The girls, only a year old, caught a mouse yesterday… their first one.

They cornered it live and were bapping it on the body a few times to get its attention while I went for a container to take it outside with.
Very good! We need more mouse catching and catchers. The image above is not the real mouse… that will be coming soon.

ok.. here is an image of the real critter:

I stopped by to take a look at the operation on Sunday and took some imagery as well.

Last year (2011) we took weekly images from the four corners of the garden. The idea was to create some kind of time lapse style of progress over the growing season.
This concept did not turn out too well in reality. Every object was just a little too small to get any useful information out of.
This year we are going to try weekly images from one corner of the garden and closeups of the first three rows. That should be a little better.

Plus 3C, winds from the North, and darn cold out. The peas started to come up after our short rain burst on Friday, and the radishes are slowly coming along. We got fooled in March with those high temps. The plastic cover is still over the plants in the greenhouse, and the temps are only 18.1C with the heater on.

I took a quick jaunt to Garden 5, and the black mustard seed is coming up, as well as the marigolds, but both need warmer weather. These were direct seeded, and will take time.

The Grape vines are budding. But we are to get a dump of, dare I say SNOW overnight, that will continue into Tuesday. Where the heck is this cold coming from?
Here is this weeks weather forecast from Environment Canada

Today Cloudy. 30 percent chance of showers early this morning. Wind becoming northeast 20 km/h this morning. High 9.
Tonight Cloudy. Periods of rain beginning late this evening. Rain mixed with wet snow before morning. Wind northeast 30 km/h. Low plus 2.
Monday Rain. Rain mixed with wet snow in the morning and early in the afternoon. Wind north 40 km/h gusting to 60 becoming light late in the afternoon. Wind becoming south 30 late in the evening. High 6.

Tuesday Periods of rain. Low plus 2. High plus 4.

Wednesday Periods of rain. Low plus 2. High 10.

Thursday Periods of rain. Low plus 1. High 7.

Friday Sunny. Low minus 1. High 9.

Saturday Sunny. Low zero. High 10. Excellent day for International Astronomy Day, and our Solar observing in Confederation Basin.

I still need to get in the beets, turnips, parsnips, and replant some lettuce, and plant new lettuce along with more radishes. I guess this will have to happen in between the raindrops.

An update on the garden… a few rows have been planted and the water containers were delivered on site this week. They haven’t been filled yet but we hope that will happen soon.
Updated: 2012 April 22 – the water containers are filled. There looks to be about 10 rows planted on the south side.

We’ve been collecting temperature data from our weather station for some years now.
We’ve analyzed this to determine the number of days our growing season is.
Some crops can survive -3 deg C “heavy frost” nights while most can survive -1 deg C “light frost” nights.

Actual Growing days
Year #days between light frost #days between heavy frost
2003 172 Apr30-Oct23 194 Apr24-Nov08
2004 156 May08-Oct11 201 Apr16-Nov03
2005 156 May17-Oct20 215 Mar13-Oct21
2006 no data
2007 147 May18-Oct12 153 May13-Oct13
2008 154 May05-Oct06 160 Apr30-Oct07
2009 129 May13-Sep19 179 Apr17-Oct12
2010 119 Jun13-Oct10 142 Jun11-Nov01
2011 167 Apr22-Oct06 167 Apr22-Oct06
2012
To date we had -3 “heavy frost” last night, April 19th, 2012.

A note that we are far from Lake Ontario, which is a huge moderating influence on temperature in the spring and fall. Hence our growing season is much shorter than say, Kingston Ontario. Typically in the summer, days are +5deg C and nights are -5deg C over those in Kingston.
This in part comes from very thin soil, a lot of exposed limestone, and the Canadian Shield just a short distance north of us.

We have received our allotment of elcipse glasses, or more aptly named, “transit of venus glasses” and will be distributing them at public events up to the Transit event on Tuesday June 5th, 2012.

Last night (Wednesday April 18th, 2012) was the regular monthly meeting of the Lennox and Addington Horticultural Society. The meeting ran from 7-9pm at the Napanee firehall.
The meeting start with the guest speaker: Mr. Kevin Bergevin, Master Gardiner from http://www.rideau1000islands.mgoi.ca/ spoke on flowering shrubs and trees.
After that 45 minute talk the meeting went into business and announcement mode for about 30 minutes, including plans for the Plant sale on Saturday May 26th from 9am-2pm at the Napanee Farmers Market.

Our next meeting will be on Wednesday May 16th, 2012 in Bloomfield for 7pm.
There will be a car pool meeting at the Napanee firehall at 6:00pm.
We are headed to a private garden tour on main street in Bloomfield. For more information please contact a member of the Executive.

Another possible fireball / meteor was captured on the Starlight Cascade allsky camera system early this morning (2012 april 18th) in the 90 second exposure ending at 04:43:27 EDT.

Let us know if you or anyone else has an observing report about this event.
Our usual spot for news like this
http://lunarmeteoritehunters.blogspot.ca/
is running a few days slower these days.

In prepration for the Lennox and Addington Horticultural Society Plant Sale on Saturday May 26th, 2012 at the Napanee Farmers Marker, we have planted some items for sale.
The first are some heirloom tomatos in packs of six plants:

Tiny Tim
Kellogg’s Breakfast
Earliest and Best
Brandywine
Fireball
Amish Paste

All were planted on April 7th in the greenhouse and have survived one concerted mouse attack that took out the peppers.

We also have a flat of flowers whose name escapes me at the moment.
Aha! Bachelor’s Buttons and Marigolds!