A snowstorm on the vernal equinox, also known as the first day of spring? Yes, and it also happens to be nearing the end of the high school basketball playoffs, both girls’ and boys’, which was a good predictor of snow when I was growing up in Minnesota and also seems to work well here in Pennsylvania. There was a similar snowstorm when I started this blog two years ago.
garden and bird feeders in a snowstorm
In the photo, you can see my four raised garden beds that are falling apart. I call the bed nearest the camera garden bed number one (terribly inventive), and of course number four is the farthest, near the lilac. You can see a little of the peach tree at the bottom left of the photo. My legume trellis (I’ve used it for cucumbers as well, in the past) stands at the upper left, currently sans hawk.
On the right, you can see a few of the commercial tomato cages that I removed from the garden this past week. These three were used to support okra last year. Behind them is my cold frame, which I should have disassembled and put away last summer.
I use an old clothesline post to support my bird feeders. On the finch feeder, just to the right of the post, some Pine Siskins (Spinus pinus) are squabbling over the perches that have food available (they’ve eaten most of the food I added last weekend). On the ground, you can see a few Dark-eyed Juncos (Junco hyemalis) and a lone Mourning Dove (Zenaida macroura); usually, the dove has two companions.
To the right of the finch feeder, nearly invisible, is a suet feeder. This is visited mostly by squirrels and an occasional black bird, possibly a Grackle. The large feeder on the left contains a mixture of seeds, mostly black oil sunflower seeds, and is visited by Cardinals, Sparrows, and last summer a clever Blue Jay that figured out how to hover long enough to grab a seed without landing on the perch and closing the weight-activated shutter.
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