Heather's Garden

Not A Lot Of Gardening Going On Here

But a lot of outdoor living!  I am stuck inside on weekdays, but I keep my camera on the couch next to me and when I see a cool bird on the feeder I snap it:

 

But more often than not a blue-jay or a grackle come along and frighten it away:

 

But the red-bellied woodpecker returned:

 

On a Saturday trip to Walmart I splurged and bought a new bird-feeder.  You can probably tell by the photo that it's a good bit larger than the last one, which is why I bought it.  We were so tired of having to fill it on a daily basis:

 

There's been a lot of good eating.  Pork fried rice and some incredibly expensive and tasty halibut that Lee poached in some sort of cilantro/scallion concoction: 

 

But basically I'm wandering around enjoying the garden.  The foxgloves are stunning in person and just not photographing the way I wish they would:

  

Actually this one's pretty good:

 

And I'm having fun trying to figure out what the various plants are.  I think this is the millet in the mix:

 

But while some things look fantastic:

 

Wait, what's going on with the creeping jenny in this container:

 

I'm so not happy about this:

 

Sawfly larva.  I plucked and smashed 7 that day and another 3 since, but there could be more:

 

Friday afternoon our little garden helper came by for the afternoon.  He's always up for watering the garden, but here he's helping Lee pluck debris from the raised bed (huge winds last week):

 

We're extremely lacking in the rain department (I'll be setting up the sprinkler tomorrow because everything's super dry).  Look at that golden oregano droop.  I think it recovered after I watered it, frankly I forgot to check:

 

When I went to wind the hose I spotted this guy: 

I'm pretty sure it's the bug I watched come from the soil in one of my containers last week: 

 

What is it?

 

So loving the fish container with the creeping jenny.  This was an inspired idea if I do say so myself: 

 

The strawberry patch is also making me extremely happy:

 

I may very well be picking and eating this strawberry tomorrow:

 

There are so many berries that we're hopeful we'll get a few before the birds hit them hard:

 

On Sunday Lee mowed and tackled his last project in the garden, getting the brick/much area for the double-lounger cleaned up.  He weeded it and at my suggestion turned the bricks on their sides for better stability:

 

We've been enjoying having the driveway clear of the Adirondack chairs, so I positioned them in front of the potatoes between the lounger and the raised bed.  It's probably the sunniest spot in the garden and pretty level (Lee wasn't pleased I was taking his photo in his mowing outfit):

 

I love being more in the garden.  I may very well move that tiki torch.  See the sun tea brewing?  It's delicious:

 

More of the view from my chair:

 

Zooming in a little, but the angle is correct from my chair:

 

I really need to deadhead the irises: 

 

The sage in flower:

 

Pretty, but too much distraction from the tomato plant.  I turned the container so the bloom was right in front of the fence.  Better:

 

And though this container is very pretty I kept thinking there was space for something small and wouldn't some basil look good.  So I put one of the mystery basils in there.  We'll see:

 

On Monday I will deadhead the irises while I run the sprinkler in the back of the garden and then shift it up when I'm done.  The grass is doing fine where it's established, but the blank spots that we seeded aren't doing so great:

 

Oh and I have to go buy more potting soil for the potatoes which need hilling again.  I swear, we had better get a gigantic potato harvest!

Scenes From A Lazy Weekend

No gardening going on here, just enjoying the fruits of our labors.  In fact, on Saturday VPH wanted to go by Barnes & Noble to buy a book he wanted.  I agreed to the trip, but said if I didn't walk outside and see zucchini seedlings popping up in the patio garden we'd be making a trip by Vaiuso on the way home.  I walked out the side door with my camera in hand and came around the corner to:

Oh yes, that's a bird in the bird-bath and he didn't even fly away.  I snapped the photo above without zoom so you could see just how close I was.  And then I used the zoom to get a closer photo and I'm pretty sure it's a Blue-gray Gnatcatcher:

I snapped about 20 photos before VPH came barreling around the corner chatting loudly and despite my subtle shush, he startled the bird into flight.  But then I was able to focus and see that I had not one, but two zucchini seedlings so no trip to the nursery for me:

Another photo of the patio garden because why not:

 

Something was really digging into the raised veggie bed and even uprooted some of the carrot seedlings:

 

Yukon Gold potatoes -- I can't tell you how excited I am about these:

 

So off we went to B&N and we stopped in to the grocery store on the way home because I saw there were a lot of radishes ready to be harvested in the raised veggie bed.  I read on-line that a wonderful way to eat them was on good crusty bread with butter and then thinly sliced radishes on top.  We came home with two different kinds of butter: 

 

And:

 

And a fresh out of the oven loaf of French bread ($.79 on sale): 

 

How cute are these?  And they were delicious.  The bread and butter made the radishes less spicy, but still tasty:

 

With all the birds stopping by the feeder, I've looked a little on-line to try and identify them, but with little success.  At B&N I bought the National Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Birds (Eastern Region) that my friend Meg had at her house -- very easy to use and lots of good information.  Now I know that this is a Black-capped Chickadee (with a big seed in his mouth):

Another view helped to verify the identification:

 

Also identified on Saturday, the Common Grackle (which I already knew) and House Sparrow (which I was pretty sure about).  I think this book is going to get a lot of use.  Sunday dawned cloudy, but around noon the sun came out in force.  It didn't look like we were actually going to get any rain, so I watered the garden and weeded a little as I went.  I left this rather large seedling in with this habanero pepper because I want to see what it is.  Looks like it could be a cucumber to me, but time will tell: 

Then I sat down with VPH, a Coke Zero on ice, and a book.  Within moments I noticed I had little bits of pollen all over me:

 

I was wearing a black sleeveless shirt which showed the pollen very clearly, like this bit on the button:

 

VPH is so much better that we actually went for a walk on Friday afternoon.  A slow, short walk (only 8/10ths of a mile), but since it was his first one in 5 weeks we were both really happy about it.  Today we took another walk, a little quicker and a little longer -- just over a mile.  This route brought us past Kathy's house, do you remember her garden from a few years ago: 

 

I can't imagine how much time and energy she puts into this magnificent garden.  She wasn't outside as we walked past, but since it was 3pm, she had probably already called it a day.  I certainly didn't see a flower that needed dead-heading or a leaf out of place:

 

We enjoyed our lazy days and the Lost finale tonight with SS1 will be the perfect end to a wonderful weekend.  I hope you had as nice a weekend whether yours involved working hard in your garden or relaxing in it like we did!

Patio Garden -- Check

With overnight temperatures back at the norm, meaning no looming potential frost, I spent about 10 minutes this morning emptying the kitchen table of all plant material.  When I got home from work it was still rather cold, but with the next 24 hours forecast to be rain-filled, I really felt motivated to get my new clematises in the ground.  After a good 15 minutes spent unraveling the stems from their mini-trellises, I got them both planted.  The Blue Mist clematis on the left was pretty easily wound around the trellis and tied to it with green string:

 

The Mme. Baron Veillard clematis on the right was more problematic.  The 2 really long stems of it broke off when I tried to wrap them around the trellis leaving 3 short tendrils, but I wrapped them around the trellis (one on the center post with the Blue Mist) without further event.  I took the 2 broken off pieces and stuck them in the pots from the clematises filled with the soil we took out of the patio garden.  Maybe I'll end up with 2 extra clematises and if I don't, oh well:

Here's the bare-root clematis I got from Home Depot last year.  It's now tied to its trellis too.  You can see that 3 of the 4 climbing nasturtiums have now sprouted.  I think this trellis will be very pretty this year:

 

Then I spread 2 bags of mulch in the patio garden.  The light spots are approximately where I planted the zucchini seeds and I didn't want to add more mulch for them to fight through as they emerge.  I love how the garden looks when the mulch is still a little damp and so dark:

 

I walked the rest of the garden and found the first potato leaves emerging from one of the containers of red potatoes in the veggie garden:

And this was an impulse buy on Monday at Walmart.  For just $13 I bought this 'patio' tomato plant with fruit already formed and tons of blossoms on it.  I think I might have bought it just for the neat trellis on the container.  I plan to add another few inches of soil to the container because it's rather low:

I got some terrible shots of the cardinal sitting on the fence this afternoon.  I think he's becoming more accustomed to us being in the garden:

Some day I want a camera that will take good shots from 50 feet away:

 

Unfortunately I don't see a lot of planting getting done until the weekend between the weather forecast and my work schedule, so this little bit of gardening and posting will have to tide me (and you) over.

OH HAPPY DAY

Stuck in your head?  It is in mine.  Anyhoo...look at what I've got (you're not drunk, it's a little out of focus...well maybe you are drunk, but I had a martini tonight, so I'm a little drunk...it's still out of focus):

So you know your eyes are working correctly I present the other zucchini quickly reaching mammoth proportions: 

And this is all in spite of the cucumber beetles chewing the bejesus out of the leaves (you know I smashed it to bits after taking the photo): 

The eggplants are disturbingly phallic: 

Wait, so are the Royal Purple Bush beans: 

Swiftly changing topics...we harvested all the sugar snap peas tonight:

And some of the carrots: 

And VPH cooked up this Chinese salmon with veggies over rice -- you have no idea how delicious it was:

The zinnias are starting to bloom, but I'm a little disappointed by how small the flowers are:

I was distracted by these two grackles foraging in the lawn: 

But then I quickly refocused and took a photo of the rapidly improving wildflower patch: 

While I was doing that, this little guy visited the birdbath: 

And then rested on the hook holding a wind chime in the upper left side of the photo to dry off:

The moral of this story, don't have a martini before trying to write a post -- it's so much more difficult.

 

THAT GOOD KIND OF TIRED

I got so much accomplished over the past 2 days.  Marked off of the To Do List:

• Plant astilbe in container and find a shady home for it

• Transplant the Red Peter peppers, chives, basils, and one lonely cucumber seedling into larger containers

First up the astilbe's new home:

Can you see it just in front of the large blue stone in the middle of the photo?

Think it's time for me to get this cucumber seedling planted?

It, the chives, and the sweet basil found a home in this container:

So you can see how big that freaking pot is (I almost fell over when I tried to lift it and carry it over to this spot): 

The Brandywine Pink tomatoes -- one in its new home so you can see the difference (I tore off the bottom few sets of leaves and buried more of the stalk in the new pot):

BTW, those "decorative" containers didn't have drainage holes, so I used a pair of scissors to put 4 drainage holes in each one.  I'm calling this my wall o' plants:

Remember the dahlia man, Dave?  He gave me a call and said he had several live dahlias (not roots waiting to sprout) that he wasn't going to be using and it wasn't too late to plant them.  So my friend Mary and I headed over to his beautiful garden.  He's just the most generous man...my share of the bounty:

My very first dahlia bud (on the plant in back of the row of Dave's latest gifts above): 

Only one of the passalong dahlia roots from Mary had thrived here and the little rose plant was a goner, so 4 of Dave's dahlias went into pots in the wildflower patch:

One replaced a rotten one in the row next to the cellar stairs (not pictured).  And the last one went into the other pretty container I brought home this week next to its larger twin:

Had I mentioned that my cherry tomato plants are covered in bird shit?  The guilty party:

The first cucumber male and female blossoms -- I can already taste cucumber! 

The eggplant blossoms are just so pretty: 

I gave the eggplant a small tomato cage for support:

If I were naming my photos I would call this one anticipation.  Look at all those buds on the zucchini.  They better hurry up because I killed my first cucumber beetle on this plant yesterday so I'm afraid its days are numbered: 

I got the Red Peter pepper seedlings into the hanging baskets:

But I forgot that I still had to install the hanger for the 4th one on the post above the zucchini.  I better go plug in my cordless drill battery charger now while I'm thinking of it: 

If you look closely at the base of the fence post in the photo above, you may notice that when VPH and I were cleaning up the garden this spring we left an interesting looking seedling to grow in the mulch because we both wanted to see what it was.  I didn't know until it flowered, but I'm pretty sure it's self-seeded chamomile from the hanging herb basket that hung from this post for a month or so last summer:  

Chigiy, would you like to identify this flower in the wildflower patch for me too?  It's a showstopper: 

Oh, and in case you're a really observant reader and wondered where the cinnamon basil seedlings went...I stuck them in with the purple hyacinth beans, which would grow up this trellis leaving the container looking kind of bare if I didn't put something else in there:  

Now VPH and I are going to laze around on the patio today since there's really not that much left on the to do list...certainly nothing that can't wait a day or two!

AM I REALLY THIS PERSON?

I've been told that I write "older,"  but I'm only 33.  When did I turn into a person who sits and watches birds?  I don't know why, but that has always seemed like a hobby for a much older person.  For that matter, so did gardening before I took it up as a pass-time.

We're finally enjoying some warm weather here this week and I've been home to enjoy it.  Still a few nagging things to cross off the to do list, but I've gotten closer to getting one done:

Yup those are the chairs and footstools from the basement that I need to assemble.  But at least they're on the patio now and I have to maneuver by them to reach the rest of the garden.  Odds are good that I'll get tired of doing that and tear open the boxes in frustration.  And once the boxes are open I will feel compelled to put them together.

I'll save the plant updates for another day (nothing really interesting going on) and instead share some of my birdwatching with you.  If I'm really going to make a habit of photographing birds I'll have to get a decent zoom lens and since our budget is already stretched to its breaking point I don't see that happening.  So for now we'll all have to deal with not so great photos.

This cardinal loving the bird-feeder on Monday:

And today:

This afternoon I decided that I would camp out near the bird feeder and see what I could capture up close.  This little guy is trying to decide if it's safe: 

Still thinking about it:

Okay, she's harmless:

Did you notice that his little beak was open?  I think he was calling his buddy and saying it was safe to come eat: 

I keep seeing these robins hopping around the yard and snacking.  I'm so glad that we're not using chemicals on the grass.  I wonder if the worm poop is making them think there are worms there for the taking:

My plan was to laze around the in the sun tomorrow afternoon trying to tan my legs a little, but I got "bumps" on my arms this evening -- and I was only sitting in dappled sunlight for an hour or two this afternoon.  I figured out that the skin condition that the dermatologist identified for me a few years ago is called Polymorphic Light Eruption.  So I may be huddling under an umbrella for the rest of the week.  I'm so annoyed because I've been outside in the sun for hours at a time in the middle of the day this spring and this is the first time I've gotten the rash.  I guess the sun is just that much stronger this much closer to summer and the temperature is a good 10 degrees warmer than any other day I've spent outside.  But I'm freaking tan already and this shouldn't be happening!!!