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.