Fit to burst!

Just a quick one today.  Some of the dahlias are just about to burst.  I over-mulched them, so I don’t know how many will really get rolling on their bloom cycle.  I started dumping horse apples on them in December when it started to get really cold.  It looked kind of like a long mole hill all winter and spring.  My better half figured I had killed all of them, but this spring their tops started pushing through the little apples, and I swear you could hear them grow!  One side advantage of the over-mulching.  Even though we have not had rain for three weeks, I have not had to water them once.  The top 4″ of “mulch” is bone dry, but under that, it’s nice and moist.  My biggest complaint last summer was trying to keep the dahlias from looking like sun burned lettuce.  Move the hose in the morning, and again at night.  Water water everywhere…  I am hoping to dig them this fall and have potted dahlias to offer next year for sale!

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Rain, you call this rain!??

So they (the talking head weather men) have been saying we will break our dry spell today…  Or this morning…  Or not at all.  Sure it was damp when I got up this morning, but I had to hunt to find something to take a picture of that might show “rain”.  No water in the feed pans, horse yard was still dusty.  My better half stuck her head out and asked why I hadn’t left for work yet, and I said I was trying to get a photo for the blog.  She asked if it had rained last night.  I allowed that things were damp, but it was more like “misting with great intention, but somehow coming up short”.  I think I have seen more wet grass on some clear mornings recently simply because of the dew.  Oh well.

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Holy Goose Egg!

Well it’s spring time!  The Geese are trying like mad to keep me in shin splints.  You haven’t lived till you have run in fear, as an adult, from an angry momma goose (yea hold the chuckles, you try bending over in a small wire enclosure to raid a nest with two disgruntled parents honking like crazy at the door, my fanny must have a big ol’ target on it).  Don’t let them get a hold of your pant leg either.  They have wings like baseball bats.  And she has good reason.  At an egg every two or three days, she has once again become the “golden goose”.  Why on earth would we be taking our goose’s precious eggs?  Cause there good!  Really good!  They taste more like a chicken egg than a duck egg.  We know that they are about as organic as you can get here.  Somewhere north of 80% of their diet is grass.  The chicken yard looks like a putting green, cut close and fertilized well.  The eggs are nice too.  Your average 3 year old can drop it 5 times and it won’t break (as long as it’s first bounce isn’t a rock).  Once hacked open in the house they fry up well (hold you cholesterol batman!) the yoke is the size of a normal chicken egg.  You can make a respectable 3 egg omelet from one goose egg.  They are a bit like gold, we get $2 each for them, and at that price we get to eat a good number of them ourselves.

We would let Toulouse set on the eggs to have babies, but we have a moritorium on new critters at the moment.  Probably a good thing too.  The last thing I need are more goose nests to check next spring.  I am going to go ice my shins.  And enjoy a nice hot breakfast…

Here is a link to the ALBCA’s page on Toulouse geese.