Category: SA Times

It appears the cold front that blew through the first week of April froze Joyce’s apricots. The day before she showed me the thumb-sized (to first knuckle) fruit. We had a pretty good freeze in late March which they apparently survived but the early-April freeze, though about the same low temperature (27°), ruined a promising crop. Maybe fruit is more sensitive to temperature than blossoms. Anyway, Joyce is disappointed to say the least. She has never gotten but maybe four or five apricots since the tree was planted and it looked like this might be the year for a nice crop.

Robins have been on the place in force the last few weeks. They spend a lot of time foraging across the prairie. I’m not sure what they find to eat. Insects, I suppose, since that is what they usually eat. They never visit the bird feeder, which is just as well because the doves, cardinals and juncos go through the birdseed pretty fast as it is. Mockingbirds, though year-around residents, don’t visit the bird feeder either. I guess they rely on invertebrates like the robins. Seems like there would be slim pickins this time of year but maybe there are enough insect larvae close to the surface to provide sustenance. The robins can be heard singing most of the time. They may be the original twitter-verse. While cleaning the lily pool I was bent over just holding the vacuum device to suck up the muck when I felt something on my back. I looked around and a robin flew off. I guess I just looked like part of the scenery to it. We were both surprised.

We finished the month on a high note. Today is February 29th and the temperature is predicted to hit 70°. Even though it is Saturday I’ll do a little herbicide spraying later. One must spray weeds when the sun shines, or when the temperature gets above 60°. Chris left earlier in the week for Switzerland. He and a friend have been making the journey the last few years to take part in Basler Fasnacht, the biggest carnival in Europe, but his friend had to drop out due to health problems, then Fasnacht was cancelled because of the coronavirus. That happened after Chris left so I guess he’ll have a good long visit with his parents.

January seemed like a long month even though it was no longer than December. As we generally do, we’ve had some nice days but plenty of not-so-nice days.

Two or three months ago a tabby cat and her two kittens took up residence in the enclosure. The kittens are now at least half grown. We decided to feed them in hopes of being able to catch and neuter them. There are also the usual suspects roaming around the place. Our cat got into a scuffle with another tom and was stove up for over a week. One day I caught site of the tom I think most likely to be the culprit strolling down the lane without a care in the world. I was able to slip up to within range with my shooter without him knowing I was there. It was a long shot but I managed to nail him and haven’t seen him around since. There is another cat that looks like our cat hanging around. I’ve tried unsuccessfully to run him off so I think I’m going to start trapping cats and see to it they don’t reproduce, one way or another.

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