Weekly Garden Photojournal

So I've pretty much wrapped up my gardening for the weekend. I may go out a bit later and water, but we had some decent rain last night, so it's not absolutely necessary, I don't think.

I'm still slacking on finishing the walkway project. That can wait (again) until next weekend. This weekend, we had more important team projects: erecting a rail fence that was my genius husband's idea, designed to make our yard look like it has visual barriers to keep wandering campers out. Also on the agenda was some maintenance-y stuff, and completing another section of back fence to limit the view our dogs have out of our yard and into the neighbor's yard.

So, here's what we done did:







I planted clematis and our solar lights at the posts closest to the walkway, to make it a little more welcoming looking for our regular visitors and ourselves.





(try not to mind the pieces of wood in the background of some of these pictures. It's leftover from the re-roofing they did to our house last week. When maintenance comes to plug our skylights, they'll use that wood back inside the house again).

I mulched around the stump, since the last of my bare-root plants are finally sprouting. My beautiful bulbs finished blooming, so I have them stashed back on the other side of the shed. The pot that's on top of the stump is growing what is supposed to turn into cascading white petunias.



I've planted the half of the replacement strawberries that have arrived. They were slow to perk up, but seem to be doing all right now. The other half have been in transit now for 18 days. I don't know how well they're actually going to do. If I can just get some started this year, I should be in good shape.




My front bed seems to be finally taking off. The Forget Me Nots are blooming, and everything else has at least sprouted.








In my rose bed, the Double Delight is just leafing it up. The Caribia is FINALLY starting to put out a few tiny buds, but you can hardly see them.





Still waiting for Blue Girl and my John F. Kennedy to wake up. My three climbers from last year are goners for sure. Not sure what to do with the corpses--have to remember to call the suppliers first.

As for the butterfly bushes, I weeded them and then mulched around them, after adding a clematis to the bottom of the wrought iron feeder hook. Look closely and you can see the two hummingbird feeders hanging from the hooks, too.






And, speaking of bird feeders, here's the second squirrel-proof feeder that I added to the yard, along with our original one. You can see Brian's newest addition to the bird attractions in our yard: an orange feeder to help attract some orioles that we have been hearing out in the wetlands. Look closely and you'll see the Downy Woodpecker helping himself to some black oil sunflower seed.





And finally, the project that caused the most consternation because we tried to do it at the heat of the day: adding a second fence panel to the original one we put up. Turns out the first one didn't completely block off our dogs' view of the beastie next door, so we needed a second panel. After some swearing and gnashing of teeth, we got it in okay, with only a few scraped knuckles to show for it. The yard slopes up fairly sharply, so we went as level as we could without some serious excavations. It's hardly professional work, but any barrier between us and the neighbors is a good one.



And that will be it for the rest of the week. Now, I desperately need to crawl through the shower and get clean.

Procrastination & Rain

Procrastination and rain conspired to make me miss a week in my garden photos. But! I did some more playing in the dirt this weekend, and have an updated set of pictures from the short time today when the sun actually came out.

We brought back a ladder from the maintenance yard so I could work on the feeders again. I have two brackets mounted, and two different sized arms to go into the brackets. I've been experimenting with the arrangement that works best. With the addition of our squirrel baffle, I think I finally got it about right. Now the birds can get the seed, the squirrels can't, and I can fill everything up without needing to climb up on rickety plastic garden chairs.

We've had quite a lot of birdy action in our yard, too. Our regular visitors of nuthatches, chickadees, gold finches, red-winged black birds, and titmouses (titmice?) have been supplemented by tons of sparrows, the rose-breasted grosbeaks who seem to be sticking around, and cardinals who are usually shy. The downy woodpeckers and hair woodpeckers are getting more brave about coming to the feeder when the dogs are in the yard. The ruby throated hummingbird has emptied my feeder once already, and visits many times a day for a snack. We had a magnolia warbler and a ruby crowned kinglet in our scraggly trees this morning, too. Both of those were life birds for me. Supah-sweet!

The sun finally broke through, so I sat in the yard and did my correcting for the weekend. I made myself finish all of it (and I do mean ALL) before I had lunch and then dug in the dirt. Sara and I went to Lowes and to get ice cream the other night, and we split a flat of these marigolds that are a creamy white and almost look like daisies. I got three tomato plants that night, too. Yesterday with Heather I picked up two red poppies to put in my red bed to fill it in a little bit. All of that needed planting, plus my replacement green wizard rudbeckia were patiently waiting to be planted, too. I discovered that my master plan for a tomato bed along the house was not going to happen--it's all packed down cobbles used to support the house. Dar! So part of my strawberry bed will be tomatoes. I replanted my impatiens from the porch bed into the front bed, and there, magically, was enough room for our tomatoes.

Here's the latest pictures. I swear I weeded the butterfly bushes at least twice. Maybe I need to just get over it and mulch there.




The front bed with the replanted impatiens:





The rose bed is just kind of keeping on. Only one of my roses has woken up yet--the double delight is tentatively putting out tiny leaves.




Here's my re-arranged tomato-berry bed, with three strawberries I got at Lowes because I'm afraid my replacements never will really get here. You can almost see the single tomato cage I've got in. I need four more. Near my shovel is the tiny spare basil that Sara gave me earlier today.





Here's the stump with the pretty marigolds, and a second view showing the poppy plants.

How does your garden grow?

After a week that featured some dismal, grey, chilly weather, we had a high pressure system push through. The result was high blue skies, a few poofy clouds, some stiff breezes, and bounteous sunshine. The temps are struggling into the 60s, but with the sunshine and some hard-core gardening to keep my heart rate up, I was quite warm puttering around the yard in a tank top yesterday.

First on the agenda was filling bird feeders, putting up the final pieces of the feeder hangers, and tacking up new screen over one of our windows. Then, since Sara found a place that would deliver topsoil to us for free, I got started on filling my strawberry beds. Unfortunately, the strawberry plants that came with it seem to be dying of fungus, so I'll have to call Gurney's back and ask for some new ones.

First, I fit the bottom layer into the garden bed by our front door. Then I smoothed out the dirt that was left. This is where the construction project has been stuck. Since the bed assembly came with a little sprinkler hose, I had to sink that before I could add the next layer.



Then, with a few more whellbarrows-full of dirt, I fit the second and third tier and patted it all down. The soil is nice and sandy, so I think strawberries will really like it. The finished product, and all nice and damp from a good sprinkling.






Next on the list was our walkway. Our walkway was sort of hodge-podge. All different widths, and seemingly never finished on a few paths to nowhere. It's been overgrown around the edges terribly--I kept finding bricks hidden under tufts of grass.



So I ripped out the part that was headed out into the yard around the flower bed, and started a nice, clean edge with the edger-pavers.







A bit farther up, I discovered that I had to rip out some other, overgrown bricks, too.



Then, Brian's assistant Heather came by and asked if I wanted any help. I told her that if she wanted to help do the walkway, to go crazy. She pretty much took over and finished most of the rest of Walkway Project Step 1: widen.





I never expected her to do so much, but she really went wild! Step two will have to wait until next weekend. Then, I'll work on extending the walkway all the way out to the driveway and giving it a nice, finished off edge out there, too. For now, though, it's a major change that makes the place look a little less ramshackle!

MEANWHILE, I'd received the bulk of my shipment from Spring Hill Nurserys. It came in two big boxes of happy surprises.



I wasted no time in sorting the plants into different piles: one for the front perennial bed, one for the red bed that will go in around my stump, one for the butterfly bush garden, and one for my lilac hedge.

I put the butterfly bushes in, singing them little songs about how happy they would be here in the Adirondacks and how much fun they were going to have with our butterflies. Then, I put up one of our shepherd's crooks between them, and hung a humming bird feeder. It looks sort of forlorn, but once they sprout up, it's going to look fabulous.



(you can hardly see the poor little things!!)

Then it was plantings in my perennial bed. Balloonflowers, rudbeckia, pincushion flowers, a magnolia, golden sedum, a few more iris. My gladioulus are on backorder for the moment. Many of the things that came in were to be planted with the crown at or below the soil line, so for now my perennial bed looks a little forlorn.



Then, I planted the clematis that I got in honor of my grandma. I'm hoping that it will slowly climb up that big pine tree right behind it.



This morning, I potted the white petunia plants I got for the stump. They're supposed to grown long and trail down the side of whatever you plant them in, though right now they're just about the size of my palm. I've still got the bulbs I got for Christmas coming up in my old pot, so I got a second pot at Lowe's last night. Now I can have a spring bulb pot that I force inside in february to get early spring bulbs, PLUS a pot of petunias for summer to get started each year, too!

We finally got the dog house moved over into the yard where it belongs. Now Pulu can use it happily while she's on her lead, and I've got the space back at the front corner of the yard. I can pick up edgers this week and start putting the red bed in around our stump this week, too.

Slowly, it's coming together.

Now, some fun pictures that I "digiscoped" from our kitchen window yesterday. Digiscoping is when you put your digital camera lens into the eye piece of your binos or your birding scope and take pictures that way. I was shooting through a VERY dirty window and a dark window screen, so the quality isn't fabulous. However, as the birds are getting braver about using the feeder while we're out in the yard, I think there may be some promise there as the season goes on.

The life bird I got before breakfast yesterday morning: a rose breasted grosbeak









Our chickadees are really brave. This one didn't mind me taking his picture. This morning, when I was moving the feeders around, I was about a foot away from the feeder. A chickadee lit on the perch, looked me all over, and hopped over to help himself to some seed. He was completely unfazed by the fact I could have reached out and touched him.




Brian reports that he saw the first goldfinches back here at camp last week, but they found our feeders for the first time yesterday. The pair that's been stopping in fairly frequently is in the midst of molting, so they're pretty scruffy looking.







Our downy woodpecker doesn't mind using the feeder, but he really prefers the suet cakes that we put out for them.