Tulips And Other Flowers

The tulips were generally at their best yesterday.   

I used to have a lot more, but there are 2 problems.  First, the voles love them!  They find them almost anywhere.  Second, the fancier ones have short lives.  They are hybridized within an inch of existence for color rather than length of life.  Even if I plant them in wire mesh cages  (small enough to keep voles out but large enough to allow the stems to grow through), they still die younger than standard red ones.

Years ago, I planted perhaps 100 tulips in 2 years.  The first were among the daffodils around the backyard woods.  And some near the deck.  The following Spring, all I found were holes where the voles dug down and ate the bulbs.  The last 2 pics are of the only survivors (and notice they are solid colors). 

You can see how many there used to be...

So, when I established the 25x25' daffodil bed around the birdfeeder, I put the hyacinths and tulips in wire mesh cages.  But even that didn't help much.  At  8 bulbs per cage, about 10 cages, 80 bulbs...  I have 8 left and a few that are just leaves this year but might bloom next year.

I plan to dig up the cages in June when the leaves die back and try again.  But this time with standard old red tulips in the Fall.  They will stand out among the daffodils better anyway.

I have no idea why the caged hyacinths all died out.  They are usually long-lived if not eaten by voles.  Maybe the hyacinth stems are too thick for the wire mesh.  Maybe I'll try putting them in slightly larger mesh and surround them with sharp gravel chips.  I've read that deters voles very well.  

I want more hyacinths.  The fragrance is wonderful!

Tax Day

 LOL@ me.  I meant the previous post to be a draft to be added to later.  It slipped past my noticing...  I guess I left it "scheduled" rather than "draft".

But I did my taxes yesterday.  It was miserable even with helpful software.  There are questions I don't truly understand, so I just do my best.  I probably make some mistakes.  But I bet I overpay rather than underpay.  I'll survive.  If I get audited, they will probably owe ME money.

The annoying thing is that my e-filing was rejected for the wrong PIN.  My taxes took 2 hours to do and trying to figure out the PIN error took 3.  I will probably never try to e-file again.

So I printed the damn forms out and will snail-mail them as usual.  I'll have to stand in line at the Post Office to get the proper postage and a receipt.  I'll get a few $100 back on the Federal and pay a few $100 to the State.  It balances out, so I don't really care very much.

But it sure could be simpler...  If H&R Block and other places can offer tax software that the Govt accepts as accurate, so could the Govt.  And it would be more official that way.  If they made a mistake in the software, it wouldn't be MY error.  Maybe that's why they don't.  😀

Tax Day

Damn, need to clear the computer desk for the tax day.   I hate doing it.  I get some slight money back, but it is always a pain.   The software sure helps. but I put it off as long as I can.  "Helps" doesn't make it easy... 

I bet the IRS knows exactly how much I owe.  Why can't they just tell me to send them that?  LOL!

Cut Daffodils

I learned a few years ago that cut daffodils keep their color when dried.  But they do fall apart eventually.  So I went and cut some from the largest patches where their absence won't be noticed much.  They are is glasses of water for now, but will be hung upside down to dry in a week...

 And some even have a nice fragrance!

Shrubs

The Yellow Forsythia look nice against the evergreen Nandina with red berries. 

But I really had to get rid of the Forsythia.  They are invasive and keep spreading.  I regret ever having planted them 35 years ago.  There are some goldenrod cultivars that aren't and the same color combination would be as pleasing in Fall as the Forsythias are in Spring.

A Trip Around The Back Yard

There is more than the one Spring bulb bed.  I have smaller patches throughout the back yyard.  And I'm placing markers for where to plant more come Fall.  I want them so thick I can barely walk through them.

And the Hyacinths will need wire cages to keep out the voles.  I bet I lost 200 bulbs to them over the first few years.

Daffodils are safe from them though.  Toxic.

The Saucer Magnolia flowers are done for the year.  

But they sure were pretty for a week.

 

Daffodils

A series of how the blooms change in the bed...  The various daffs were planted to bloom in anti-clockwise rotation.  Well, it seemed a good idea at the time.  

 

New Electric Razor

I used a Norelco Rotary Razor for 4 decades.  Bought new shaver heads every 10 years.  It finally failed and I bought a new one that was about the same price.  I forgot that prices of old stuff don't mean the same today.  Well some things get better cheaper.  But in this case the same price new one (different brand) was  a piece of junk.  

So I bought the best I could find this time.   Why not?  I probably have 20 more years of shaving every couple days.

Philips Norelco 9800 Rechargeable.  Shaved my face smooth as a baby's bottom!  

I don't get anything for this.  And it ain't cheap.  But I just love it...

The Annoyance Of Cheap Stuff

 I smashed a wristwatch a few days ago.  It was relatively new.  

I don't care for fancy watches.  A former friend of mine was so proud of his (actual real) Rolex and never understood why I wasn't all that impressed.  I don't do jewelry.  All I want from a watch is accurate time and day, and ease of reading it.  And that it be digital.

So I'm in the "cheap" category...  What is it with cheap watches that they have to be black display on a grey background?  That's hard to read.  I was gifted an early digital watch as a teenager (a Quasar - sp?).  Nice black display on white.  Easy to read.  Kept perfect time for 40 years (with a new battery every 5 years).  Sadly, the innards finally failed.  I loved it for the simplicity.  All I ever had to do was change to DST and back to EST.  It had 2 buttons and each did 1 thing.

My experience with watches has been poor ever since.  The best replacement I found at a reasonable cost was black on grey.  And too much information on it.  I know what day of the month/date/week it is.  I don't need an alarm, a countdown function, a countup function, or a timer.

My previous newer watch had 3 buttons.  The first engaged "settings".  The other 2 let me cycle through options to change the time (up and down).

The newest watch had 4 buttons (and the same black on grey screen).  It lost a minute per month so had to be reset sometimes.  I had to read the instructions every time.  And then the buttons stopped working.  Oh, I could move from one function to another, but nothing stayed "set".  Except alarm beeps at midnight.  

I tried everything in the instructions to stop it, with no success.  I finally smacked it a few times on my workbench just to stop the alarm (5 days ago).  Today, it started beeping at me again every 5 minutes starting at midnight.  The alarm refused to die.

So I whapped it again on the desk until it stopped.  Silent for an hour...  (hurray)  I'm wearing my previous watch for now. I like it better than I did before.  😊.   I want a simple to set, easy to read, basic digital wristwatch.

If anyone has a recommendation, I'm listening...

Saturday Surprise

I have been getting my wine, meat and deli stuff from a small specialty store for 20 years.  They are great on meat (both cheaper and better quality than chain stores), cheaper and better deli products too.  Their wine selection is great.  So is their specialty liquors (I found apple liquor there for a 'Golden Dawn' cocktail.

They are even the only place I can dependably find egg roll wrappers.  And they are also the only store around who seem to understand that Golden Delicious apples should be gold and not green!

Well, at checkout, confetti fell from the ceiling and a horn blared...

I was their 1 millionth customer!  Boy was I surprised!  I got my stuff free.  They took some pictures too.  Manager and me.  Cashier and me.  Apparently, it will show up in the local newspaper (I'll have to buy a few copies for posterity)!  I'll post pictures when I get them.

Things like that never happen to me.  So this is a real surprise...

Indoor Seed-Starting

 I got back to planting seeds inside.  Last post, I had cleaned up the spill from "somecat" jumping on the stack of soil-filled trays and knocking half of them over.  What a MESS!

So I took the filled ones and planted 2 trays of seeds.  "Just 2" you ask?  Yeah...

It was all the stuff I had to do before planting them.  Well, if you go to a fast-food place, they don't start preparing for the assembly-line when the store opens.  They have to have everything ready to use for the first customer, right?

I started by sorting out my plant labels (I don't make new ones every year).  First, veggies vs flowers.  Then various types of each.  Flower labels are easy.  Annuals vs perennials.  Then common ones (Marigolds and Zinnias, etc) vs "fancy" (the ones you don't find on Walmart racks).  I bundled the categories with rubber bands.

Then I had to soak some of the filled trays with water.  The dry potting soil I mix myself takes a while to get wet (really).  

Then I had to check my list of starting dates.  I am behind a couple of weeks (as usual).  So I needed to plant seeds that should have been started earliest first.  It is 4 weeks til "last frost date", so I planted the -8 weeks to -6 weeks last night.  And I planted the common ones, just to get back into practice again.

Later today, I will catch up to -4 weeks and be current again.  

After that, I will tackle the more "exotic" flowers.  Those are trickier.  Those seeds can have some real odd requirements.  Some need to be planted deeply, some need to just be sprinkled on the surface.  Some need to be planted in soaked soil and then be left dry for a week.  Some need constant water.  Some need strong light, others want none at first.  Some need cool temps to germinate, others need Summer warmth.

There is a reason those flowers are not "common", LOL!  I move trays around the house a lot.  Some get set above warm floor vents, some get set in the colder garage.  Some get direct light on the planting stand, some have a towel other them for initial darkness.  It takes some time, but it is a hobby and obsessive attention to a hobby is self-justified.  😎

There is a reward though.  The "fancy" ones are fairly cheap as seeds but expensive to buy as seedlings.  And the ones I am trying to grow are ones that support beneficial or lovely insects (butterflies, bees, ladybugs, etc) for food or egg-laying.  And many support hummers and other interesting birds (some migratory).

So tomorrow, more seed-starting.  And some are nearly impossible to grow (for an amateur like me).  I have an order of 38 pollinator and meadow flower plants due to arrive in late April.  Sometimes, you just have to buy what you can't grow.