Last week I mentioned I had been away and talked about the Melipona bees in Mexico. While I was away my son, Ryan, was checking our house one day when he noticed some tracks around the house that were a little out of place for January. There had been about an inch of snow the night before and there were clear bear tracks in the snow going around my house like he was looking in the windows to see if there was anything good inside. We normally do have a bear visit in October before going into hibernation but that's it. But because of the warmer weather during the first two weeks of January, I guess he figured he would go out to look for a bite to eat. Of course, my bird food barrel on the patio got knocked over even though he really doesn't like the black oil sunflower, beggars can't be choosers. He really just spreads the seeds around and the squirrels clean it up. 

Now that the weather has turned back to winter, I'm sure I won't be seeing tracks around the house again. It is rare for bears to be out during the winter but not unheard of. The warmer weather confuses them as well as some plants that might have started to swell buds just a little bit. Prolonged periods of warm weather in the winter can spell disaster for some trees and shrubs if they start to bud out too soon. If the buds swell too much with water, they can then freeze off when the temperatures turn cold again like we have now.

Amazing to think days in the thirties almost feel springlike after the cold we have been through lately. But unfortunately, spring is still five weeks away on March twentieth. The darn deer will be happy to see the snow go. With the deep snow this January the deer ate the one plant that they previously never bothered with before, my Andromeda. Andromeda, Pieris Japonica, is an evergreen shrub with long deep green leaves and white or pink flowers in spring. Never in my life have I known any deer to ever eat an Andromeda. I swear next I'll find my deer eating barberry. There is nothing that the deer in my area won't eat. Luckily, we put up five-foot-high netting all around our house this fall to protect the shrub beds right by our house. It's a good thing too because when we came home from Florida in January there were tracks all around our house in the deep snow. The deer were checking out to see if there were any weak spots in the fence that they could exploit. There were not and my shrubs along the house are safe. 

So, what can we do while we wait for spring? At the store, they're stocking up on all the seed starting supplies and hydroponics. They have five-gallon hydroponic bucket systems that you could grow tomatoes in right now if you had a heated sunroom in your house. With a light on a timer to make sure that the plant would get roughly fourteen hours of light per day, you could be the first person in the neighborhood to have fresh tomatoes this year. By months end you'll be able to start tomato and pepper seeds as they take longer to germinate. Another plant that takes a while to germinate is morning glories. Every spring we sell out of morning glory plants very early and by May it's almost too late to start them from seed as they can take up to three weeks to even germinate.

At home, I'm getting my maple taps out as the days are getting warmer and the nights are still below freezing. We haven't tapped our trees down here in Eldred since moving here in 2023, so I will need to keep a journal as to the trees that produced the most sap. Some trees are better than others and after a year or two, I'll be able to figure out which maples not to bother with and which ones are the rock stars. Also, the placement of the taps matter too. I'll be checking on my trees on the East, West and South side of the tree. The North side of a tree trunk doesn't get any sun and won't warm as well during the day to allow the sap to run. Hopefully I'll be able to collect around twenty gallons of sap, which will be enough once cooked down to produce a half gallon of maple syrup. It truly is a labor of love.