Purple stems and big purple berries: don’t eat it.
Pokeberry with longleaf and chinaberry
Sure, people make poke salad when it’s young, but once the stems turn purple, it’s poisonous. Continue reading
Purple stems and big purple berries: don’t eat it.
Pokeberry with longleaf and chinaberry
Sure, people make poke salad when it’s young, but once the stems turn purple, it’s poisonous. Continue reading
If you want a southern pine forest, you have to burn every few years to keep the other trees back, and to keep the vines from climbing to the top as ladder fuels.
This was a burn around the house, also to reduce the likelihood of wildfires or our other burns getting to the house.
Might be prudent to do it in less than five years, since there was a lot of raking to be done this time. That’s why we took two days to do this five acres.
But we did it with one match. No gasoline or diesel to spread the fire. Just flaming pine straw on rakes. Continue reading
Update 2023-12-29: Turpentine Afterburn 2023-12-22.
This is a McCoy turpentine cup collected some time back from my property.
As you can see, it is folded metal, so far as I know galvanized steel, although quite rusted.
Another of those is what you see the remains of on the fallen catface. Continue reading
We burn so the longleaf and the other pine trees can flourish.
Some bits of wood smoke for a while after the fire.
Don’t worry: in a few weeks, the whole burned area will be green again.
-jsq
Update 2022-01-12: Starlink Router inside 2022-01-10.
Turns out Starlink doesn’t work too well during thunderstorms. Other than that, so far so good.
Longleaf, solar panels, roof mount
Also looks good against longleaf pine. Continue reading
Fortunately, when the bee tree snapped off, it broke above the bee hive. So our pollinating native bees are still humming in and out of there. Their exit used to be on the other side of the tree, but they’re using this new entrance now.
I guess they will relocate, but at least they did not get suddenly evicted.
The bee tree was far from the largest of the fourteen big trees down we’ve counted so far. Two more were less than a hundred feet away towards the cypress swamp. Continue reading
Below the longleaf pines, in a thicket: ten turkey eggs. Mama turkey flew up in a tree. Turkeys lay one egg a day, so it took her ten days to deposit those.
The dogs found them. Honeybun made off with another egg in her mouth. Blondie covered the getaway. Continue reading
The frogs sang as the sparks flew upward.
This one could be my favorite: Continue reading
Spring has sprung, with yellow jessamine in full bloom, and the pines producing plenty of pollen.
Yellow jessamine, loblolly, longleaf
It was 35 degrees this morning, but freezes seem to be over. Continue reading
Surprisingly clear shortly after dark, with only a phone: three planets and a moon.
The famous alignment of Jupiter and Saturn, off the starboard bow of Earth’s moon.
And, towards the east and way up, the red planet, framed in longleaf pine trees.
-jsq