Bluebird Nest Boxing Day

The combination of an otherwise overcast and dreary Sunday, a warm south wind, and the sighting of a pair of Eastern Bluebirds, male and female, this morning convinced me that it was time to traipse over these grassy hills I call home and clean out my bluebird trail boxes.

Regular readers know that I try to do my part for the survival of the Eastern Bluebird and I maintain a number of boxes over 20 acres of Kansas prairie.  In fact, last year I got my own nest box design approved by the American Bluebird Society, which pleased me to no end.  Regular cleaning of the nest boxes, removing old nests and debris, is important to keep disease and overwintering insects to a minimum and thus improve the fledgling rate from the boxes.  And it must be done in the cold weather of late Fall, since the bluebirds begin nesting right after the worst of winter.

On this year's box cleaning hike, I found that 10 of 16 boxes had been occupied by nesting bluebirds, and three others looked like nests had been started but abandoned before completion.  It's easy to tell a bluebird nest from other nests, for instance from those produced by wrens, because the bluebirds build a shallow messy nest, usually of grass, as pictured at the right.  Heck, if I was starting my own nest in chilly February, as the bluebirds do here, I wouldn't be very particular about the construction either.  I have three sets of boxes out; my new box design, which had 5 nests in 6 boxes; my older box design, which is identical except for a smaller lid and which had 4 nests in 6 boxes, and 4 older NABS-type boxes, only one of which was previously occupied. 

There's always a little maintenance to do on the boxes and this year was no exception.  The older-style box pictured at the left must have had a rough year, showing signs that it was pretty singed by the Spring burn here on the prairie, but it will make it another year, I think.  I was most disturbed to find 3 boxes knocked off of the fence posts and lying on the ground.  I'd never seen that before, but at least I don't think it was due to human activity.  The pastured cattle this year were a bunch of steers who liked to rub under the boxes and I had already put one back up near the house that I had witnessed them trying to destroy.  I don't know what complaint this particular group of steers had against bluebirds but this is the only year that I've seen them single-mindedly attack the boxes. 

All in all, it was a pretty successful Bluebird year here on the prairie.  Now I just need another warm day to get busy and build a few more boxes to replace some of the older ones.  Happy Bluebird Trails to everyone!

Eclipsed Morning

I'm not a superstitious gardener, nor a howling Druid worshiping every single tree in my garden, but I do try to take note of celestial happenings when they occur, lest the gods take displeasure that I'm ignoring their handiwork.  I was therefore pleased when CNN warned me this morning that a lunar eclipse was underway.  CNN, after all, has to be good for something besides keeping me up on Kim Kardashian's short-lived marriage and the actions of the latest nutball in the sports world.  At 7:23 a.m. this morning I was able to grab this shot of a partial eclipse just before the moon dropped below my prairie horizon:

A lunar eclipse occurs twice a year during a Full Moon when the Moon is "behind" the Earth and the Sun in "front" resulting in the passing of the Earth's shadow over the Moon.   In fact, I snapped the picture above at a special time called "selenehelion," which occurs when both the Sun and the eclipsed Moon can be observed at the same time, just at sunrise or sunset.  In my case, the Sun was just cresting the horizon over my right shoulder.  Mr. Moon is looking a little reddish because the sunlight reaching it is being scattered by a long passage through a long and dense layer of Earth's atmosphere.  While again, I'm not superstitious, lunar eclipses have played a part in a number of historical events and were quite frightening to prehistorical cultures.  No wonder that some cultures cover their wells or eating utensils to prevent contamination by the blood-colored Moon during a lunar eclipse.   Christopher Columbus is said to have intimidated the natives of Jamaica into provisioning his ships by predicting a lunar eclipse on February 29, 1504.  Hey, his superior knowledge may have been just another exploitation of a less-developed culture, but at least all that navigational expertise was good for something.

I don't know what part, if any, today's lunar eclipse played in my garden's ecology, but I'm not holding my breath.  Maybe, next year, I'll think the red roses have taken a deeper crimson hue and I'll think back to today.  But I doubt it.

Slow Love, Busy Life

I've been caught up reading Slow Love by Dominique Browning lately.  Subtitled "How I Lost My Job, Put on Pajamas,& Found Happiness," Slow Love is not so much about gardening as it is about facing change and growing older.  I picked it up because I've enjoyed several of Browning's other, more garden-centered works including Paths of Desire and Around the House and In The Garden. 

This one, though, is not so much about gardening as it is about life.  I seem to be on a binge of reading works more suited to despairing or overheated middle-aged females than crusty old males, but I still enjoyed Slow Love.  Perhaps I should see my physician for a testosterone-level check?   Well, anyway, I enjoyed the book except for all the hand-wringing relationship angst about a non-committal male nicknamed "Stroller", so there still may be some hope that I can keep my grouchy and crotchety image for the public.   I also had a little problem identifying with Ms. Browning's divorced state, since the extreme patience and tolerance of Mrs. ProfessorRoush has allowed me to avoid that particular moniker.   Mrs. ProfessorRoush, however, does always takes care to point out that I'm continually on thin footing. 

What Slow Love does offer, for the gardener, is a little bit of gardening advice mixed in with a lot of good life advice.  I was particularly taken by two ideas.  One was the simple idea of running your own current troubles by "the stranger in the street".  In other words, if you explained the situation to a stranger in the street, what would he/she/they think about it?  Following this advice would make any person face their problems to the point that if any of the "Kardashians" or the characters of "Teen Moms" would think about it, they wouldn't be nearly as successful on TV as they are.  I've always used this one, whether I consciously knew it or not, because of a really good innate ability to step outside myself and look at things fairly objectively.  It works in gardening too.  Try it. The next time you place that hot pink impatiens next to the orange marigold, just ask yourself, what would Sydney Eddison or Lauren Springer-Ogden think of that combination?  Would they vomit uncontrollably, laugh in derision, or applaud your boldness? 

The other interesting thought from the book was Mrs. Browning's definition of introverts and extroverts.  She states something to the effect that "extroverts are energized by public encounters while introverts need to recover from them."  I agree wholeheartedly with this one, since I function acceptably in public, but I need loads of alone time, reading or writing or in the garden, to recharge and rest.  My introversion comes honestly and genetically from my own Mother, with whom I share many personality traits, not the least of which is the ability to keep myself occupied and perfectly happy free from contact with people and society in general.

It is a useful trait for a gardener, this ability to withdraw into nature for long periods of time, but not so useful for the gardener's family life or relationships.  I could have told Ms. Browning that without reading Slow Love, but that would have cheated both of us from her enjoyment of writing the book and mine of reading it. 

Large Rats at Work

While inspecting my garden this past Saturday, I noticed this (pictured) damage to a small deciduous tree that is placed in the middle of my Evergreen bed.  I think it occurred sometime during the previous week, although, since I didn't see my garden in daylight hours last week, I am not absolutely sure of the exact day.   ProfessorRoush is definitely NOT an expert on wildlife biology and behavior, nor do I have any extensive knowledge of garden pests or their control beyond personal experience, but I'm pretty sure that the picture at the left is evidence that several large prairie rats with long skinny legs, fluffy white tails, and antlers have been visiting my garden.  This particular varmint must have been suffering a mighty itch along those antlers to scratch out this big of a section of trunk.  Alternatively, I suppose this rutting stag could be some sort of a garden snob offended by the fact that I put a deciduous tree in a bed otherwise composed of evergreens, and he simply expressed his displeasure by trying to off the tree.

The particular tree in question is a volunteer Double-flowering Red Peach (Prunus persica 'Rubroplena'), an offspring of one of my other landscaping trees, that cost me nothing as a volunteer, but with whom I was well-pleased.  The trunk is currently about three inches in diameter and the tree about 8 feet high.  I don't have a vast experience with damage of this magnitude, but I'm pretty sure it will permanently damage the tree.  Any bets out there?

I'm not sure why this tree is the only one damaged at present, but truthfully, fully half my young trees are protected by fencing wire just for this reason.  And I'm partially at fault here, both for not circling this tree with fencing and because I haven't yet instituted my standard deer repellant program this winter. I guess if I had to pick a tree to sacrifice for the purpose of honing the antlers of rutting deer, this was about as good as I could have chosen, but that doesn't mean I'm mitigating the death sentence of the bounding hart.  In the long run, I may have to fell my baby tree, and if I catch the perpetrator in my garden, he's going to unwillingly contribute more organic fertilizer to my garden than the little pellets he left near the tree. We must protect the children (or in this case the baby trees).