Yikes!

Been a while...

Jeez, it's been ages since the last BlichBlog installment. A lot has been happening. Watch this space in the next week or so for:

- Rabbit news

- Yard and garden reports

- Employment updates

- Home improvement projects that were met with various degrees of success.

Let's start with the kiwi report. Here's our entire kiwi harvest for the year. Keep in mind that these plants are maybe 25 feet long by 15 feet high. Not a very impressive yield, if you ask me. But hey - it was essentially another drought year down here...

Various updates

Rabbits

Skippy and Zeela are officially bonded. It took four days of the rabbits living in separate cages. I’d let them out on the back deck to hop around together in “neutral territory”. Skippy was his usual hyper-friendly self, and wanted to do no more than chase Zeela around. She, on the other hand, wanted nothing to do with this, and would tear off, stomping her feet. Of course, tearing off would just turn on crazy Skippy, and escalate the chase. The good thing was that each bunny would mellow out and lay down if you stopped to pet it. It was just a matter of coercing the rabbits into getting petted at the same time, which turned out to be pretty easy.

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Once a remote degree of calmness was induced by these, umm, rabbit-human-rabbit interactions, it was more of a contest of who gets to be the alpha rabbit. They would do this by approaching each other, lowering their chins, attempting to get the other rabbit to initiate grooming. In the bizarre world of lagomorph pecking order, the bigwig rabbit gets groomed first. “Hey you, lick my head!” Skippy made the first concession, and calmly groomed Zeela. But she held out for a few days, refusing to return the favor. He didn’t think much of this one-way behavior, so he kept up the chasing. On day four, Zeela finally gave in. She walked up to a resting Skippy, and started grooming his ears. From that minute on, they‘ve behaved like they’ve been best buddies all their lives. It’s not at all clear who won the alpha rabbit contest, but now they are both living together in the big hutch, and are getting along famously.

Fortunately, they were able to have lots of deck time. I had a project that I could work on out on the back deck while the rabbits tore around underfoot, sorting all their personal stuff. It was easy for me to stop a squabble, or enforce some quiet petting time.

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I am “The Rabbit Whisperer”…

The rabbits, doing what rabbits do on a hot day: hanging out by blocks of ice.

"What do you mean, 'Behave!'? We've been friends for years!"

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Yard stuff

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After a cold, late spring, we finally started to get some warmer temps and even some rain. Lots of stuff growing.



Figs. The first batch will be ready to pick soon, and you can see the second batch set on.

Coreopsis

Ice Plant

Ice Plant, up close.

Lavender.

The big, overgrown plant by the front door is some kind of picker bush. Its existence is justified only by the fact that new growth has somewhat interesting red foliage. Once summer hits, the leaves turn green, and I trim it back fairly aggressively – hey, now it’s just an annoying picker bush! The worst part is that it totally hides the only surviving azalea left in our yard. This azalea is actually pretty showy. But it’s only visible from inside the dining room, and completely invisible from the street. The picker bush may not be long for this world.

The kiwi vines were pruned way back this year, as they will take over the world if you let them. They are kind of like kudzu in that way. As you can see, they are growing like crazy. Looks like we will actually have kiwis this year! Yeah!!!

Baby kiwis on the vine.

Daffodils II

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We are having a compressed spring here in the Carolinas, with a cold February and everything coming up at once. The daffodils are essentially going nuts. Betsy took these pictures.

Note the freshly painted storage shed in the background, courtesy of Bob and Roy.

On a vaguely related note, this mushroomy thing popped up beneath the rabbit hutch. It was so weird I had to take an early morning picture.

Mini Garden 2010

I built this cold frame many, many years ago as a birthday present. It has essentially gone unused since then, the transparent top gathering dust and mold in the then-yucky crawlspace.

Last year, to kick off my Big Crawlspace Renovation Project, I pulled the top out of there, cleaned it up, dug up the existing dirt, added some compost, and planted various types of lettuce. What did I have to lose other than $1.89 in seeds? It was easy, and provided lots of leafy greens for both humans and rabbits.

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The vent on the lid is supposed to have a temperature sensitive hinge, opening the vent when it reaches a certain temp. This actually operated as designed at some point in the past. I don’t think this works anymore, but I’m not too worried about it.

I did this year’s planting just the other day. I just used last year’s seeds, hoping that's not being overly frugal. One row of green lettuce, one row of random mixed salad greens, one row of kohlrabi. I can’t wait to see what, if anything, happens with the kohlrabi. I've never grown kohlrabi before, and it looks like a truly bizarre veggie:

Next step - figuring what to do about those overgrown kiwi vines. Still thinking a pergola is in order. Now, THAT should be a fun project. As opposed to a crawlspace (entry through the three foot high white door in the background), you can actually SEE a pergola.

Here's how the Spring 2009 crop turned out.

Signs of Spring

Betsy got the camera out and took some early spring photos on Saturday. Because of an unseasonably cold winter, we are a good 3-4 weeks behind the usual schedule down here in North Carolina. The plants are pretty confused. They did respond to a couple of dry, windy, sunny, upper 40 degrees days.

Here’s what’s up in the garden.



The Veronica reopens:

Hellebore. (Great name for a plant...)

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Crocus of various flavors:

Snowdrops:

Sedum

Rosemary. It turns into a good-sized woody shrub around here. This one has been blooming all winter.

Coming soon: lots o' daffodils! But it's snowing outside right now...

Spiny gum balls. Ever-present. A new batch rains down every February.