It’s hot here today (94*F), and it’s hard to believe that just last week we woke up to (18*F). I hope the heat isn’t an indicator for what’s in store for summer. It’s only March right now. Yesterday I decided it was a ramble on sort of day. I went out looking for orchids, stopped to take a photo of one of the old homesteads along our road. And today I did some garden cleanup and sowed some lettuce seeds.

The lettuce will certainly need to be heat tolerant if we continue to get such hot days so early in spring. Any of my plants that perform well this year will be marked for seed-saving in case this is the new climate here.

Every year in my garden I have a difficult time keeping the ground moist enough even with daily watering. This year I’m trying something new, probably in addition to the daily watering. I bought some olla jars to put in the beds. For now I only have a few to try, but if they work, I’ll get a lot more of them the next time we ramble on to south Texas.

I put a stick in the olla jars to allow any critter who goes in to be able to get out. This is something I do with anything holding water now, because I’ve had to rescue frogs, skinks, or lizards from any containers in the garden that have water in them. During the heat of summer when it isn’t raining often enough, water is a big draw to little things that need it.

Orchids

When I got the chance to ramble on some more, I went on my orchid walk. I found Cranefly, Adam and Eve, and Rattlesnake plantain. All of these are presenting only leaves at this point. Flowering normally doesn’t happen until around May, but I’m wondering if the early heat will spur them into flowering sooner. So I’ll keep an eye on them so I don’t miss the progression.

I have a course at my Skool community where I upload videos of these walks. In another month or so I’ll have a progression file in that course for the Showy and Twayblade orchids, too.

Old Homesteads

There’s an old house that lives down our road. Every time I pass it, I admire the architecture of it. In spite of being abandoned for more than a few decades, the old homestead retains character. While nature is overtaking it year by year, it still looks beautiful.

I rambled on past it shortly after sunrise Wednesday morning and the spirea blooms glowed bright in the dim light. I had just gotten new batteries for my Canon camera and was happy to have a good opportunity to use it again after having it sitting idle on my shelf for more than a year.

Footprints in the Sand

Some little critter rambled on and left this track, but it also became another subject for my newly re-commissioned camera. I saw it while looking for the orchids.

That’s it for my rambling today

I hope you enjoyed a little break from the stress of all that is happening in the world these days. I’ll try to keep posting little nature connection posts from out here in the wilds of Wild Ozark!

The theme for this post was inspired by one of my favorite Led Zeppelin tunes. Can you guess which one?