The Days of wine and Roses

      I can’t say about the wine, but it certainly is the day (or maybe the year) for roses.

     I have never planted a rose.  They are not my favorite flower.  “A thorn with every rose,” the saying goes.  In my experience, there are dozens of thorns for every rose.  Try to do a rose bush a favor by removing some of the weeds around it.  You will be rewarded with scratches a-plenty.

     All my roses are  inherited.  A former owner of the Loveland house must have loved roses.  In our small yard are nearly 20 rose bushes.

     Two years ago, I thought it a shame that the riot of roses in the backyard was appreciated by nearly no one.  In the front yard, on the sunny side of the garage were some vines that clambered near to the garage eaves every summer.  Since they didn’t bloom in the first or second year we lived here, I decided they should go and I would thin the backyard roses by transplanting three of the biggest rose bushes to the front yard on the sunny side of the garage.

     I dugout the existing garage plants.  I made big holes for the new residents.  Somewhere in a tree-planting catalog, I read that you should dig a $100 hole for a $10 tree.  I thought that should work for roses, too.

      Digging up the roses was more difficult, since I needed to preserve as much of the root ball as possible.  And, of course, there were the thorns to deal with.  I got the job done.  I wondered if the bushes would grow at all after the shock they had been through.

     They did grow, and pretty well, too.  But nary a bloom did they produce the first year.  I was calling on a neuro-kinesiologist who was also a rose-raiser.  She said they might never bloom, probably because I hadn’t taken enough of the root ball.

    I stuck with them for another year.  They put out a few blooms low, then gave it up.  But the vines grew six feet or higher.  So I gave them another chance.  This year, they produced.

      Speaking of weird plants, take a look at this asparagus stalk:

     It started out as Siamese twin shoots.  Coming through the soil, it looked like a double barrel shotgun barrel.  I refrained from cutting it.  It grew big.  What will it be like a year from now?

      Asparagus season is over for this year.   I guess I will have to learn how to trim roses whose blooms have faded and fallen.

      Maybe I’ll check out the wine, first.   

Irish Blessing

      “May the road rise to meet you, may the wind be always at your back.”

      So begins an “Irish Blessing”.  There are four or five versions floating around the barbershop world.       

      It may be an Irish blessing, but it most certainly is NOT a combine driver’s prayer, or a tractor driver’s, either.  Like many things in the world, the words mean well, but really have the opposite effect.  I can see if you were taking a journey on foot or perhaps by bicycle, a tailwind would be a good thing.  (OK, airplane fliers like tailwinds, too.)

      I’ve sung the song a few times, so can’t really complain if my prayer gets answered.  I set out this week to work the summer fallow, which is yielding lots of volunteer millet.  I would destroy the crop which a year ago was a cash crop, but now is a crop of weeds.

      The theory and practice of good tillage dictates that you work a field in a direction different from the preceding operation.  Other considerations for what direction to work include consideration of conservation, preventing erosion from water and wind.  Taking all the forgoing considerations into account, I decide at the beginning of an operation which direction to head tractor and plow.

      It seems no matter which direction I lay out the land, the wind finds me out, and answers the prayer, at least half the time.  That is to say, no matter which way I go, the wind will follow me. 

      Ideally, I would have a wind blowing at a right angle to my tractor’s direction of travel.  So if the wind is blowing out of the southwest, I lay out the field so the tractor is heading northwest half the time and southeast the other half.  Perfect, the wind is at right angles to the directions of travel.

      Except, that after an hour or two, the wind dies down, and then comes up a little later out of a different direction—either from the southeast or the northwest.  Then, half the time I have a clean ride with the wind in my face, the other half, I am covered in the dust kicked up by the implement’s interface with the soil.  

     The combine driver has the same dilemma.  A tailwind brings not only dust but also chaff and beards that hunker down in the shirt collar or wherever elastic goes, such as underwear band.  Not pleasant.

     Of course, with modern-day equipment, cabs, air conditioners, and the like, it’s not much of a problem.  I do have a tractor with a cab, but no air conditioner.  It spent last week waiting for clutch parts.  I wanted to get the summer fallow done.  I didn’t take the few hours it will take to install the clutch on the cab tractor.  

     Instead, I took the 820 out, no cab, let alone air conditioner.  Last time I worked the field, I went northeast by southwest.  The wind blew an inordinately long time out of the northeast.        

      This time, I went southeast by northwest.  The wind blew predominately out of the southeast.  I put on lots of sunscreen, without cab or umbrella to protect me from solar rays.  When I came in at noon or at the end of the day, a glance in the mirror revealed a character who spent too much time in the makeup artist’s chair, who had gotten the pancake flour mixed up with the dust, and the grease paint applied plentifully on the nose where I pushed up my glasses several times a day with greasy finger.  After a shampoo in the shower, I had to scrape mud off the shower floor.    

     How does the wind know?  Perhaps I should change the words when I sing “Irish Blessing”.  “May the wind be always at your side.”  Doesn’t have the same ring.  Maybe quit singing it altogether.  Or just give in to the inevitable.

May the road rise to meet you,

May the wind be always at your back,

May the sun shine warm upon your face,

May the rain fall soft upon your fields,

And until we meet again, may He hold you in His hand,

May god hold you in the palm of His hand.

   

Ah, Hail

                   “Then April cried and stepped aside, and along came pretty little May.”

     This year, the merry month of May brought relief from April’s winds (March had given up its place as windiest?) and wildfire danger, over 2” of moisture mostly in the form of rain, and a hailstorm.

     The storm left .61” in the gauge.  Not sure that included melting ice.  It did modest crop damage, the full extent yet to be determined. The buildings suffered some dmage.  No glass got broken.  The roofs suffered only minor “cosmetic damage” according to the adjuster.

      Plastic took a hit. 

     Some of the house siding is 40 years old.  Some of it is newer, having been replaced after earlier hail episodes.  The newer stuff has smaller laps, 5” compared to the older 8”.  The oldest siding is on the south and east, where hail apparently never hits.

    The newest is on the north side of the house, which has been replaced twice since the original job.  The 8” stuff on the north got replaced some years ago.  Within a year or two of that replacement, a second storm nailed the north side.  The siding manufacturer replaced the replacement under warranty.  I doubt they’ll do it again.  It was nearly 20 years ago.    

    This week, the house adjuster was here, measured, noted, and left.  I should hear from him soon.

    The wheat is another matter.  The biggest damage was to leaves that canopy and shelter the rows so that other plants—weeds—don’t start growing between rows.  It could be a weedy harvest.  Can’t spray for weeds without losing organic status.

     The final evaluation on wheat won’t come until harvest.  The formula will compare what should have been with what actually happens as far as yield.  

      As always, Mother Nature showered us with a mixed blessing, the needed moisture along with the damage caused by hail.  Musn’t complain.  I remember a May (2001) when it was so dry not even the dandelions could grow.