Maybe it’s just me, but when I look at this photo I hear Audrey and Rex singing, “The rain in Spain stays mainly in the plain!”
Just a tad bit o’ rain
Tag: Weather
April aaand… still winter
Not the point of this post, but worth mentioning for posterity: the world is still in the throes of Coronavirus. We’ve been cooped up since mid-March, which means it’s been about 5 weeks and 4 million days.
For the love… it’s after Easter and it snowed all day here. It was a whopping 36 degrees today, so only a very small amount actually accumulated, but the entire day looked like this:
Needless to say, we’re still waiting on monarchs here in northern Ohio. But, happy news: I checked on my winter sown seeds, and we have lift off! A few sprouts have poked their brave heads about a half-inch out of the soil. No picture yet because I didn’t feel up to trudging through the snow, but when it warms up I’ll post an update.
I never did get around to putting my seeds out in batches like I talked about in my last post, so what I have is several jugs of Common Milkweed, plus one with Balloon Milkweed, Zinnias, and Coneflower. We shall see… The only ones that have sprouted thus far are Common Milkweed.
I also took a lazy approach for what I am hoping will become my dedicated milkweed patch and just scattered some seeds around. The winter sowing really is kind of a pain in the batooskie, and since I have about a 3′ x 20′ patch of ground on the side of our barn that the milkweed can just go nuts in, I figured I’d at least give the minimal effort method a try. If we don’t get anything, I’ll figure something else out.
So here with the Barefoot Country Kids, we’re still in a holding pattern for butterflies in general and monarchs specifically. The cool thing is that with the entire country at a stand-still, plenty of people in the southern states have plenty of time at home to tend to their gardens report sightings. I feel like the migration map on Journey North‘s website is probably the most accurate it’s been in a long time!! Here’s a freeze-frame from today:
Both last year’s data and the year before show the first monarchs in northern Ohio were spotted the first week of May, so doesn’t seem “late” yet, although I really don’t have enough experience yet to say. Hopefully this extended winter won’t delay their arrival, because with this Coronavirus Crapola going on, we really could use some nice weather and pretty butterflies to head our way!
Stay healthy everyone!
Simply Sunlight 