Clear skies and realization of the garden.

 Slightly hazy, weather app said it would get cloudy later in the day and it's almost 3pm with no cluds I can see from my window. So enjoying the weather and temperatures, being typical spring weather which a lot of people make fun of. Clear one day, cloudy the next, rain and then windy. It all fits together in the larger scheme of weather.

Everything is green and growing, flowers blooming and all that. Gives the plants much needed energy to grow with a clear day like this (will have to edit that first photo and take out the satellite dishes).

Two revelations. First one, that little onion that is growing in the west bed is still there. the carrots and cilantro have been covering it up so I liberated some sunshine but it's bent at an angle. I think that's one of the larger onions and will likely transplant it sometime soon. Second one is what I thought were lacewings when I was first in the garden, turns out they're winged ants. Yep. Swarming season for ants that I discovered in the pot of soil waiting for me to plant in. There's two sets of wings, an ant that lost them and one that still had them.

I then realized what the Phoebes were going after. Not fruit flies but the winged ants. I got videos of those in the little pot and the phoebes and another finch going after all the ones flying around.

The better bird video is over a minute and a half so will hold off on that and just show the 34 second version. My hands aren't the steadiest so sorry for the jiggly video.

Other than that, I also was worried that the ants would make a nest in the raised bed. Found at least two that had fallen in there so hoping for luck they don't and the birds eat as many as possible.

 

 Everything else is just waiting for the next storm. I did water a bit but only to try and convince the ants my beds were not a good place to stick around. I was so hoping they were eating the fruit flies, and they may well be but the ants are more numerous.

 

 

Oh yes and 'Charlie' was out on the log pile as well. May even have been taking advantage of the flying buffet as well. The sweet peas are overtaking the snow peas and the lettuce is finally kicking into high gear. I will have to grab that single pot and drop in either some straight neck squash seed or a poblano pepper. 

So many things I want to plant and they all need time and room to grow. Almost pulled one of the carrots, which btw I sliced up about four of them from the last harvest, boiled them in the  microwave, added salt, pepper, butter and sugar and they were delicious! I am not much of a carrot fan but these were good!. I could tell the difference between mature and not by the color, one was bright orange and another was almost green in the middle, tossed that one and stuck with the more orange. I cut the tops off the largest one and might make sticks of that to go with some ranch dressing later.

The lemon bush is flowering which caught my attention with the scent of the flowers. Crop doesn't look as big as last year so far but will see. Last year the bush was covered in flowers and maybe a dozen or so fruit matured.

That's it for today, not sure if I'll get out on my usual hike for Easter but will see what I can do.