, back on the hunt. I just hope he keeps moving north and doesn't revisit me later on this summer. Larger and more sinister.
Initially, I thought he was a copperhead, but after looking a little closer and with a clear remembrance of his white mouth, I realized now that it's a cottonmouth.
Either way, I hope he has a long productive life doing snake things in the woods where he belongs. He has no business hanging around my tomato plants. That's stinkbug territory!
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