It is December in New Hampshire and today it is sunny and 65 degrees!  If you’re from another part of the country ......... yes this is very much unseasonably warm!

Here we are preparing for winter, in fact on Saturday we’re supposed to get snow, but today, I feel like gardening.

We really don’t mind our home being surrounded by green, growing grass but we also don’t follow the American obsession with perfect looking, golf course style lawns.  We mow, albeit not regularly, rake when necessary, but that’s about it.  I’ve read that American households use way, way, too much fertilizer and pesticides on their lawns, much more by square foot than is used in commercial agriculture. This creates a ‘chemically dependent’ lawn, the runoff pollutes groundwater, the pollution kills beneficial bugs and birds and other species ....... and the horrid cycle continues. 

Dan and I, we welcome the natural world and its micro-ecosystems.   Nature does know best; why mess with it?  We don’t want Stella rolling on pesticide laden grass, nor do we want to walk on it.  We welcome the dandelions and clover and other weeds, and we don’t fret over yellow grass due to grubs.   The grubs feed the robins, blue jays, woodpeckers and other birds, which in turn eat bugs that would invade our gardens.  The skunks also eat the grubs and frankly I’d prefer they not hang around because of the alpacas!  But oh well.

So folks, dig up your lawns!  Plant a garden!  I realize we’re all starting winter, but here’s a couple of links for you all to start planning gardens for next year:

 http://www.motherearthnews.com/Organic-Gardening/Square-Foot-Gardening-Food.aspx

  http://www.squarefootgardening.com/index.php/The-Project/how-to-square-foot-garden.html

We’ve finally had another stretch of hot, sunny days so it feels like summer.  I’ve actually had to water the vegetable garden for the first time since I planted it.  Our mid-summer flower gardens are blooming with many brightly-colored hybrid daylilies, purple coneflowers, black-eyed susans, liatris, and hostas.  All the nearby fields are filled with bloomers too, goldenrod and queen’s anne lace, wild black-eyed susans, ragweed, and many others of which I haven’t got a clue.  In the late-day summer sun, our yard and pastures are teeming with hundreds of beautiful dragonflies.  Walking by the nearby fields there are clouds of them, hovering and swooping, their presence so magical and uplifting.  Sometimes one will land on us while we’re floating in the canoe or in the gardens.  We love to sit and admire them close up, such a fascinating little bug.

We love to see the dragonflies and have planted many of the flowers that attract them.  Dragonflies are harmless to people and animals, and because they eat so many mosquitoes it only makes sense to have plantings that attract them.  These same plants also attract many insect-eating birds too, another bonus.  And when it comes to eating mosquitoes, we don’t argue with the bats that show up at night either!  Attracting dragonflies and birds (and bats), not having standing water, and fans in the barn are our top choices for keeping mosquitoes, flies, and other disease-spreading insects away from the alpacas.  We know there will always be some bugs, and sometimes plenty of them, in our humid climate, so every little bit helps.

(Don’t worry........ this is not an Alfred Hitchcock type entry!)

A fun thing about living here is all the birds!  Ever since we’ve moved here, we’ve been focused on creating our pasture.  We did move several hundred perennials over here from our former home, but otherwise have not done too much to attract birds.  And they are plentiful!  We’re enjoying all the usual backyard birds:  robins, chickadees, goldfinches, cardinals, hummingbirds, juncos, house finches, sparrows, blue jays, mourning doves, downy and hairy woodpeckers, etc.  We’re surprised and excited to see the others that have showed up:  indigo buntings, Baltimore orioles, scarlet tanagers, evening grosbeaks and rose breasted grosbeaks, bluebirds, northern flicker woodpeckers, pileated woodpeckers, catbirds, bobolinks, and more.  They have me running to my Peterson’s field guide so that I can identify them, when they stay in one place long enough for me to do that.

Even funner than just seeing all the birds is that some just love to nest on the criss-crosses of the log ends.  So far it has just been the robins doing that, and one mourning dove pair did once too.  It’s ‘normal’ for us now to walk by certain corners of the house as quietly as possible so as not to disturb momma robin and it’s great to just stand quietly and look at the 3 or 4 beaks peeking out of the nests.  And, now, we even have a bird friend nesting in the rafters of our little barn!  We haven’t identified her yet, probably some kind of finch, although the 4 little heads looks like juncos.

There are always tons of birds around throughout the day, singing their beautiful songs and chit-chatting. Sometimes they do all get quite squawky and we start looking frantically for the most likely cause – a hawk.

Don’t get me wrong; we absolutely love hawks.  They are also gorgeous birds and we are always amazed to watch them fly and soar.  BUT, we get protective over the little bird nests!  We just have to stand nearby and the hawk will fly away once it notices us.  The hawks have to eat, but not our baby birds!   

Our fencing is the 5 foot, woven wire no-climb type, with pressure treated pounded posting.  These posts are perfect for setting nesting boxes and bat houses on, which we will start doing as time allows. Oh, have I mentioned the bats? ................

Here in the Northeast it has been raining for the past week and it seems like it’s getting to be time for us to build the ark.  I’ve been reading a rather funny thread on alpacanation about all rain we’ve been getting here in New Hampshire, Maine, and the entire Northeast.  I say funny only because I just thought it was a funny topic to start a thread on.  But, here in the Northeast excessive rain is certainly a real concern for us alpaca farmers.  The rain brings out the slugs, gross little creatures, which bring along the meningeal worm, hosted by our cute wildlife, the white-tailed deer.  M-worm is of particular concern for alpaca farmers as it is a deadly disease, and here in the Northeast we routinely de-worm as part of our prevention program.  (Note to self:  get chickens, sooner rather than later.)  And of course, any of us with new pastures from recently disturbed soil, as well as anyone with clay soil, is having additional problems with mud, mud, and yes, more mud!!

Not to mention all that standing puddle water is a breeding ground for mosquitoes and all the yucky diseases they carry.

So times like these make me appreciate the dry Southwest more and more, and like I already mentioned, make me start thinking about building that ark.

Or perhaps at least I should remind myself of the good things about rain........  The most obvious benefit is it waters, usually evenly, our lawns and gardens.  In a previous post I mentioned that I had planted seeds and transplants for our little vegetable garden.  I’ve only had to water once, the day I planted!  Most of the seeds are sprouting, but by now, they could certainly use some sun! ............  A related benefit is that I don’t have to be out there watering morning and night, and subsequently feeding the mosquitoes while I stand there.......... Another benefit is that is replenishes our wells.......Rain runoff from our roofs fills up our rain barrels, to water the gardens............ The birds have plenty to drink naturally, rather than me filling up birdbaths.  Water attracts birds to your yards, and birds eat many, many, bugs; no need for pesticides! ....... And as my friend Deb says, "At least we're not shoveling it!"

But we’ve had many, many inches of rain and we’re more than ready for sunshine!  Those of you who practice yoga, please join me daily in spirit for a Salute to the Sun!!!!