Category: Infrastructure

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07/17/2022 straw bale sampling and other afternoon torture

We appear to have some potatoes in the straw bales.
The Granny Smith apple is having a hard time. The leaves are turning brittle and possibly sunscalded? We are on mandatory water conservation until the city pump is fixed Monday hopefully so the most I can do is hand water it. However, this apple tree is the most westward facing so maybe it’s just having problems.
Native Texas dandelion in backyard earlier.
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Window weirdo

Shackleton pants in the plant window. It’s 103 F outside. I’m going to put a thermometer in there with him. He has an entire air conditioned house and he chooses here. Update: it’s only 90F in the window, not as bad as I thought. However, the sun has also moved far enough west that it may be shadier. Anyways, still a goofy decision for a fluffy polar explorer.
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07/10/2022 eeeee!!

Five Coryphantha sulcata from Montana!!!
Eleven in this tray.
You can see the roots!!
Another one with roots.
“What are you doing to my favorite window perch?”
Five in the last tray.
A few here were somehow upside down. We’ll see if they make it!
One upside down in a pot with plastic wrap. I think the food containers with clear lids are the way to go. Seven days from planting to sprouting. About 50 seeds, 23 up so far.
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Spreadsheet convenience

While I was organizing the blog, I decided to create a few standardized “filter views” for my plant spreadsheet. There’s the full inventory of everything (including things that haven’t sprouted or have failed), a view that shows just successful favorites, one that is ordered by planting date for edible plants only (ie mostly the vegetables), one for plants that I either have or can easily collect extras of (ie just waiting on them to go to seed or can do cuttings whenever), and finally one just for tomatoes. Just because.

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Change of procedure

I have finally succumbed to inaturalist.org. I am putting the yard non-planted-plants list on it, i.e. anything I didn’t plant (critters, fungi, volunteer plants). So, for now, the mediocre critter pictures (as well as the good ones) from the yard will go there, and I will only put the arty or really exciting ones on the blog (plus field trip ones). Less work for me. There is an RSS feed in the blog sidebar with the most recent critters, as well as a link directly to all yard observations. I might also link to individual iNat sightings if I’m feeling wild. Vegetable and food sightings will continue apace on the blog.

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06/05/2022 bird nest

Bird’s nest fungi, that is!!!
The Chef noticed these this afternoon. Very excited.
A William’s pride apple!!!
I realized there are multiple kinds of horse crippler cactus. Mom helped me identify this as Echinocactus horizonthalonius (the common and widespread subspecies), based on it having eight ribs. The flower closed in the sunshine today. Apparently it needs a second individual to make fruit, ie it’s self sterile (also known as self incompatible).
Some kind friends brought us a big obsidian rock!
I put it near the baby two leaf senna. I think the black and yellow will look very nice together.
A small pokeberry growing in backyard.
A Texas dandelion accidentally brought from home! Yay!