SPOOK, HOOVER, THE GARDEN, AND A SURPRISE AMONG THE FLOWER POTS

SPOOK,  HOOVER, THE GARDEN, AND A SURPRISE AMONG THE FLOWER POTS

 

I wanted to share some of this year’s lilies with you, and, having a nice day for a change (read low humidity) I toddled out with the old trusty Nikon to try to capture the amazing beauty scattered around the place. But, my critters seemed interested in what I was up to (read hungry, as usual) and I got a few interesting shots of them – so, critters and garden first, lilies in the next post.

 

Hoover has found a new sleeping place, in the wiper opening on the van when she is not up on the top in the luggage rack. On top she can see what is going on… as a windshield wiper, she is not noticeable… a surprising hide-away, I guess. Spook had been under the van but came out as he heard the back door open. This is a sad shot of him. His age is showing along with his damaged ear as the hobo cat, as we call him, did a number on him earlier, requiring several stitches… and we chipped him while the ear was being operated on anyway.

 

I am grateful Spook is staying home more and not across the street like he used to. He and Hoover are getting along better (SO GRATEFUL!) and these hot days Spook is usually snoozing under the bushes out front where there is usually a breeze. I found him napping there when I was getting a shot of some of the front yard lilies.

In the back yard, I thought it was interesting that my Christmas poinsettia was still in bloom. See it? Here it is with my 6 foot+ tomato on the left and a bunch of day lilies behind. The house plants seem to like being tucked in next to the pine tree. The 4x4s are there to keep them in place. Here is the 6 foot plus tomato plant.

And the first crop of beans in the Stand-Uppity garden.

Ashley has been helping me in the yard this year for which I am SO grateful, and last Wednesday she dug (I potted) about a dozen baby camellias for her grandmother. But first, I needed to wash out a dozen or so pots… and that was when I spotted one of this year’s newest. See him (her)?

OK, I will go ahead and do the lilies next – they will come up in a couple days. By then I will have been to Sterrett’s to order some more which Ashley and I will plant down along the road at the base of the row of Crape Myrtles. Then we will be able to enjoy the daffodils first, then the azaleas (someone stole one of them – can you believe it?) then lilies and finally the Crape Myrtle. If my body can handle it, I think I will find something to put in around them for fall…the fall azaleas are struggling out there – maybe a few fall camellias? It is hard work, but my flowers bring joy to so many people on their way to work or home… even if I don’t get to see them. My legacy, perhaps?

Come on by, sit for a spell... enjoy my labor of love for all to enjoy.

 

THE GARDEN IN MAY - JUNE

THE MOST AMAZING thing about the garden in early June is the fragrance. I won’t bore you with pictures of the honeysuckle, we have all seen more than our share of honeysuckle, I am sure. In the winter, on warmer days, I can spend hours pulling it out of the camellias, off of trees, out of the gardens. It truly grows like a weed here. But, depending on the severity of the winter (northern people – stop laughing, right now!) the world smells so wonderful starting usually the beginning of May with Honey Locust, the Fringe Trees, honeysuckle and magnolias. What a joy it is to step outside on a still cool morning and breathe in the sweetness of the southern air. I realize every morning of my life how blessed I am to not be in a city, not be caged in an apartment, to be free to walk on my small acreage, fill my eyes with the beauty planted there and to even enjoy the weeds – or at least the weeds we call honeysuckle. Better than that, I have the joy of growing my own food and each day I love to go out and see how much bigger this is or that… maybe pick some strawberries, blueberries, or later on, some beans, cukes or tomatoes. It doesn’t get better than that.

This year i decided to indulge myself with some plantings I normally don’t have the time to mess with… i doubt they will winter over in my little greenhouse, but who knows? Every year is a new experiment. Here are a few of my plants and a lot of my weeds.

 

This hosta is so big, a neighbor argued with me and insisted it is an elephant’s ear. That is a yard stick  standing in it… so it is nearly 4 feet tall. Behind it is a blue hosta which is almost as big, but not quite.

Right in front of that hosta are these plants and the new birdbath. i finally found a couple straggly strobilanthes… that’s it behind the pink Astilbe and Heuchera.

In the back yard, flowers grow in and around the veggies. On the left, just below the Adirondacks, are some potato bags. All the way on the right is a 4x4 space with cukes and tomatoes.

potatoes (in the pots) tomatoes, basil, peppers, and pansies. Qwan Yin and geraniums are tucked in the huge English Daisy plant. Who’d believe I cut that better than in half a2 years ago. On the right, potatoes (redskins), miniature roses, violets, iris, pansies and dianthus.

 

From the other side, this shows the clematis. Finished blooming under that is a deep red peony and not blooming yet, phlox. Out in the side yard, a rhododendron is in bloom.

Out front, the window boxes have impatiens that wintered over, geraniums (ditto), new coleus, and a couple new blue things – i can’t think of their names. And a close up of the mountain laurel.

I have a hanging petunia and a hummingbird feeder (being filled) in front of Rusty’s bedroom window to keep him occupied when he isn’t watching puffins or hummers on the computer. Pix of that on the next posting!

Hope you enjoyed my garden, disorganized as it is… but it is fun and something in bloom in every direction. Yes, it is a lot of work for me, but I can’t describe the joy I get from it. The lilies are just starting to bloom!

MY NEIGHBORS PAID ME A VISIT

The Gray fox family that lives in my woods must be expecting… she is visiting my compost area a little before dark every night. Isn’t she beautiful?

And then there were these 2 love birds…

Normally possums are solitary animals… Obviously they get together every once in a while… The romance is short, but I understand it is intense. I hope the mama brings her little ones around in a couple of months.

the BLACK AND WHITE of IT…

I finally broke down and replaced the birdfeeder my sister gave me years ago (my god has she been gone 10 years????). It is a Yankee Droll Flipper… Look it up on amazon. It has a little motor in it that turns the perch when the weight exceeds so many ounces, designed to spin squirrels off so they can’t eat all the food or destroy the feeder as they have done to so many of my feeders. Don’t get me wrong, I love squirrels, but I hate the damage they can do. Anyway, the thought is that one or even 2 Grackles can land on the perch, but more than that and the perch starts to move causing the birds to fly off. Now if you know blackbirds at all, you know they are like a mob, large numbers of totally unruly beasts… I won’t even mention their filthy habits like pooping on each other and pooping in the birdbath as they are drinking… but one can safely say they are not patient birds. As one or two birds would get tossed off the moving perch, 2 or 3 more would try to grab on being spun off in their turn while even more wait to grab on. Eventually there was this pile of blackbirds all fighting each other to get onto the feeder just to be launched off as fast as they hopped on. As they fought for the chance to be thrown off, I was reminded of a movie scene (no idea what movie) where a whole crowd of drunks gathered around a mechanical bull, eagerly paying their money just to get tossed to the ground in seconds as the next drunk occasionally climbed over the previous body to get on board.

All the birds in flight have been spun off the feeder or are trying to get on.

Now you might think this is mean… but the truth is, so much seed gets spilled in the process, the other birds, large and small, get to eat the seed off the ground (or the snow, as the case has been lately!) Obviously, no one gets hurt, and the smaller birds do get a good meal when the bigger guys are not around. And you get some good entertainment. Either Google Yankee Droll Flipper feeders or go to amazon. Both sites will give you a delightful video of the Flipper in action.

For those of you who might be interested in the birdbath deicer as seen on my blog, please note, it stops working when the temps are in the teens. You will get a thin skim of ice, but it thaws as soon as the temps get into the 20s. And for those of you who commented on the gathering of bluebirds at that birdbath, thanks for your comments. I have seen larger numbers of bluebirds from time to time, but not 11 in one little spot at once so I could get them all in one photo. I bet that will never happen again!

For days I have been hearing a huge roaring of geese as about a thousand or so fly over several times a day, settling in the fields about a tenth of a mile east of my house. i also have been hearing a lot of gunfire and finally figured out people are chasing the geese away from their property as that many geese are very noisy even just sitting on the ground looking for something to eat. The following pictures are of small sections of the field of snow geese… I could not get them all in the frame at one time or they just look like piles of snow out in a field. I managed to frighten the “guard” crew and they continued to circle over me until I left probably shouting back to the rest of the flock that I did or did not look dangerous, I was walking toward them, get up, move, or whatever. 

You see how close they are to the houses at the other end of the field… and I was standing in someone’s driveway taking most of these shots.

Winter Storm Janus 1-22-14

Well, Winter Storm Janus blew in last night in a bad temper. Snow is one thing we all enjoy every once in a while, the high winds are another thing. Then, too, temperatures in the teens are a shock to our sensibilities around here. My camellias are frozen. Not nice, Mr. Weather! In truth, we had only 4 inches more or less – with the blowing it is hard to measure how much actually came down – but here on the Shore, 4 inches might as well be 4 feet. The phones started ringing at 6 AM with cancellations. The radio had been broadcasting nothing but cancellations since 5 AM, foregoing all other broadcasting except ABC News and Mike Huckabee and a couple funeral announcements. I mean, who needs to listen to advertising when you can’t get out of your driveway anyway, right?

One interesting comment by our announcer (and owner of the station) was to tell the Good Old Boys to stay off the road. “Yeah, I know,” he said, dropping his voice and adding the drawl of the uneducated, “I got 4 wheel drive, man, I can go anywhere. I am out here to help people who get stuck!” Then he paused for dramatic effect, “And you end up in the ditch with the rest of them causing more problems than you can ever could fix, blocking road clearing crews and even emergency vehicles. So stay the heck home and off the roads!” Of course, the bulk of the sales on days like this are – guess… go ahead… milk? No. Bread? No… Baby formula? Nope, not that either… beer. Well, if you can’t get to work what else is there to do? So, half of the 4 WD pick-ups in the ditch are drunk drivers anyway. Whoopee.

OK, I digress… so what else is new? Anyway, here is the scene out my back door onto the carport which is protected on one side by the house, a little by the furnace room, and, of course, has a roof over it. Look at that snow, will ya? It was all the way up on the top step. See how it has drifted by the bottom step? I had to sweep off the steps to get to the snow shovels. I have 2 – one is an old aluminum shovel, one is plastic. This was an aluminum shovel type of snow because that is ice under there on the ground and on the concrete. My van was covered with almost as much snow as my truck that was sitting out in the yard.

   

The greenhouses were struggling to stay above freezing with ice crystals on the doors. My little incandescent bulbs were working overtime keeping my bucket of bricks warm. I hoped none of them burn out during this below 20 weather. I would hate to open the doors to change a bulb!

It was not a ‘pretty’ snow. The high winds blew most of the snow off the branches. On the other hand, that kept things from snapping and coming down on power lines… unless the wind did it. The prayer flags got a good workout blowing so hard you couldn’t even tell if it was Sanskrit or Hebrew on them. But the early morning sun was pretty and a promise that things would thaw. Eventually. The daffodils have been up, some as much as 6 inches, but they were invisible this morning. In a good year, they bloom the end of February. I have a feeling they will wait until March this year. But, who knows?

The Buddha was wrapped in a nice blanket of white while St Fwankie kept an eye on the birdbath deicer. The little critters were very thankful for that tiny pool of not quite freezing water. However, I have a couple wrens and sparrows that have discovered the cat’s heated water dish and take an occasional drink out of that. I tried to get a shot of one of the little fellows last week when it was so cold hunkered down at the bottom of the door to the furnace room. When I opened the back door, he hopped out a ways, but went right back to the door after I shut the kitchen door once again. I think he is smarter than Spook who has abandoned his heated box now that Punkin is no longer there to defend him. Bless his heart. A friend renamed Spook last week calling him a kittidiot. I have to agree. He is such a scaredy-cat that it often applies.

The new generator is here… but the inspector has not been here and I am on a long waiting list for the gas tank. I can only hope I don’t need it.

And these last 2 shots are of my CoCoRaHS official precip cylinder – minus the inner core that stays in the house during freezing weather where it will measure the melted snow for water content.

I hope the storm was not a bad event for you and yours. Stay in, stay warm, stay safe!