Yourr Neck of the Woods 2015 Part1

Muddy--

Last year was the first in ages that there was only one adult rabbit.
I am sure it made plenty of babies--but I only saw one that I would see
hiding in my beds, running away when i watered, but, otherwise, not too
afraid of me. It started as a youngster--maybe 5" long, and as time passed,
I saw it grow bigger and bigger.
Once I saw the mama Rabbit with a mouth-full of dried grass head under my
neighbor's huge shed/garage which sits on abase of 6x6's.
This garage sits right behind my raised bed.
IF she was whelping babies under there--they never made it outside.
I think snakes or a hawk got them all. Good!

Last week--I saw an adult rabbit. Must be the little one all grown up.
If this rabbit continues to nest under the garage, there won't be any babies around either.
Then I can stop putting the stupid, green, plastic fencing around everything.
So ugly! Unsightly! Distracting!
I can tell you that rabbits will strip every leaf off of the stems of Oriental Lilies,
my NE Asters, my Heliopsis, and every Gladiola in my neighbor's bed.
Then--many of the stems were chewed off at the base and laying on the ground.
They must be so desperate for something to eat...

I have to encircle all these plants with the fencing to save them.
A rabbit-free yard would be wonderful! G.

Once the season begins, rabbits aren't much of a nuisance in our yard. It's mostly in the winter and early spring when they are doing the most damage.

Not much for them to eat right now with all the snow.
I was out tromping thru the snow with Jen & Josh and the Grands. Jen and her husband are thinking of buying land and there were 2 parcels 6 acres each in our area. So we all went out for an adventure. The one parcel is in an area that I just love and it was advertised as having 2 streams on the property but unfortunately one of the streams runs right thru the middle of the land, with very large rocks. Not really suitable for building. We passed the other parcel on our way, so we went back to look at that one as well. It was very nice but probably more than they want to spend.

Hey Holly. Have them build Fallingwater Two!
If I could ever consider it I would love a stream on my land.

As I sit here in my house on a 1/3 acre plot, I'm wondering why they can't build on one side of the stream if there would be several acres to work with?! There must be a reason, I'm sure...maybe the stream floods sometimes?

I wondered too!

Have you ever seen a boulder field left by the ice age? That is what the lot with the streams has to offer. Just clearing a lane requires a major piece of equipment and basements are almost non-existent in that area. Well drilling also almost doubles over the cost in limestone. You also have to clear space for a sand mound. If you wanted to place a cabin or modern structure and leave the land as is is the only way to do it justice.

It is not just the stream and there are two of them. Both smaller that meander thru the property and then join together. There are huge boulders all over the property. The land sits in a hollow with the properties on either side up much higher. We walked back in pretty far and found a site to put a house but it is on the slope near the property line, back in pretty far. You would need at least one bridge, not sure if the land would perk (owner will take care of that if he finds a serious buyer) and it would cost a fortune to try to move the boulders to put in a driveway. Even though the streams are pretty small it could flood especially since all the ground around it is much higher. Here are a couple of pics. You can probably see where one of the smaller streams is by the depression in the ground it was frozen and snow covered. These aren't even the really big boulders you should see the size of some of them. It really is a beautiful area though.

If the surface boulders are glacial erratics, the underlying bedrock one must drill for a well may be a different rock type. Consult a geologic map of the area to see what it is underlain by.

It must have had glaciers moving over this area to have all the big,
smooth rocks now exposed. Very interesting to see if you can find out
just what was happening there a few million years ago.

I LOVE Geology! Best class I ever took in my life.
Then--visiting my sister in AK--and walking up a hillside to get to the
tongue of a glacier, we walked over immense, solid rocks smoothed by the
force of the glaciers in the past.
It humbles you to see the force that glaciers have--as they inch down the mountains
on their way to the sea. Impossible to even imagine.

1--The black lines are where multi-glaciers meet (dirt and stone churned up) as they move
downward to their end--the river-and then on to the sea.

2----My sister and our cousin's DH facing off with the very end of a Glacier.

Sorry--if this went off topic again....G.

Sally, I too always wanted a stream on our land. We looked at a house a couple years ago and there was a stream in the backyard. FEMA insurance was 4000 a year. That killed it. I don't even know why they had to have flood insurance because the house was upslope from the stream and the stream was at least 100 feet away from it.

G, I enjoy geology as well. It's probably one of the most interesting sciences.

Jeff, the FEMA maps don't always make sense. Our sons' BF lives up by State College above the Juniata. Compared to the river he lives on a hill, yet in the last revision of the flood plane maps his property was included. The mortgage company was requiring flood insurance at like $3-4K a year.
I think he may have taken a loan from his Grandparents to avoid it. My Dad's house requires flood insurance, that cost us about $900, which I consider a deal. The new maps take forever to be updated and Dad's is now supposedly no longer flood plane. I wonder if you can request a refund back to the date of the survey?

There is a creek on my property, but I think the house site shows above a flood plain. I've never had to have flood insurance on the home owner's policy.

Hey, coleup and I live down here in Anne-arrundell, down here on the Coastal Plain. Please explain, what is a 'boulder' of which you speak?

Streams down here are kind of boring since they lack much rock personality. I guess we compensate with flatter calm easy-kayakable water.

This is all interesting. 'What lies beneath' is so important.

LOL Sally!! Wolftrap Creek has more than a few of them. These aren't the largest ones; I just happen to have this photo already.

Holly, I get it now. That's probably why the land is less expensive. It would be nice if someone bought it and just put a cabin on it because it's a beautiful spot.

Oh Muddy that is a beautiful spot and yes it looks quite a bit like what we were looking at.

It's amazing that the trees can grow on such rocky sites. Makes me realize how pampered the trees are in our yards.

I walked around back this morning to take the trash out and I could see rabbit turds all over on the white snow. We had a coating of ice so they didn't melt through. Lol...there was a turn every 4 feet or so. Maybe it didn't want to get lost and was doing a Hansel and Gretel thing...

Jeff. I read somewhere that rabbits have to pretty much eat continuously as that's how their digestive system works. So, it stands to reason that they would also poop continuously. They are like little in place fertilizer factories!

lemons from lemonade- think of the gentle distribution of nitrogen across the lawn just as the grass wakes up...

Hmm....I pay someone to fertilize the lawn. I'd rather have my shrubs look nice. And I don't like lemonade :) Too sour. Joke is on the rabbits though because they're eating their food for next winter.

Yeah, I didn't expect the whole gentle nitrogen thing to be any consolation over the shrub damage!

Lol, well the good news is that it/they are plump and healthy from eating all my shrubs so they will be good food for whoever gets them.

Sallyg, when I did percolation tests for the County I had an opportunity to see some of 'what lies beneathe' our part of the coastal plain. Confirming that we found no 'boulders' per se but we did find 'rock' of the sedimentary kind in layers from as little as 3' down to as much as 30' These layers were anywhere from a foot or two to 6 or more feet thick. The depth of the rock determined what septic system (if any) could work for a particular property. Even on a small property there could be quite a varience in percability from front to rear or side to side.

Surface water 'drainage' or runoff will follow lay of the land above until it hits 'rock' layer beneath. where in certain instances this layer drains water uphill creating poorly drained sites and a high water table dependent on evaporation more than percolation.

I think this has to do with us being part of the end morain for glacial advance, along with eonic changes of the contures of Ches Bay.

Jeff,doesn't it sound like 'entrapment' to plant a 30' row and various other shrubs with no protection whiie they are tender babies, and then have rabbits take the fall for damage?

Hmm...I can't say I'm surprised you would take the rabbits' side on this one ;-P

I have ~120 shrubs all planted within the last 4 years. It would be herculean at best to fence them all. Once they get to a certain size, they lose their protection. I know that rabbits will eat at them but still like to complain about it.

Sequoia, in line with your observation about rabbits, I wish deer could have the foresight to realize they're destroying their future food supply.

In addition to the trees hanging on for dear life on the eroded banks of Wolf Trap Creek, there are others growing in really rocky, dry soil higher up in the valley carved by the creek. The soil is black (loam?), but it's impossible to dig more than 4 inches deep without hitting large rocks. I do the best I can when planting shrubs there, but their roots still face big challenges.

Lol...yeah I guess wild animals are a lot like some Americans...

We've all been under the weather the past couple of weeks, maybe a dose of winter blahs thrown in, so I'd been thinking I would give Philly a miss this year, figured I'd had my fill of Hollywood trappings by watching the Oscars. THEN I came across an article mentioning that the cinema being celebrated by the theme of this year's show is DISNEY!!! Pixar, too.

OK, so now I really really really want to go!

Who is planning to go, and on what days?

We had no school today (should have driven to Philly LOL) and "wintry mix" scheduled for tomorrow and tomorrow night. Rain Wednesday, snow again Thursday, sunny & cold Friday through weekend. So if we wait for good weather, we also get weekend crowds, and possibly some "tired" flowers.

If there's no school again tomorrow, I think Joyanna and I should hit the road, provided the highways are OK. Well, that might be overly ambitious, given that I was up half the night with her last night -- thankfully we managed to use our new "teledoc" service to obtain antibiotics for her ear infection, and by this evening she was pretty bouncy again.

I can't go, but I hope you have a great time! I'm glad Joyanna is feeling better. Oh the wonders of modern medicine.

You aren't kidding... poor girl was just crying with that sudden & severe ear pain... tylenol & hot water bottle can only help so much... 20 minutes after the first antibiotic dose and she was already feeling better. Big cheer for antibiotics and 2 more cheers for "teledoc" and 24 hour CVS.

Maybe I will wait for the weekend, so Joyanna is totally recovered. This is definitely one that I can't imagine seeing without her (and she's been lobbying to go for several months), although I'm willing to pull her out of school for something like this, too.

Ric and I are heading out to Philly today. We are catching the 9:15 train, hopefully we will have tons of Pictures when we get home.

Have a wonderful time!

I just got a call from Ric, checking to see if by chance we were in Philly. (No such luck; Joyanna is home sick again today.) They are having a ball! They took the train in, as they've done before, so no worries about parking, tolls, weather, etc. The entrance is really spectacular this year -- red carpet, huge flower arrangements, flanked by flower gardens, and a big screen just inside showing snippets from various films.

He also said some of the plants had signs of frost damage -- unfortunately, on larger ones that couldn't just be switched out. But still, quite a spectacle. I think his favorite so far might have been the "Finding Nemo" exhibit, for its underwater appearance.

If we try to get up there this weekend, who would like to come along? Anybody thinking of heading that way?

Sounds fun, but will be going to a baby shower.

The Spring Plant Swap threads are up!

We had a slow ride home from the train station, it's just 20 miles and took 1 1/2 hours. Everything was covered with ice. I'm glad we had taken the 4WD truck.
It has been snowing here all day and it's still at it. We have 10"s or so. Little Alfie loves the snow but it's so deep he can't walk. I'd call his method of movement bounding, he's lucky there are no deep spots or he'd just disappear. LOL

We went to the Philadelphia show last weekend. Weather was horrible. I wasn't overly impressed by the show gardens. To be fair it was so packed it was hard to see anything and when it finally thinned out I was so tired and sore I didn't want to. I did pick up 3 Ackerman camillias (he was an old patient of mine) and some lovely little primroses, trillium grandiflora, solomon's seal (the big tall ones) and a big bag of casa blanca lily bulbs plus a great cart to carry everything. I wanted to get the hellebores they had on offer but at the prices they wanted I decided to get them at American Plant. I wish they weren't so expensive. All in all I was kinda disappointed. Most of the vendors were garden chachkas and artisan garments. There were very few plant vendors. Guess I've watched too many BBC specials of the Chelsea show.

ugh, bummer.

Snow day again here... behind enough on preparing for a couple of talks next weekend that I will probably have to stay put & work this weekend. Maybe Jim will take Joyanna out somewhere... or I'll go to the Y and put her in the Fun Zone for a couple of hours while I type away in the lounge!

Pixie posted something fun in the NorthEast Gardening Forum... Allison (OneWish) is getting married, and Pixie has organized her gardening friends to get her a really amazing wedding cake!

Thanks for reminding me, Jill