Images

I like my little Sony digital camera, but it does not do well on close ups. I had an old Olympia camera that wore out a couple of years ago that did an awesome job on close ups, but they no longer make that camera model anymore. Sigh. One day, however, I found the exact same camera that had been discarded by a family member. The camera was in perfect working order. The one drawback was that the attachment that connected to the computer for downloading the images was nowhere to be found. I took some pictures of the garden last summer anyway, in hopes that I could somehow locate a means to download the pictures eventually. Fast forward to last Monday when I was at the Apple Store having my laptop fixed by the ace professional there. I was standing around waiting for my laptop when I noticed a Belkin thingee that promised to download any and all digital images off of any card from any camera. The light went on and I bought the thingee. True to its promise, I was able to, finally, download the pictures off of the Olympia camera. Yippee! I'm back in business, close up wise. It doesn't take much to make me happy. Thank you, Belkin. And thanks to Joey at the Apple Store for giving me my laptop back.

Ta Da

This year I decided to try growing vegetables in a raised garden behind the garage. The area itself is prone to standing water whenever there is a significant rainstorm, so raising the garden bed was a must. It's also easier to tend to the plants, although I haven't had to do much of that. The tomato plants took off immediately, but the green peppers stayed the same size for about a month. Then the pepper plants seemed to stretch themselves upward dramatically. The odd thing is that there are absolutely no flowers on the pepper plants. Bummer. There are lots of little tomatoes on the grape tomato plant, but only one so far on the big boy tomato plant. The cucumber plants are growing nicely and putting out lots of yellow flowers, so I'm hoping to get significant cucumbers from all this. The pumpkin plant has huge leaves and some flowers, but I only want to get one or two pumpkins so that's fine. There are three or four broccoli plants strewn in for good measure and anything I get from them is a bonus. For fun Henry and I threw some radish and carrot seeds around the garden and it looks like some of those are going to produce. The seeds were just thrown in helter skelter and a lot of the little plants are too close together to get sizable roots, but what the heck. This year is the first year for this and the year I see what's what.

Snowing

It's Christmas Eve and it's snowing. Again. It has snowed every day this week. It has snowed every Tuesday this past month. It is beautiful. I received a copy of Garden Gate magazine in the mail the other day, and it was really exciting to see pictures of spring flowers. One can sit at the window, look at the snow outside, and feel hope inside. The snow is supposed to abate tomorrow in time for Christmas visiting, which I hope holds true as Henry is supposed to come over tomorrow to get his presents and have dinner with us. Maybe I'll go to the store later and get a plant in honor of Spring Hope. I left a lot of the garden geegaws out, mainly because I did not have the time to patiently put them away, and now I can see them as snow sculptures. I hope they don't all fall apart from exposure to the cold and damp. Time will tell.

It's everywhere

Well, school is on the horizon and I had to spend a lot of my time setting up my classroom this past week. This meant that I could not take my morning walks and I could not do much in the garden. Except water everything. The weather has been great, except that there has been little rain. And it looks like there will be little rain next week, too. I see buckets of money (aka the water bill) going out the hose this week. A couple of noteworthy items: There are Japanese Beetles nesting in the rose bush. I go out there to admire the roses and find that there are little beetles tucked away in the flowery folds. This is mildly unnerving and rather irritating. Here I go to great lengths to nurture a rose bush and these guys despoil it. The beetles themselves are all shiny and not bad looking on their own, but I see bad things down the road if they should take a liking to my yellow rose bush out there. The rose is the only thing I can see that they have taken a fancy to in the garden, although I have found one or two on the ferns.

The bee balm has lasted the longest I can ever remember. I've usually cut it all down by now, but there's still some bloomage going on. I wonder what the difference is this year. Everything else is doing well, with the notable exception of the tiger eye sumac which bit the dust a while back. With any luck, that will be the only casualty. I did transplant the blue hydrangea from the center of the front garden to the sunnier side in hopes that it will follow the rose bush lead and start to grow. I put a variegated hydrangea in its place. It cost $7 at Lowes so I won't feel bad about it whatever happens to it. If it follows past experience, it will grow and prosper. Why do the expensive plants belly-up while the inexpensive ones take (more or less)? There's a lesson in life right there.

Little Things

Lots of little things are happening in the garden. Today a hummingbird visited the petunias on the deck for the first time this summer. The bees have returned to the bee balm and whatever herb that is I have planted next to it. How nice to see them hovering here and there as they inspect the flowers. For a while there I thought they were goners. There have been several different types of butterflies flitting around. Today there was a huge golden swallow tail gliding throughout the garden. I haven't seen the monarchs lately, although there have been two recent caterpillars chowing down on the milkweed along the Henry Path.


I went to a local craft store to see if they still had any shepherd hooks left that were on sale. Fortunately, they had a few left, and as I picked one out, I saw way on top of a neighboring shelf, a large pot with greek letters carved into it which was on sale for 70% off. It was originally $50, marked down to $14 (!). I grabbed it immediately, since it is one of the niftiest pots I've ever seen, and who can beat that price? I found a few flowers to go into it temporarily so I could put it by the white and blue garden by the patio. Most excellent.

Home Depot is selling out their perennials so I picked up some black-eyed daisies to go out back by the Canada Lilies, where the sun shines more than most places in the yard. The daisies add a nice touch of color out there, color I can see from the house.

I moved the blue fescue out of its container and into the ground by the new pot. The fescue was looking like it needed a change of scenery as it was browning at the tips. I think it needs more drainage. We'll see. Grass in general seems pretty hardy.

Phil and Henry put together a new water fountain for the yard. We put it right in the bee balm by the deck so you can hear it as you sit out there. It's very cute and very simple. It's nice to finally have a "water feature" in the yard.

Wee Bunny

I finally got a picture of the wee bunny that has been hanging around my yard this past summer. He's as cute as a bug and he doesn't seem to mind when I'm around. He actually looks like he's interested in what I'm doing. I found him up in the front yard right after the thunderstorm today, so I grabbed my camera and took his picture. There was actually another rabbit hanging out with him, and I was hoping to get a shot of the two of them together, but the other rabbit high-tailed it off before I came back. Too bad.

The flowers all got a good dose of water today, since we had a sizable storm roll through this afternoon. Plenty of good soaking rain, accompanied by lots of thunder and lightning. Everything seems status quo in the gardens, with most of the plants looking happy. I didn't see the monarchs today, but I had to spend most of the day inside with the handyman working on the kitchen. It looks like we might be going to Rockford on Sunday to visit the Japanese gardens there, which are supposed to be nifty. That will be nice, especially if I can get an idea or two for the back corner.

Unexpected

Not having much experience with hostas, I was surprised to see the lovely white flower one of the front yard hostas produced. The hostas on the side of the house send up lanky stalks that have little purple flowers along the end. I thought all hostas flowered like this. I personally do not like this flower and only leave them alone (instead of cutting them off) because the bees seem to like them. To me they look awkward and messy. Imagine my surprise when I saw the lovely white flower this particular hosta came up with. Now I wonder what kind of flowers other types of hostas produce. I actually like this one.

I found a bargain priced tamarisk at the local garden center, and picked it up fully intending to plant it up front, in the sunniest part of the yard. The garden worker admonished me to plant it in a spot that had tons of sun, as she planted one in a spot that only got 4 hours of sun and her tree died. Once I got it home, I changed my mind and ended up planting it in the backyard where it can get maximum sunlight and, thus, half a chance to survive its experience. Back to tearing up sod.

Once the tamarisk was planted, I sat back to watch things in the yard. First, two monarch butterflies came by and landed on the butterfly weed. This surprised me as I thought Monarchs only liked milkweed plants. Go figure. Then I spied a thirteen-lined ground squirrel climbing up a mulberry tree. It was up there about eight feet from the ground. This was also a surprise, as I thought ground squirrels stayed on the ground. Then Wee Bunny showed up and scooted under the ferns by the garage. I could see its white tail as it sat in the shade of the ferns. This guy is so cute. He's not exactly 'wee' anymore, but he's still a junior rabbit. He was running back and forth by the fence yesterday afternoon in what appeared to be a bunny version of having fun. I could see no other reason for doing it except for pleasure. Perhaps he was experiencing joi de vivre.

I went to the Atrium garden center again yesterday, looking at possible hydrangeas for the front yard. I found them, but at great expense. So now I'm waiting for a hydrangea sale (if there is such a thing). However, I managed to pick up a few more plants and an inexpensive pot to make yet another arrangement for the side door, by the chair which seems to have taken up permanent residence there. The overall effect is pleasant, which I guess is what encourages me to make more of them. Talk about positive reinforcement.