by March 1 Rebecca and I were standing in the kitchen after church when Rebecca pointed out the kitchen window. At first I couldn’t see what she was pointing at; then I saw Abigail on the 2005 side of the driveway. We were waiting on her and Kennedy to join us for breakfast. Abigail had her back to us and seemed to be kneeling on the ground. Rebecca said she was about to cry but I couldn’t see anything to cry about. I thought maybe Abigail was petting one of the cats which she is prone to do. I was sort of wishing they would stop fooling around ‘cause I was ready for breakfast. They finally got to the house and that’s when I learned that Kennedy had stopped on the way over to propose to Abigail and apparently Abigail accepted his proposal. Anyway, she was wearing an engagement ring and smiling.
March 8 Moisture fell on SA this week. I say moisture because, while there was rain, there was also a significant amount of hail. Most of that was pea to marble size but now and then something larger would fall making significantly more noise when it hit the roof or a window. The apricot tree had just begun to bloom a few days before, and I was afraid the hail would take care of this year’s apricots before they had a chance. However, the next day when I examined the tree, there were still plenty of blossoms on it. A freeze usually takes care of the fruit, but for now, there’s still hope.
Kari has seen a mallard drake on the pond several times over the last few weeks. She hasn’t seen a hen, though, but they are harder to see so there may have been one.
March 15 Smoking junipers. This time of year a gust of wind can blow a cloud of pollen out of the junipers that looks like smoke, making hay-fever suffers cringe.
Finally, pleasant weekend weather this week. Those have been few and far between since, oh, maybe New Years. At least it seems that way. We’ve been fortunate this year in having workable weather early in the week more often than not, but by the time the weekend rolled around it would be too cold and/or windy for working in my yard, so it’s not in very good shape, which is frustrating. This weekend, though, I took advantage of pleasant weather to clean up a couple of beds over Friday and Saturday. A front hit Sunday morning and a dry wind has been scouring the place all day. I wouldn’t have worked anyway but I’ll have plenty of cleanup to do once it stops blowing.
I placed another agave this week, this time with Art Brokenbek’s daughter Jill. She lives in the Dallas area, and she saw the one I gave Art when she was visiting her parents. She told him he was lucky to have been given one. Seems they are expensive down in her neck of woods. A month or two ago I told Art I had an agave I could give to Jill. Apparently, she was coming to town soon and he picked out one for her this week. That makes three I’ve given away: one to Art; one to Devon; and now one to Jill. I like to give them to deserving people and since there are lots of pups, I should be able to continue doing so.
March 22 A week ago it was windy and cold, just like today, only today is less windy and warmer. Last Monday morning the thermometer said it 24 degrees outside, so there goes the fruit crop for this year. Although, there is a plum tree south of the shop that looks like it wasn’t affected. Can’t see how it would not have been, but time will tell. Still no moisture, which is getting tiresome.
In spite of the cold start to the week, the weather warmed nicely. By the end of the week the afternoons were downright hot. Abigail was off with her betrothed, but I still had enough ambition to tackle the vine infesting the honeysuckle area of the enclosure. I hadn’t realized the vine was there until recently. It was so intermingled with the honeysuckle I thought it was just honeysuckle. The vine is an invasive species, which I guess the honeysuckle are as well, but this vine was much more invasive. As I got in to trimming it, I realized that it was encroaching on the honeysuckle and probably in the process of eliminating the honeysuckle altogether. The honeysuckle I like but not this other vine. For one thing, it drops a boatload of leaves which have to be cleaned up. Anyway, I’ve reduced it by 80 or 90 percent which required sawing through stems as thick as my wrist. My coworker will be back this week and we’ll haul off the trimmings, which are considerable.
K tells me our parents planted three honeysuckles way back when. After clearing out the rest of the undesirable vine, I could see there were once three honeysuckles, but only one surviving. It is my hope that lone survivor will spread now that it doesn’t have the nasty vine to interfere with it.
March 29 Well, that just about does for March. It has alternated between lion and lamb, true to its reputation. Maybe we should add camel to the meteorological menagerie. Yes, we are dry. So what’s new. We’ve whiffed completely on moisture this month. We have totaled only 2.15 inches of moisture over the last six months. I completed the second round of watering trees for the year and will start a new round tomorrow. I may learn slowly but I do learn.
This past week I had six trees trimmed. I followed through on the new plan of having the trees cut off about where the branches start, leaving the majority of the trunk. These were big trees, much too big for me to attempt to cut them down myself. By leaving the trunks I saved a little money, though the job was still expensive. The trunks are mostly obscured by the junipers so I don’t feel like I sacrificed aesthetics. The trunks are no worse than ground level stumps and , in time their roots will rot to the point where the trunk can be pushed over and loaded into the pickup for transport to the brush site. That will take a while but eventually the trunks should disappear one by one.