After reading this gruesome story in the Australian Herald Sun about a movement to switch to reusable toilet wipes (NO THANK YOU!), I thought I’d post this friendly reminder that you have the lovely hills of the Doran Family Farm – Knock na Garry – to thank every time you don’t reuse your pooper scooper!

And it’s not just your bum that appreciates our hard work!

Say kids, do you know where comics come from?

That’s right! Comic books grow on trees! And here at the Doran Family Farm, we harvest trees just so they can be turned into pulp paper and then printed with stories that you can enjoy!

And so Sheryl Crow can wipe with more than one square!

Here, Sheryl! Have a square of papery goodness on me! I made it just for you.

Farming trees doesn’t mean just cutting down a swath of verdant wilderness so you can get your comic book fix. No sirree! It means managing the land, replanting all that stuff you just spent 20 years waiting to cut down, and enjoying the unique thrill of scrubbing bugs off of hemlock branches. Oh, boy!

And if you think that’s easy, I wish you had been here helping us out for the last several months.

Ah, the smell of fresh cut timber! The light glittering on silken leaves! The majestic thrust of the mighty pine toward the sky!

Why, it is all so beautiful…it makes me want to…SING!!!

This was Monday. Taken from the laptop camera.

This weekend it will be 70 degrees.

c

BEFORE:

AFTER:

Keep an eye on your bird feeders and birds. There is an epidemic spreading among the finches and we have the poor little buggers dropping left and right out here. We’ve had to take in and sanitize all the feeders. We have also had to clean the areas where the birds congregate.

A sick bird will be lethargic and may not move away from you when you approach. Wild birds should disperse, but sick birds may even allow you to touch them or pick them up. Birds with conjunctivitis will be readily identifiable by the swelling around the eyes. If you can catch these birds and get them to a vet, they may be successfully treated. Otherwise, they will go blind and starve to death.

If you enjoy wild birds and have feeders, please take a moment to read this page at the university of Cornell.

If a sick bird comes to your feeder, minimize the risk of infecting other birds by cleaning your feeder area thoroughly. If you see several diseased birds, take down all your feeders for at least a week to give the birds a chance to disperse. Keep the feeders down until you no longer see diseased individuals. And remember that prevention is the key to avoiding the spread of disease. Regularly clean your feeders even when there are no signs of disease and prevent overcrowding by adding more feeders or setting up different types of feeders that allow only a few birds to visit at one time.

Please report any sick birds you see to the National Wildlife Health Center.

The National Wildlife Health Center has information about a recall of wild bird food tainted with salmonellosis, which has infected the birds here.

It appears the culprit may be, in part, tainted bird food, though salmonellosis occurs naturally in the bird population. And it can spread to people. Wash your hands, folks.

AN UPDATE FROM MARGARET COLLINS OF WILD BIRDS UNLIMITED:

While Wild Birds Unlimited Bird Food has been found to have been tainted with salmonella, there does not seem to be a direct link between the strain found in the dead birds and the bird food.

This was just released by the North Carolina Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services:

Test results of bird food from Wild Birds Unlimited, the retail source of the seed in question, indicated that Wild Birds Unlimited Wildlife Blend bird food with the specific manufacturing date code of 81132200 2916 08124 was positive for Salmonella. Also, Wild Birds Unlimited Woodpecker blend sold in 5-pound bags at a North Carolina store was positive for Salmonella. The bird seed Salmonella strain isolated during testing is different from the strain that is implicated in the current peanut product recall. These test results also indicated that the strain of Salmonella in the bird seed is different from the strain found in dead wild birds that have been examined by the NCDA&CS Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory to
date.

And from the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy:

Nathan Ramsay of the US Geological Survey’s National Wildlife Health Center (NWHC) in Madison, Wis., said his center also has been seeing an increase in bird deaths related to Salmonella in the Southeast.

To reduce the spread of Salmonella, the NWHC recommends cleaning feeders with a 10% solution of bleach in water, changing feeder locations regularly, and adding more feeders to reduce crowding.

I so enjoy having the birds at my window feeder every day. It has been a very sad sight to see these tiny, beautiful creatures grow sick and die, so I have taken down all feeders and sanitized everything. I look forward to being able to put the feeders up again, soon. We always keep multiple feeders on hand to clean and swap out, so we’ve always been conscientious about the health of the birds, but I have never seen anything like what we are seeing now. Even the birds in the woods appear to be ill and do not shy away when we approach.

Please pay attention to your bird feeders and the health of the birds in your area and report any signs of disease.

Thanks.

PS: Very relieved to know I didn’t poison the birds. We always shop at Wild Birds Unlimited, get great service, and I appreciate their contacting me to let me know what is up.

Since the big name garden catalogues charge about a dollar a bulb (or more) for some varieties of spring flower, I’ve been economizing buying bags of bulbs from Sam’s Club and Costco, which can go for as low as $9-$13 for 100 bulbs.

After three years of dedicated planting, I noticed something funny.

Some of them will bloom the spring after they are planted, but some don’t. I expect that from cheap bulbs. The second year bulbs taunt me with leaves and no blooms to accompany them.

Daffodils are the easiest thing in the world to grow, so what the heck was I doing wrong? Well, isn’t the internet just dandy? Found this info at the Daffodil Society website.

Transplant shock can cause daffodils to skip a year of bloom. So can improper storage. Even if you get blooms the spring after planting, daffodils will take the next year off and then come back the third year, blooming regularly each year thereafter.

I know a few folks who dug up their cheap bulbs, thinking they were diseased, but bulbs which did not perform for me at all last year have sprung up as winners. So, with a little patience, you can have that showy garden, but you’re going to have to wait at least 3-5 years to get it going. I am relieved to know all that. That’s a lot of digging that didn’t go to waste.

The cut-rate hyacinth bulbs: a real deal. Three years later, we have 4 times as many as we planted and the scented blooms are glorious. The only problem with them is they are such a tasty temptation for the critters that many disappear after planting, only to spring up 40 feet away in the middle of the yard next season.

Ditto for the crocuses. At $10 for 100, even when the squirrels chow down half, they are a bargain. And the squirrels do some interesting redecorating.

The only sad performance is from the narcissus, which were planted too early. While the packaging recommended October, we have to plant in late November for best results.

My annual membership costs at Costco and Sam’s are paid for in the savings on bulbs alone. And I save enough to buy at least a few of the high quality bulbs every year from garden specialty sources. So if you shop at Sam’s and see those big boxes of cheap plants, give them a go, but know you won’t get good performance for a year or so.