Berm seeding

On the left is how it looked earlier in the week. A little snow fell. I guess everyone stayed at home.

before

It was nice weather today, so I took the opportunity to seed my swale berms, even though I'm rolling the dice a little.

There is rain in the forecast and I need to get the berms mulched over to prevent the compost from washing away.
A big bag of white clover just arrived this week so I made a mixture for the berm from the seeds I have on hand.



The mix contained white clover, two varieties of mustard, millet, parsnip, echinacea, chamomile, dill and cilantro.

after

After I seeded the berm I covered it with wheat straw which holds moisture very well. It is suppose to rain tonight and warm up a lot next week, into the sixties. I'm taking a risk seeding the berm now and having everything germinate and then lose it later with another bout of cold weather. However I've noticed that when I've sowed seeds at the wrong time they've just sat there and eventually germinated when the conditions were right.

The berms are mostly clay. I've tried planting them before but nothing has gotten very much traction, especially when they dry out. Hopefully the top dressing of mulch will get the process going this year.

I also put in around 30 or so comfrey cuttings that I received this week from Coe's comfrey. So I've probably got around a dozen put into the berm.

Snow Time in ATL

More Snow, sorta..

Early this morning it began to sleet with a little snow mixed in. It's mostly ice very little snow.

A huge limb already fell on the fence, of course!

They preemptively closed the schools so it hasn't been near the magnitude of the last event which was a fiasco.

They also oversold the predictions because they were so petrified from the last event. Everyone stayed home.

Maybe we should just start school in spring and end in the fall, skip winter altogether.

Snow 2014!

It began snowing today around lunch time and came down steadily the rest of the afternoon. I estimate that about 2.5" fell here at the house.

The snow had been predicted for the last several days by all of the weather forecasters. Yet, true to form, the schools did not cancel classes for today. Instead they called school off at midday. This created a traffic jam of enormous proportion. People have been sitting in their cars for hours only to move a tenth of a mile.

A few weeks ago all of the school systems cancelled classes the night before when the temperature was predicted to go into single digits. There was zero chance precipitation! The next day was a sunny, clear, beautiful day, and no child went to school. With snow predicted three days in advance not one school system cancelled classes! Children were in school and then on the spur of the moment all of the school systems dumped them out without a moments notice. Way to go ATL!

As for me, I walked outside around 1 pm and it had been snowing for at least half an hour and it was beginning to stick. We don't get a chance to see snow very often so I walked out into the yard to take it in. Aggie, the dog, she's never seen snow. She was very frightened of it. I had to coax her out from under the deck. I believe that she thought that she had somehow caused it and was to blame. She didn't want to come to me. I think she thought I would punish her for it.

After a little while she finally trusted me enough to come out from under the deck and we went into the garage. I knew if I walked out underneath the eave she would most likely follow me out. She was pretty skittish to begin with but after a while she took to it.

She had a good time running around in the snow and eating it too. It dawned on me that people believe that dogs are color blind. Aggie isn't. She clearly saw all of that white powder all over the place and she did not know what to make of it. I think animals see colors just the same as we do. Why wouldn't they? They probably see it better than us.