The Return of the Feculent Possum

It's Spring, so there must be a dead possum in my yard.



Since this has been the case for the past two years, I feared the worst when I began smelling something dead today.



Sniff, sniff. Is it in the garage? I went and got a flashlight and shined it in all the likely spots. The smell persisted, even though I couldn't find anything.



Could it be outside the garage? I have a lot of salvaged wood and fencing leaning against the side of the garage and it's a popular site for animals to hide. Sure enough, when I moved a stack of 2x4's I saw fur.



At first I thought it might be a cat, but as it was revealed it all its putrefascence it turned out to be another GIANT possum. Why do these things always choose MY yard to die in? I haven't had catfood on the porch all winter because I brought my outside cats inside for the duration, thereby cutting down on my food costs as I was not feeding every living thing for miles. I'm probably the cause of its demise in that regard.



Off to find a spot in the yard I can dig a hole. Dug one and went back to get the decaying marsupial. Whoops! Too big, have to dig a bigger hole. Carried it across the yard dropping writhing carrion worms the whole way. Went back and scraped up the "pieces" that were left over and filled in the hole. It still stinks.



Hosed down the spot as well as I could and hope the worms die in the sun.



Well, got that job done for another year! That is, unless something comes along and digs it up.

Breaking Buds

It's hard to believe that only 5 days ago I had buds instead of flowers. This is how the tulip tree looks tonight.

I had to take the picture because we have had wind all day and bad weather predicted--even snow for Monday--and the petals are already starting to fall.

Here are the buds on the wisteria. Here are various other things that weren't blooming Saturday. The bleeding heart wasn't even up yet!

The above is a black currant bush. You can't believe how wonderful my yard smells right now. This thing is powerful. Everyone should have one--not to mention all the black currants! (That I can't figure out what to do with.)

Count the kitties.

Beezer

The following owie shot is for Greg. I "broke the skin" on my thumb restacking some boards that blew down. It's not as dramatic without the dripping blood, but you can see the scar on my wrist where they repaired the triple break from a wallyball mishap. (Oh--and my toes.)

Annual Rites of Spring

Today I finally girded my loins and decided to find out what was making the stink under my back porch that was so bad I could smell it through the walls in the basement. First I dug a big hole over by my neighbor's house--heh, heh--then moved the bale of straw that makes up one of the sides of my fancy under-the-porch cat shelter. IT WAS THE LARGEST, FATTEST POSSUM I HAD EVER SEEN!! I didn't get a picture because I wanted to get this feculent (to borrow a word from Greg at the Petch House) thing in the ground. The hole wasn't big enough so I had to stand next to this oozing stinking thing and dig some more. I folded it into the hole--it had lost its rigor--and covered it up. I can still smell it through the ground over there.

Here is Spot checking out the toy possum. The door to the space is standing open.

It still stunk under the porch so I raked out a lot of the straw that was under the possum and took it and one of the bales to the city recycle site. I was still smelling something so got a flashlight and peered in. Now I know where all those succulent suicidal squirrels ended up. Something had been digging up all my squirrel burials and carting away the remains for a while--now I know who.

It smells a lot better on the patio now.

In other news this is my Magnolia x Soulangiana or Tulip Tree as we call them here, today.

It should look like this right now.

That's not gonna happen this year because of this a few weeks ago.

All the buds that hadn't opened are filled with brown mush and are falling off the tree. At least the lilacs are doing great, and the Black Currant (ribes nigrum) smells wonderful. (That really helped with the smell of the feculent possum.)

Global Warming?

Well, here we are 3 weeks after my last post when I was celebrating the return of Spring. Things were fine for about a week and then the temperature plunged again. The end of March brought another warming trend and I started cleaning out the gardens and brought out the patio furniture. I was preparing for a nice week of garden prep the week before Easter when the weather changed again. First lots of rain that percolated down to my basement floor, followed by snow. A few days later the snow was almost gone and the weather was warming again.

Then today! The following pictures were taken from my back porch.




See all the sad little clumps of bulbs out there? A few days ago I had lots of daffodils and hyacinths standing proud. I was going to cut them yesterday because they were looking sad after the first bout of snow had knocked them down, but didn't. When I saw the snow today I suited up and went out there and cut all I could find.
I wait all year for this season and am not going to let this stupid snow ruin it for me! Hopefully the buds on the lilacs haven't been frosted.

There are some blue hyacinths in the middle that you can't see.

The Groundhog Was Right!

Monday it was finally Spring in West Michigan. 70 degrees and sunny. A lot of the snow melted and mud was everywhere. I even saw worms. Birds were singing. Neighborhood children were screaming. I even saw people with their shirts off. (Of course their pants were almost off, too, and I could see their stupid underwear.)

I got busy with the clippers and started my Spring pruning. It's still a little early to start raking, so I'll wait until the leaves can dry out some more and the city compost dump opens. I did repair my gate, which I ran into last week when we had a foot of snow. I broke a picket and bent the hinge, so off with the hinge and I banged it back flat and put it back on good as new.

I also rehung a garage light which has been off for several months now because it had a short and I had to rewire it. Then it was too cold to put it back up. Today it was a little cooler and overcast, but I got out again and did some more pruning. The cats are loving being outside after being cooped up for so long. They are racing around and smelling everything.

Snowdrops and crocus are blooming, too!