A little rusty

We couldn't work in the garden at all over the weekend, because it rained so much Friday night and Saturday morning.


It rained hard - the creek is always muddy when that happens.

I'm not sure exactly how much it rained... our old rain gauge cracked, and Jasmine apparently thinks the new one is a chew toy. Some areas got 2 - 4 inches.

After it stopped pouring on Saturday we went for a walk to see if we could see any migrant birds. But I got a little distracted.



I had a feeling that it was cedar-apple rust, which I'd read about but never noticed.



The bizarro-alien-invader-looking things were only on cedars.



They were easy to spot since they were so bright orange.

These roundish ones were the oddest looking, but there were also little sleeves of orange gelatinous goo on twigs, and bunches of it in clusters like this:



Here's what that one looked like the next day after drying out:



Big difference!



The roundish ones looked slightly less creepy when dry.

I didn't get a shot of the sleeve-like parts when wet, but here is a dry one.



If I've read this chart of rust differences correctly, the roundish ones are cedar-apple rust, and the others are cedar-quince rust.

It's an interesting fungus - it has to go back and forth between hosts (cedars and apples) to survive. Which is why the old timey remedy, if you're trying to grow apples, is to just cut down all the cedars! Hmm.

The other remedy is spraying fungicides. But since we're not trying to grow apples, I don't think it's worth it. I had a sad thought for all the crabapples I just planted, but since all the animals roam in those areas I'd rather not be spraying anything.