Ugly snow and frigid cold - farewell January 2026

January 2026 has been...what's the word?  Weird?  Cruel?  Unkind? 

I don't know how to describe it, but honestly, I'm glad that today is the end of it.  I'm not at all sad to see January 2026 in the rearview mirror.

As 2025 ended, the temperature was very warm. We had a high of 81° F on December 27th.  I think December 2025 ended up being the warmest December on record.

Earlier in the fall, I had build a tiny, tiny air prune box from some scrap 2"x4" lumber.  But because I sometimes do things without thinking them through, it wasn't long before I was second guessing the little box, and thinking that it wasn't going to be deep enough for the seeds I had planted.

So I decided to take advantage of the warm weather at the end of December to build a more proper air prune box.  This one still isn't very large compared to what real tree growers have, but I think it will be more than adequate for what I want to do.  It has a base and three risers, so it can be up to 14" deep.  It also has actual hardware cloth on the bottom (fastened to the bottom - it's not just sitting on chicken wire). 

Revised air prune box. The first version can be seen in the background by Zelda Scissorhands little house.

The bottom box is screwed to the 2"x4" legs which are tall enough that the three risers can just drop down inside the legs.  Hopefully the box won't be too hard to take apart!  

I filled it with hay/manure that I collected from the field earlier in the month, then topped it with compost.  In hindsight, I wish I had put more compost down inside the box.  I'm worried that the things planted in there are going to run out of nutrients before next fall.  I may end up having to water the box with some compost tea or liquid fertilizer or something.  

In the box are some white oak acorns that I collected from a tree at work; some pecans collected from the tree that blew over just a year or so ago; some Red Haven peach pits from peaches my dad gave us; some Mexican Plum pits I collected down by the creek; some Ozark Witchhazel seeds collected down by the creek; a single hazelnut from the shrub in the back yard; cuttings from the red seedless grape.  Toward the end of February, I may add the Ozark Chinquapin seeds I got in the mail this month.  I'm anxious to see what happens with this experiment.

And while the 28th of December was a nice day to build an air prune box, on the 29th a cold front dropped our temperatures down to more "winter-like" so it wasn't very pleasant to be working outside in the wind.  I decided to go ahead and plant some of my earliest cold-weather crops.  

In the past, I'd tried planting individual onion seeds, one or two into each cell of the CD-60 module trays.  That just never worked for me.  So the approach this year was to "winter sow" them in old creamer containers.  They'll grow on in those containers until I am ready to set them out in the garden - essentially, it will be like growing my own onion sets.  I hope that's how it works out anyway!

The more seasonal cold temperatures at the end of December only lasted a couple of days.  As the new year got under way, we were right back to crazy warm.  We reached 71° F on January 6th. 

I decided to go ahead and plant some more early garden crops on January 3. 

Just a few days after they were planted, the Early Texas Grano onions were already starting to come up.  Within a week, the two containers were filled with the little grass-like onions.  The germination was great!  The Utah Tall Celery germinated very well also.  

But the Red Burganday onions?  Zero.  Not a single seed came up.  Nor did any of the American Flag leek, the Nebuka Bunching Onions, the Lacinato Kale, the chives or the cilantro.  All of those seeds were several years old, and I am pretty sure storing them in a place where they got very hot during the summer was a bad, bad thing.  In other words, I ruined them.  Sigh.

But the Red Russian Kale seeds I had just bought from MIGardener germinated well so at least there's that. 

I waited until mid-January just in case the seeds were just slow coming up, but when there still wasn't any sign of a single seedling, I took the rest of the seeds in those packets an planted every last one of them.  If germination was even 5% the hope was I'd maybe get one or two plants!

Well, I guess it was just not meant to be.  The Lacinato Kale did finally sprout three or four tiny little plants, but nothing from any of the others (yet).

By the 17th of January, it had been so warm that I started to worry that I had missed the window for cold stratifying my seeds.  I did some more winter sowing.  Most of these plants are destined for The Meadow but a few of them will go in the "soft landings" bed I'm trying to add under the big oak tree in the front yard.

Winter sown seeds in yogurt cups.  Others were sown into creamer containers.

That afternoon when I walked to the mailbox, I was shocked to see a single daffodil bloom in The Flowerbed to Hide the Ugly Stump.  

I'm not going to count this as the "first daffodil" though, because while technically it is the first one, I think it is an outlier, tricked into blooming because it was on the south side of that log.  The others had just begun poking up through the ground so I don't think they'll bloom until February. 

But while January broke some record highs early on, it maybe hadn't been as warm overall as December was.  But I think it was determined to beat out December in the record books - just not for record warm temperatures....

The snow started on Saturday, January 24 and transitioned over to sleet/snow mix on Sunday night.  It was hard, if not impossible, to get an accurate measurement, but we might have ended up with 4" to 5" by the time all was said and done.

It was an ugly snow, not one of the pretty snows like one sees on a Christmas card.  It covered the ground and drifted up against things and just made everything miserable.

I don't think the National Weather Service gave this storm a name, but apparently The Weather Channel named it "Winter Storm Fern."  She happened because a large blast of arctic air (an offshoot from the polar vortex I guess?) surged way down into the southern United States at the same time a river of moisture was flowing in from the Gulf of Mexico and from the southern coast of California.  

We got very lucky here.  The storm started out with snow for us and transitioned over to sleet as the shallow layer of cold are shifted back to the north.  But that shallow layer stayed just far enough to the south that we didn't get any freezing rain (at least not that I know of).

While I say "we got lucky," that doesn't mean everyone in this area did.  There were people here in the county that had damage from the storm, including my dad.  His equipment barn collapsed on top of the tractor, the hay baler and some other machinery.  I think he said there were 28 chicken houses that collapsed in the county too. 

But areas to our south and east were hit particularly hard.  Up to an inch of ice was reported in Mississippi, with ice widespread across several other states.  Millions of people lost power during the frigid cold that came with the storm.

The snow and sleet that fell has been locked in place by the frigid cold temperatures.  It's still covering the ground even now, and it's slick and very treacherous to walk on.  The temperatures plummeted when the cold air surged south on January 24, and we didn't get above freezing again until January 27.  Our low that morning was 3.9° F.

It probably seems pretty foolish, but in the middle of all this cold weather, I thought, "Why not go ahead and plant the rest of the brassicas and the pepper seeds?"  So that's what I did.  

On January 26, I planted eight different types of peppers.

The Poblano pepper seeds were fresh, just purchased from MIGardener this fall.  If I held my mouth just right as I was planting them, they should come up.

The jalapenos were home-saved seeds from last year.  I sure hope if they germinate that they grow  true to type.

The rest of the pepper seeds were from the same packets I planted out of last year that gave me so much germination trouble I couldn't get to germinate.  Planting them from those packets again makes me wonder if I'm just stubborn, or stupid.  Maybe both.

I also planted more brassicas - a mix of old seeds, and some that I bought from Sow True Seed last year.  I planted very heavily in every little pot just in case the seeds had gone bad. 

The spinich was from a seed packet I bought a couple of years ago when the feed store put their expired seeds on clearance.  They were a year old when I bought them, and now they've been badly stored for two more years.  I have had them come up in the past, so I have my fingers crossed that they'll still do something.

I also planted garlic chives (seeds my older sister gave me) and some dill (home-saved seed from 2022).

(The random numbers on the list above correspond with a number written on the side of each little container.  I had cut some labels from milk jugs for the first seeds I planted, but had run out and didn't have an empty jug to make more at the time I planted these.)  

Because I never bought a heat mat, the yogurt cups I used as seed pots all came in the living room to sit on top of the dish receiver and the audio receiver.  Those two units give off quite a bit of heat and so long as I don't try to water anything that sitting up there and spill water into them, I think it's fine to use them to keep the seeds warm.  (Just DO NOT SPILL WATER INTO THEM I keep repeating over and over and over....)

Repurposing an ice cream container, a take-out container, and a cup cake carrier that someone had left at the recycling center to create mini "greenhouses" for my seed pots.

To my surpise, just three days later the first brassica seedling were already germinating: cauliflower, purple sprouting broccoli, green calabrese broccoli and some unidentified brassica in pot #11, which apparently I neglected to write down what it was in my book. 

On the 30th, some of the home-saved jalapeno seeds were germinating.

Anything that germinates gets moved into the bathroom under the grow light.  We've been able to keep the bathroom at a bearable temperature this year (not warm, by any stretch of the imagination, but at least bearable), and that's where the Meyer Lemon and Key Lime tree are spending the winter.  I put some hooks on the wall under the grow light and repurposed an old wire DVD rack to hang from the hooks to hold the small containers up close to the lights.  That has worked out pretty well so far.  

Celery, pricked out into individual modules; three or four tiny Lacinato Kale; Cauliflower (it looks like practially every seed germinated!) and one Liatris aspera (button blazing star) mixed with some Andropogon ternarius (splitbeard bluestem). 

Red Russian Kale (the three pots by the wall) and Savoy Cabbage.

Early Texas Grano onion.

Upright Prairie Coneflower, Ratibida columnifera, pricked out into toilet paper tubes.  These were winter sowed, and came up after just about a week, taking me totally by surprise.  They'll go out in The Meadow this spring.

Sprouts from the store-bought Sweet potato I half buried in some potting soil about a month or a month and a half ago.  I think I started these way, way too early but oh well....

Cilanto, pricked out and put four or five to a pot (another Red Russion Kale at the bottom left.)

One final frustration for the month:  I had ordered an Ayers pear tree from Stark Brothers back in August.  When I placed the order, the expected ship date was March, if I remember right.  Well, mid-January, I got an email from them that said it was supposed to ship the week of January 18.  I don't think they even looked at the weather forecast to see if that was a good time to ship.  It looks like it actually got moving with USPS on the 19th and then spent the next 11 days on a truck, arriving at my house on January 30.  Its roots didn't look very good.  And of course, I can't plant it because the ground is frozen solid, so it's just "heeled in" in a bucket for now. 

So as I sit her typing this post, my feet are so cold that they ache.  I can honestly say to January 2026, "Good riddance.  Your time came and now it's gone."  (Note to self..read this post in August when it's 110° F outside.) 

It's time for us to move on to The Waiting Month.

The garden in Ju...wait...you mean it's January already???

Although I know we grew a garden last year, honestly, it doesn't really seem like it.

Maybe it's because we started a big renovation project on the house in late June which took up almost all of our time for about a month.  By the time the project reached a pausing point, the weather had turned hot and dry.  Then the grasshoppers came.  They ate pretty much everything that was still alive.

But the garden must have been productive with certain things.  For example in my post titled "Now What?" I had a picture of the squashes and cantaloupes that were all ready at the same time.  We ended up with so many cantaloupes ripe at once that I'm sad and embarrassed to say that most of them went to waste.  

So did we grow much of a garden in 2025?  Let me think back on it.

• We harvested garlic, several nice onions, a few yellow squash and a few snow peas this year (I let most of the snow peas go to seed).  I could have harvested lettuce if I had just picked it but I don't thnk I picked a single leaf from any of the plants and eventually they all bolted.
  
  
• We had hundreds of Tommy Toe and San Marzano tomatoes and while I canned several pints of juice and whole/diced tomatoes, most of the tomatoes rotted on the vine.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• The Cherokee Purple tomatoes were loaded, but we ate very few of them because the skins were tough from being punctured by stink bugs.  I'm guessing that about 99% of them went to waste. 
  
  
• The cucumber vines loved the cattle panel trellis and made an unbelievable number of cucumbers.  Unfortunately, the vines got really thick (again) and I discovered a nest of very aggressive looking red wasps in the vines so I was afraid to pick the cucumbers.  Probably 99% of them went to waste.
  
  
  
  
  
• We made three nice little cabbages, which I harvested and then let ruin in the refrigerator.
  
  
• We made a nice little crop of Kandy Korn (Corn?) and I froze maybe two (maybe three) dozen ears on the cob.  The rest of them ruined in the refrigerator (although in my defense, the ones that ruined were all way less than perfect ears).
  
  
  
  
  
• And after a late start on my bell peppers, we did end up with some really nice plants that were loaded down by the end of the summer.  I chopped up enough to fill a one gallon freezer bag, and picked many more...which I then let ruin in the refrigerator.  Many more ruined on the plants in late fall.
  
  
  
  
  
• The ground cherry plants were absolutely loaded.  I ate a few of them when I was out working in the garden, and while I found them to have an interesting flavor, I'm not sure yet if I like them.  But I'll probably have more next year because literally hundreds of them dropped off the vines onto the ground below and I never cleaned them up.
  
  
• The blackberries set lots of fruit, but I'm not sure they were pollinated very well because some of them were kind of an unappatizing brownish yellow color in places.  Most of the berries went to waste.  I did pick a few berries, but most of those ruined in the refrigerator.
  
  
• I finally got four Cayenne pepper plants started and by late summer they were absolutely loaded with peppers.  But they ran out of time and never had a chance to get fully ripe, so they all went to waste.
  
  
• I planted some summer cover crops in the south part of the garden because the soil there is still not very good.  (It was a diverse mix with Buckwheat, Sorghum Sudangrass, sunflowers, squash, purple hull peas and okra.)  Most of them did really well in the spring, and I was pleased that the Sorghum Sudangrass even survived into the fall.
  
  
  
  
  
• The nasturtiums were gorgeous last year.  That was actually the first time I've ever had any luck growing them.And the zinnias and petunias were really showing off by mid-summer - and again taking over, which was something I said I wasn't going to allow to happen.
  
  
  
  
  

Looking back at that list there are two things that stand out:

• First, the garden did produce lots of food. 
  
• Second, the food mostly went to waste because of me.  

That means that really the problem isn't poor soil, grasshoppers, the heat, or the drought...it's me!

It also makes me realize that I always focus on the failures.  But boy did I have some big ones in 2025!

• Peppers - I could not for the life of me get my pepper seeds to germinate this year.  I tried and tried and tried.  I tried pre-sprouting the seeds in a plastic baggy with a damp paper towel.  I evenutally got one sprout, but when I planted it in the pot, it never came up.
  
  I wondered if my pepper seeds had gone bad from being stored in a place where they got very hot the summer before.  I bought more seeds and planted again - and still, I couldn't get any plants to come up.
  
  By May I think it was, I had only managed to get three pitiful little bananna pepper plants started.  I bought some TAM Jalapeno and regular Jalapeno plants from the feed store, but I couldn't even get them to grow (although in my defense, the plants had been in their little six-packs for way too long and were probably stunted as a result...that's my story and I'm stickin' to it).
  
  Eventually I ordered more Jupiter Bell Pepper seeds from Walmart and was able to get them to grow (see above).  But I cannot believe that I didn't make one single Jalapeno this year.  I was so excited to make more of the refrigerator Jalapenos, but it was not to be I guess.
  
  
• Okra - Can you believe it???  I could NOT grow Okra this year!!!!  Now that's really pitiful, isn't it!  I managed to eventually get about a dozen plants and I harvested enough for a couple of meals.  But boy, oh boy, I'm hanging my head in shame on this one.  If a person can't grow okra, they're not much of a gardener!
  
  
• Apples/Cherries/Peaches/Blueberries/Grapes - The Gala apple tree started off the year covered with blooms and I was so excited.  But it got infected with Fire Blight and it's pretty much doomed I'm afraid.  The Enterprise tree set a few apples this year, but they got worms in them so they shriveled up and fell off.  The peach tree was loaded with peaches, but every single one of them fell off.  The sour cherry had a few cherries on it, and I ate a few of them (very tart and good), but I think the birds got most of them.  I ate a handful of fresh blueberries, but that was all the plants made.  The grapes disappeared, either eaten by birds, or shriveled up and dropped off.
  
  
• Figs - I planted the fig tree in ground at the south end of the shop.  It actually put on about a dozen figs, but they all fell off and then the grasshoppers ate every leaf on the plant.  It put out new leaves in late fall, and I've put a wire cage full of leaves around it.  Hopefully it will make it through the winter.
  
  
• Raspberries - Died.
  
  
• Jostaberry - Died.
  
  
• Pink Champagne Current - Almost Died.  Currently on life support.
  
  
  
  
  
• Green Beans/Green Peas - I managed to get about two messes of beans and two messes of peas this year, but something wasn't to their liking and they just didn't grow very much. 
  
  
• Lima Beans/Kidney Beans/Pinto Beans/Scarlet Runner Beans - What can I say about my beans...abysmal? Disaster?  Very poor germination and essentialy zero harvest from the ones that did grow.  The Scarlet Runner beans at least did try.  They made lots of pretty red flowers that the hummingbirds really liked, but I guess it got too hot for them and they never set any beans.
  
  
• Peanuts - Last year we grew a few peanuts so I decided to give that another try.  Unfortunately, things didn't work out so well this year.  The vines suffered a lot because of the drought and I didn't water them like I did last year.  When we finally did get some rain, they put on lots of peanuts, but they didn't have time to ripen before frost.
  
  
• Tomatillos - More seeds that I couldn't get to germinate this year.  I ordered more seeds and finally did get a few plants, but the drought hit right after I set them out and they never amounted to anything.  Funny enough, we did end up with one volunteer plant that came up at the end of a row.  However, it came on so late, that it didn't have time to make anything to harvest.
  
  
• Potatoes -  I only harvested enough potatoes for a couple of meals.  I was very disappointed about that.
  
  
• Pumpkins - I planted some pumpkin plants in the compost bays again this year, and they went wild.  I was so excited, thinking I was going to get a bunch of pumpkins!
  
  
  
  
  But just as they were getting ripe, two disasters.  First, the groundhog (I think) found them, and started clawing and knawing trying to eat the ripening pumpkins.  But even worse, the squash vine borers got into the base of the stem and the vines started to die.
  
  After I started finding pumpkins on the ground (pulled off the vine by the groundhog), I went ahead and harvested them.
  
  
  
  
  Unfortunately, only one of them had any pumpkin seeds mature enough to roast, and the rest of them weren't mature enough to cook.  They all ended up in the compost pile.  (Note the Cherokee Purple tomatoes on the left...speckled up with stink bug punctures.  I think those all ended up in the compost as well.)

• Broccoli/Cauliflower - I harvested enough broccoli for a few meals and it was pretty good.  But most of it bolted very early so I just left it for the insects.

And speaking of insects - last year was the most terrifying and depressing year ever.  There were so few butterflies, even compared to 2024, when it felt like there were so few.

I kept looking for the Variegated Fritillary butterfly caterpillars in the garden - last year they were all over the Viola sp. growing in the walking rows.  This year, the plants were there, but there were no caterpillars.  I left the Cudweed for the American Lady butterflies, but it was very late spring before I ever saw any sign of them on the plants.

My youngest daughter mentioned the Harambe theory when I was chatting with her this morning. When I told her I had never heard of it, she explained to me that Harambe was a male western lowland gorilla at the Cincinnati Zoo.  In May 2016, a child fell into his enclosure and Harambe was shot and killed to save the child (even though apparently the gorilla wasn't showing any aggression to the child?).  She then explained that the theory is that killing Harambe, "...split our timeline down the wrong way and that's why the world has gone to **** since then."

We just had our warmest December on record.  It was 78.8° F on December 27th.

It was also our driest December on record.  The County Judge issued a burn ban effective 8 am this morning.

So while I don't know if the killing of Harambe split time and sent us on a wrong path, I think we are on the wrong path, and we have put ourselves there - we've created a death spiral for life on earth as we know it.  

It's like life exists in a giant bathtub full of water, and we humans have pulled the stopper.  The water started gowing down, but the tub was so full and we were in boats on the top so we didn't even notice.  As the water level got lower and some species got sucked down the drain, we told ourselves those really didn't matter - there was still plenty of water so there was nothing to worry about.  But as the water level has gotten lower and lower, the suction at the drain is getting stronger and stronger, and most people are still just blissfully floating on top in their boat.  My fear is that we're approaching the point now where if we don't take drastic action we're going to lose the life that sustains us all and nothing will be able to break free of the vortex of water swirling around the drain.  

Maybe we've already passed that point.  

Wow.  Happy New Year, right???  

December 2025 Sunrise - Winter Solstice

 

Sunrise at 7:35 am on Sunday, December 21, 2025

Could it be???!!!

I ended up with about 50 seeds.  Now...how to plant them?  

I figured they'd be like other fall-ripening wild fruits where they just needed a period of cold moist stratification in order to germinate.  I couldn't find much at all online, but finally came across a post where someone who had started some Viburnum plants from seed said they first needed warm moist stratification then cold moist stratification.

So I have them in some potting mix in a couple of flower pots ...

After about a month and a half, I couldn't help but dig around in the pots to see if anything was going on, and I think one of the berries had a tiny root coming out of it. 

In Pursuit of the blackhaw (Part 2) - December 10, 2024

What I had thought was a tiny root on that seed turned out to be nothing.  By summer, not a single seed had germinated.  I dumped the pots out and looked through the dirt for the seeds.  I found them, but they all looked completely dead.  I got a bigger pot, dumped all of the dirt and seeds from the two original pots in it, and just set it out in my woodland garden - just in case the seeds might not actually be dead. 

I didn't forget about the seeds - I watered them when I watered other the plants in the woodland garden, but when an entire year passed with no sign of any germination, I had pretty much written the whole thing off as another failure.

So I can't even begin to describe how shocked (and excited) I was when I watered the pots in the woodland garden yesterday.

What was that?  Was I imagining things????

No, I wasn't.  There it was - one tiny pale seedling poking up through the soil.

Now of course I may be all excited for nothing, because it may turn out to be something like a privet seed that a bird planted in the pot. 

But I don't think so.  I am pretty sure I can see the flat black seed coat.  It appears to have split open, setting the tiny leaves free.

But the million dollar question...why on EARTH did it decide to germinate now?  We're heading into the coldest part of the year.  Blackhaw is a deciduous shrub, so I can't imagine that the seedlings are supposed to come up in the fall or winter!

I wonder if temperature swings (cold at night, then warm in the day when the sun was shining on the pot) tricked the seed into thinking it was spring.

Well, no matter.  I'm not taking any chances that it will be killed by the cold weather.  I brought the pot inside and put it under the grow light with my citrus trees.  My hope is that if one is germinating, now that I've brought the pot inside where it's warmer, there will be more.  

Have I finally gotten lucky?  If it does turn out to be a blackhaw, and it doesn't die from dampening off or something (like Betty Boop, the kitten, eating it) maybe I'm going to actually have a blackhaw shrub to go in my yard.

That just made my day!!!  

The Meadow, Revisited

This past summer was, as my little sister said, a "mean summer."

I suppose that's not unusual though.  I can remember as a kid scanning the intense blue summer sky for clouds and just wishing so hard that it would rain.  School would start in August, and the afternoon rides home on the un-air-conditioned bus were sweltering hot, even with every window on the bus down.

But eventually the weather would break, the daytime temperatures would return to at least bareable and the rains would return.

We made it to that "end of summer" weather for 2025.  After what I suspect will be yet another hot/dry - probably record hot yet again - finally we got some slightly cooler temperatures and some much needed rain in late August and mid-September.  It was still hot out in the sun during the afternoons, anywhere from mid-80s to low 90s, but the nighttime temperatures were much cooler and the forecast showed highs in the upper 70s in the coming days.

So what happened in The Meadow over the summer?

In mid-June, the weedy-looking mess gave me a little glimpse of what I hope will be its future beauty.

The meadow, on June 19 of its first year.

Some of the highlights:

Spotted Bee Balm (Monarda punctata)

Black-eyed Susan (Rudbeckia hirta).  To the right, there's a flower stalk and bud of one of the pale purple coneflowers.

Purple Love Grass (Eragrostis pectinacea).  Sadly, these two clumps didn't survive the summer.

Tall Thistle (Cirsium altissimum)

Splitbeard Bluestem (Andropogon ternarius), surrounded by what I believe was crab grass.

Plains Coreposis (Coreopsis tinctoria) rescued from the Sparks place, just starting to bloom.

Old Field Goldenrod (Solidago nemoralis)

There really weren't very many plants that bloomed in this first summer, but they had all started to grow, and it looked like they were going to be Ok.

I had a few pots of pale purple coneflower (Echinacea pallida - or maybe it's Echinacea simulata?  I'm not sure....) that I had winter sown and as spring turned to summer, they were really starting to outgrow their pots.  Rather than move them into larger pots, I decided to go ahead set them out.  

I had also planted some splitbeard bluestem seeds in one of my 9-pack module trays.  The seeds germinated, but I couldn't seem to keep them watered and several of them died.  I decided to just plant the survivors in the meadow as well.

Splitbeard Bluestem (Andropogon ternarius)

July and August are horrible months to set out transplants, but since I had gone and done it, I decided to cover the little patch of meadow with one of my 40% garden shade cloths to try protect them at least a little bit from the baking hot summer sun.

Boy, did it look tacky!  But it actually worked really well.  With just a little of the sunlight blocked from hitting them, most of the transplants survived. 

The end of summer saw the fall bloomers take center stage.  The late boneset was blooming, the wrinkleleaf goldenrod was blooming, and the Texas vervain, plains coreopsis and Rudbeckia hirta put out a second flush of flowers.  I was reminded why I wanted a meadow in the first place.

After setting out the transplants, I hadn't planned on doing any more work in The Meadow this year.

But fools are called fools for a reason, I suppose.

RAF came out one Saturday in September to find me dragging the silage tarp over a new section of the field.  He watched for a bit and when I stopped to ask him what he thought he said, "I just don't get it.  You haven't even finished the first part yet and you're making it bigger????"

He does have a point.  But because the tarp has to be down for about a year to kill the Bermuda grass, I guess I was getting anxious.

After the billboard tarp and all but one piece of the silage tarp was moved, I took my weeding sickle and worked around the entire edge of where the tarp had been, cutting out the crabgrass, Bermuda grass, ragweed, etc. that had grown up because I hadn't run the string trimmer around it during the summer.  (Note to self...keep the edges of the tarp clear next summer.)

But then there was a big problem.  What should I do with all of the bare soil that I had just uncovered?

I decided to try three things.  

First:  In the 10' x 16' spot where the billboard tarp had been, I planted seeds.  I know, I know...that's not what I said I was going to do in my last post about The Meadow.  But this time, I took a clipboard and paper with me and made a map as I planted the seeds.  Every spot where something was planted got marked with a popsicle stick. Since the seeds are marked, it should be much easier to identify what's something I planted vs something that's a weed when the seeds germinate next spring (notice I said "when," not "if" - you just have to believe in the seeds, don't you?). 

  

Second:  North and west of the part where the popsicle stick markers were, I planted a cover crop of cereal rye. 

Third:  To the south of the popsicle stick markers, I scattered seeds of Rudbeckia hirta and a bunch of other old seeds that I had saved long ago.  Some of the seeds were marked and some weren't.  I said I wasn't going to do that again, but fools are called fools for a reason. 

One thing I did learn from my first "sprinkle the seeds" fiasco was that I need to "edit out" the ones I know I don't want, like the meadow buttercup, the goose grass and the crab grass while they're still small.  I have learned to recognize some weeds and some of the native forbs, and that gives me more confidence this time around in knowing what can stay and what needs to go.  

So what happens next?

There actually is a plan for next spring, even if it's not very well-formed at this point.  My little sister has also been bitten by the native plant bug (YAY for that native plant bug!), and we're hoping to have a winter sowing party very soon.  I'll be winter sowing some native bunch grass seeds:  Sideoats Gramma (Bouteloua curtipendula) and Prairie Dropseed (Schizachyrium scoparium), both purchased from Hamilton Native Outpost in Elk Creek, Missouri;  Little Bluestem (Schizachyrium scoparium) collected on the side of the road by my little sister's house; and Purple Lovegrass (Eragrostis pectinacea) collected from the ditch north of The Meadow.   If I do manage to get some grasses started, they'll be used to fill in the blanks between the popsicle sticks.  It's backwards from what the experts recommend - they say establish your matrix first - but fools are.........

(There are lots of other seeds I'll be winter sowing, but that's a whole 'nother post!)

As for the part planted with cereal rye - well, if the rye behaves as it has in the past where I've planted it in my garden, I expect it should be ready to terminate by mid to late April.  I plan to crimp-kill it then direct sow a matrix of grasses directly into it.  If the grasses don't come up, I'm sure that spot in the meadow will grow some great sunflowers!

October 2025 Sunrise

 

Sunrise at 7:37 am on Wednesday, October 22, 2025.  The low for the morning was 39.7° F.  

September 2025 sunrise - fall equinox

The sun came up somewhere behind those heavy clouds sometime around 7:10 am on Monday, September 22, 2025.

August 2025 Sunrise

 

Sunrise at 6:43 am on Thursday, August 21, 2025.

Now what?

 

July 2025 Sunrise

 

Sunrise at 6:25 am on Monday, July 21, 2025.

June 2025 Sunrise - Summer Solstice

 

Sunrise at 6:07 am on Friday, June 20, 2025.