Springtime Spotlight

For people who enjoy nature in an area that experiences several months of winter weather. This is prime time! I hope you will enjoy the plants and sights of spring highlighted here.

The Black Locust tree blooms are glorious this year. Many trees exhibit more blossoms than leaves right now. The honey bees love the nectar and the blooms smell good. Folks who enjoy foraging for wild foods find the blooms a delicacy.

Raspberries are another great nectar source for honey bees. We encourage our black raspberries on the property because we like honey and the fruits of successful pollination.

 

See the owl? I think it tucked itself under a canopy of leaves to avoid the songbirds. We usually are tipped off to the location of an owl in daytime by the cacophony of angry songbirds. They don't like owls. We sure do. They eat mice and are fun to watch.

Prickly Pear cactus budding. These bloom yellow. Yes, this is in Michigan. I see them in the median of the highway in southwest Michigan blooming in mid June. These are next to a parking lot of a business.

 

One morning, I saw this tiny, perfectly formed oak leaf on the front bumper of my vehicle. It reminded me of an infant child, fully formed, with so much growth potential ahead.

This is the time of year to run across an egg out of place. I wonder what the back story is here?

I saw mamma robin sitting above her nest and wondered why. When she left, temporarily, I realized she had no place to sit in the nest. She had a full house of little ones! I bet they flew the coop soon after this picture.

Honeysuckle. It is rather invasive and not native to our area. See the green fruits? Those ripen and the birds eat them and poop the seeds everywhere. This pic shows a white blossom (the white blossom turns yellow as it ages). There is also a pink and a red blossomed honeysuckle bush. They are kind of pretty and the honey bees go to them for nectar.

This is yellow rocket. It is in the wild mustard family. It blooms soon after the main dandelion bloom period. The blossoms turn into seed pods along the stem.

Yellow rocket seed pods soon after forming. They will grow bigger.

 

I used to think this was phlox. But, I learned that phlox has five petals, and dame's rocket has just four. Count the petals. Yup, this is dame's rocket. It is very pretty and invasive in Michigan. It can be light purple like this pic, or white. Check it out later in the season and you will see lots of seed pods along the stem. Note the black raspberry blooming on the right side of this pic.

Leaves of three......my walking stick is pointing to poison ivy. I do see some raspberry leaves also. That can look like poison ivy sometimes. I also see virginia creeper in this pic. When that starts growing it can fool you into thinking it is poison ivy until it gets all five leaves formed.

 

This is a poison ivy fake out, sometimes. It is a box elder tree. The box elder is a maple and can be tapped for making maple syrup (from what I read--I have not tried it). You may be familiar with the black and red box elder beetles? They especially like the box elder tree sap, juices and leaves.

The pic below shows the samara (seeds) of the box elder. The leaf shape may not make you think of maple, but the helicopter seeds do don't they?  

 

While fishing in someone's private pond (with permission), my first cast got me this channel catfish. Watch out for the sharp spike on the dorsal (top) fin. When I fish the river for smallmouth bass, I bring a thick rubber glove (in case I catch a channel cat) to protect my hand from that spike. These are fun to catch, though.

The summer coats on the deer are so beautiful this time of year. But, I wish they wouldn't eat from my perennial and vegetable gardens. 

When I saw this picture, I chuckled and said, "Just like a little kid." With all the fish I have caught in my lifetime, big and small, here I am grinning about another little bluegill. We were once again at the Discover! Event put on by the Kent County Parks at Millennium Park. Our "booth" is right on a pond, so when we get set up, I go fishing until the event starts. We were there to exhibit honey bees as you can see from my sweatshirt.

If you are able, I hope you get a chance to walk a trail somewhere. You never know what you will see.

Thanks for taking the time to enjoy this blog.

 

A True Fish Story and More

Okay, folks, this is a story that I would find hard to believe. But, it happened to me! And now....the rest of the story. (I miss Paul Harvey.)

The picture above shows two bluegills. The larger one I caught in the traditional way while ice fishing. See the lure in its mouth? I was fishing for fun for a few extra minutes that morning, releasing all I caught back into the ice fishing hole because I had my limit of fish already. Because of that, I left the transducer float in the hole as I caught this fish instead of removing it out of my way so the fish does not tangle itself in it and get off the line. (See that thing floating in the hole? It holds up the transducer just below the bottom of the ice. The transducer sends and receives a sonar signal to make the depthfinder work properly.) After I iced that bigger bluegill, I looked back at the hole, and there was another bluegill at the surface. So, I reached in with my bare hand and scooped the smaller bluegill you see in the picture out onto the ice. I got a double! All I can figure is that the smaller fish followed the larger one all the way up and into the ice hole (a ten inch long tube of ice that day since the ice was about 10 inches thick) where it got wedged between the ice and the transducer float keeping it from turning around and swimming back down again. It was unbelievable! In over fifty years of ice fishing, this has never happened to me before. I put both fish back into the lake to swim away. What a fish story!

 

When a flag goes up on a tip-up, it means a pike has grabbed your bait (hopefully).  

This Northern Pike was on the tip-up and you can see the bluegill I used as bait sticking out of its mouth. 

I made fish patties out of this one and one I caught a few days prior. Click here to check out my YouTube video that tells you how I made the delicious patties. 

Blooming Now

In my beehive journal I often write, "Blooming Now" and list all the main wildflowers honey bees visit that are currently blooming. It is important for beekeepers to know and understand the bloom cycles for their area. But for this post, I am showing you just a portion of the plants I have seen blooming recently. They are not all plants for honey bees, but I hope you enjoy them as much as I do.

 

I like the Bleeding Heart. My mom has one that blooms every year (not this plant) and she gave me an offshoot, but it did not thrive in my environment.

Don't forget the Forget-Me-Nots

Okay, this is not a bloom, but a fruiting body. It is a true morel, according to my mushroom expert son. But it is a "half free" meaning it is not connected to the stem at the bottom. So, we do not harvest these. We use them as a sign that the "eaters" are not far away from coming up.

These Lesser Celadine are invasive. I usually see them near rivers, but these I saw along a path in higher elevation than I expected. I was surprised and a little bit alarmed.

Bluebells are always a joy to see.

The first day the Tulips opened up.

Note the white bark of the Birch Tree. It is blooming, too.

Here is the bloom of the Birch Tree.

Here is a clump of moss on cement. It has bloomed already, I think, on the tips of the longer strands.

When you see the Garlic Mustard (my walking stick is pointing to it), please pull it, bag it in plastic and toss it into the garbage. It is very invasive and will be blooming soon.

A type of maple tree in full bloom.

Here you can get a closer look at that maple tree's yellow/green blooms.

I like daffodils. A true sign of spring and they come up year after year, sometimes for many years.

Dead Nettle weed grows in large clumps, oftentimes. I found this loner and took its picture.

Box Elder is a type of maple tree and can be tapped for making maple syrup. Here it is in bloom (or maybe just past the peak of bloom).

The Bradford or Cleveland Pears always show well, especially with a blue sky backdrop.

The wild cherry trees are often the earliest, most obvious bloomers in our woodlands.

I use the Red Bud bloom as a signal that it is time for me to get out bluegill fishing.

As a beekeeper, I love seeing fields of dandelions in bloom. Their pollen is orange when the bees are bringing it back to the hives on their back legs (pollen baskets).

The Myrtle ground cover seems to be blooming prolifically this year.

Blood Root is one of my favorite wildflowers to see.

A type of maple tree blooming here. Just think of all the pollen and nectar available to the bees when a tree like this is in bloom.

Beware of ticks as you wander outdoors. This is our first for the season and it won't be our last.

Happy Springtime. It is a busy, but amazing time of year.

I've Got Worms!!

I do not need another hobby in my life, but I started a new one. I have started raising worms. It is a natural fit for someone who likes to fish and frequently uses live worms for bluegill fishing. Purchasing bait is getting expensive and the quality is declining. And finding my own worms in nature has been more challenging recently, so I have decided to raise my own bait. I hope it works. The composting the worms do and the castings (poop) they produce will be a bonus for me and the garden.

My first worm purchase was 100 European Nightcrawlers. 

I set up a five gallon bucket worm bin. One bucket sits inside the other. I placed a brick at the bottom of the outer bucket so the two pails do not nest too closely, making it difficult to separate them. Holes are drilled in the bottom of the inner bucket to allow excess water to drain into the outer bucket. That water can be used as "tea" for feeding plants. Holes in the lid are for aeration. This keeps any decomposition from going "anaerobic". Anaerobic decomposition stinks, literally. The system needs good air flow in order to work properly. The tote the bucket sits in is to contain worm escapees. It makes me feel better, but I know they could and would escape the tote, too.

This is the "outer" bucket with the brick at the bottom.

The bag of worms has been installed into their new home. Be fruitful and multiply, please.

Two weeks after installation into their bucket system, I decided the nightcrawlers should have more space, so I put them into a tote for their bin. Here, I am rehydrating some coconut coir to use as part of their bedding material. 

The coconut coir brick soaks up lots of water. As it does, I am able to break it up. I want it about as wet as a wrung out sponge for the worms. 

Torn up paper egg cartons make a good bedding material.

Shredded newspaper is going into the bin as bedding material as well. I layered the various materials, mixing in some soil from my bait worm cooler. A spray bottle of water moistens any additions because the worms need a moist, but not sopping wet environment to thrive.

I peeled back some of the moist shredded newspaper to reveal some nightcrawlers for you to see. They do not have eyes, but have light sensors, so as soon as the light hits them they pull back. I was glad to be able to get parts of a few of them in this pic.

Since the nightcrawlers are in a tote now, I purchased some composting worms for the bucket system. These were smaller worms and came in a bag of 250. You can see some dead ones in the mix, unfortunately. I called Uncle Jim's Worm Farm and was given the option of replacement of the lost or partial refund. We decided that since we are in the heart of winter, a partial refund might be best, due to cold weather. My hope is that the 50% that seem alive will do well enough to out produce the losses. If these little composting worms get established, we may have to decide who gets the kitchen scraps, the chickens or the worms! Check out this YouTube video of my inspection of the European Nightcrawlers' bin where I find some actual cocoons! https://youtu.be/J8LdAKUeCHQ?feature=shared