It Looks Giant From This Angle!

Juvenile Bunny - To Balance the Icky Tick Post

When I was watering the berry bushes this weekend this little guy came darting out of them and ran right for the garden fence. He ended up in the corner where the garden fence meets the wood fence and couldn't get through. This made me very happy because if this little guy couldn't get through a full size rabbit surely can't. Being a big meanie I proceeded to pick up the cute little guy for a closer look. I also wanted to show the neighborhood kids who were out playing in the circle. After showing it to them I put it down and it stayed still in place. The girls pet the bunny very gently and were in complete awe. It was kind of awesome.

With some encouragement from us he made it into the bushes and was then gone. I returned to watering the berry plants and proceeded to scare out two more little bunnies. They aren't babies anymore because they can really move and their ears are perky. Still I felt like a big meanie. I hope they enjoy the clover in the lawn, and stay away from the garden. I prefer these sorts of interactions to those they take place when they get in the garden;)

Tick Removal - Not for the Squemish

This morning I spent about twenty minutes in the garden harvesting greens for my co-workers who donated the most for the MS Bikeathon Tour of the Vineyard this past May. They get a portion of whatever is currently coming out of the garden for their generosity. Unfortunately I didn't do a tick check after I came back inside. Laziness mixed with a desire to finish getting everything rinsed and spun dry won out over habit. When I was getting ready for Gabe's bath this evening I noticed a large red spot on my leg with a nice black tick in the middle. In this case another female deer tick. Since it was already deeply embedded I figured I might as well document it for a How-to on tick removal.

These are my disection tweezers from my college anatomy class. They have a very fine point as you can see by comparing them to the hairs on my leg. I always try to use these when removing ticks as they let me get as close to the mouth as possible. I push them deeply into my skin to the point where it hurts badly so I can get as close to the tip of the tick's head as possible.

I then pull away with gentle steady pressure. I do not twist or yank! Looking at this picture zoomed in at full detail I could see that the tick was ever so slightly engorged. I was out in the garden at 9am and removed her at 7pm. Considering the time it'd take a tick to crawl up my leg I would guess it didn't bite until around 10am. In any case it was attached at most for ten hours which is outside what I would consider the safe bite time. In theory you have 12-24 hours before they will transmit lyme's disease, but anytime they have some amount of engorgement is dangerous according to some.

The tick was very deeply embedded and I couldn't quite get all the way down to the jaws. After removal I still has some of the tick's mouth pieces left behind. With a clearer view I grabbed a bunch of skin with the tweezers and pulled like the dickens.

I ended up minus a chunk of skn, but the mouth parts were gone as well. I'm going to be keeping a very close eye on the bite site for the next several days, and I'll be checking for any of the multiple symptoms. If any show up its a strong course of antibiotics for me! I've had one other tick on for about this long before and nothing came of it so I'm hopeful. The site was very irritated but is already looking much better just a couple hours after the tick was removed. Wish me luck!

Springing to Life

The peas continue to climb up their towers, though the ones in back are about 2/3rds of the way up and are climbing both up the tower and away from it in a chain of pea vines that reminds me of a barrel of monkeys. The are all in bloom now, and I can't wait for the first sugar pods of the year. The shelling peas have already set, but after trying one I think I'll wait for the shelling part. I'm begining to lose hope that the sweat potato slips we ordered are going to arrive. Next year I'll try to make my own, and perhaps sometime this week I'll plunk some of the remaining tomatoes into the spot the sweet potatoes were going to go.

The tomato plants are doing well overall. I wouldn't say any better than that as they are under an assault of aphids, tortoise beetles, and flea beetles. I succumbed to temptation for a quick fix and sprayed insecticidal soap on them two nights ago after doing a test on one of the plants the night before that. All of the plants are doing better aphid wise as of today, but three of them developed severe burns from the spray. I wouldn't call that a fair trade and I think I'll stick to manual removal. I may end up having to pull the affected plants, but I'm going to give them a couple weeks to recover first. The carrots have sprouted between the tomatoes and the beans up the middle have also germinated. Unfortunately so have about a thousand grass seeds. I need to do a major weeding and quick. The trouble is it will have to be delicate as the grass and carrots are intermixed.

The potato bed is taking shape and all of the potatoes have pushed through to the surface. The beans up the middle are suffering from the same burns as the tomato plants from the soap spray. They had it much worse and in a way I'm happy because if they didn't have the same burns I'd be freaking out about an exotic tomato disease that I couldn't identify. I don't think the beans will make it anyway as I thought that the potatoes would grow much slower than they have. I'll be needing to mound them in the not to distant future and the beans will be in the way.

This is another one of my interplanting experiments. I need to thin out the turnips, and I'm pretty sure the melon vines will stomp all over everything. My hope is that the other plants will be established enough to hold their own for long enough to produce. I look forward to seeing how this bed develops.

Ribbit

My photo contribution for our Garden in the Woods excursion:





While I had a ton of pictures of flowers and trees and landscapes, these two photos were the best of the bunch. And quite possibly, the cutest (with the exception of the ones taken of C4 & Michelle's son Gabe).

Doing Battle

This is my battle-suit: three layers of latex gloves, and plastic newspaper bags, held on with rubber bands. The enemy: poison ivy.

And here is an unflattering view of my backside as I go to war.

I took a new tactic this time: lots of bare skin. I was a dangerously hot day - dangerous, because as far as I can tell, urushiol goes floating around on sweat, spreading it far and wide. I have had the oil go right through sweat-soaked clothing in the past. This time, I decided I would use caution instead of full-body armor. It worked. These photos were taken two weeks ago, and I don't have a rash.

Ironically, that's a black cherry, prunus serotina, there in front of me. Ironic, because I recently bought some black cherry seedlings, having failed to realize that I already had some in the yard.



It looks so harmless, doesn't it?

Look Mom, no poison ivy!

Six-Spotted Tiger Beetle - Cicindela sexguttata

We went to the Garden in the Woods this morning on a photography and native plant expedition. The trip was a great success. Many photos were taken and native plants procured. Jen, Steve, and his Bridget met us there and we made our way through at a snails pace since we were so busy stopping to take pictures. Jen had eyes like a hawk for bugs and pointed out most of the bugs I took pictures of. I wouldn't have gotten these shots without her help as I was always looking through the camera lens at something else. These Six-Spotted Tiger beetles were landing on a path through the meadow section of the Garden in the Woods, and they refused to hold still in general.

The bottom one is giving the other a piggy-back ride...uh...ya.

I took the camera off the tripod and went prone to get this shot. It was so cool getting within a couple inches of these guys. Luckily they were busy and didn't fly away until after I had snapped a few shots. Be sure to click on these to see them at full size. The detail is awesome!