Weeding Day

Yesterday was weeding day!  I'm ashamed to admit that there were an astronomical amount of weeds in the vegetable garden.  We usually put grass clippings in between the rows to keep down the weeds, but we had so many dandelions this year that we were reluctant to use that grass, so the weeds went wild!

We finally got another huge 900 pound bag of poplar mulch from the"Mulch People" but the weeds needed to be removed first. My helpful husband and I spent a considerable amount of time on our knees hoeing the chickweed at close range and removing as much of it as possible. It amazes me how resilient some weeds are! Even a tiny root of chickweed left behind in the soil and it will sprout up again!

It gave me a good chance to see up close how much some things have grown! The potatoes are growing well as well as the tomatoe plants and the spaghetti squash plants. The zucchinis are still very tiny and I don't know if they will amount to much. The rhubarb plants are HUGE!  I have made a pan of rhubarb squares, 2 rhubarb crisps, 3 strawberry rhubarb pies and today I made another pie, a rhubarb crumble which will be for dessert tomorrow when our friends come for dinner.  There is still loads of it left! Good thing I like rhubarb! I'm going to make some jam early next week.

We actually got our first red tomato off one of the plants and had our first feed of swiss chard and spinach in a salad at supper yesterday evening!

After weeding was done, I spread the pile of grass clippings around as many of the rows as I could and the whole vegetable garden looks so much neater now.  It's not completely weed free, there are still some around the strawberry plants, but over all it looks 98% better. 

Fat Buds

 As I do my daily tour of the garden, I am thrilled to see not only the plants that have burst into bloom but the ones with the fat buds. I love the anticipation, the suspense of waiting for them to open! It is much like the feeling a person gets just before Christmas when you know it's almost here and that you will soon get to open those presents stashed so lovingly under the tree....

What has fat buds and is about to bloom in my flower beds?
The peony closest to the house has HUGE buds!
Two of my four rose bushes, the Morden Centennial and Morden Blush!
The delphiniums
The dark purple lupines
The aconitum (Monkshood)
The lavatara annuals  (I love their pink cup-shaped blossoms!)

The pink sage and the white sage has started to bloom (the blue sages have been blooming for 3 weeks already!)  The pink perennial baby's breath has tiny buds and several of them have popped open to reveal miniature pink flowers.
The marmot continues to nibble on the gazanias in my rock garden, but so far leaves the ones in the lower flower beds alone.  I sprayed the Green Earth Animal repellent on them ( and on  many other flowers) in the hopes that it will deter the little 'So-and-so'!  Not sure if rain takes away the effect or not. Should check that out online, I guess....

What is trying to dominate:
The white shasta daisies, of course!  They are everywhere! They are quite beautiful but they have been spreading out and starting to shade the plants around them more and more. I have been cutting stalks of white daisy flowers regulary and filling up vases in the house, but it is time to get ruthless.

(My husband actually laughed when I said that to him... ("It's time for me to get ruthless with the daisies!"I said.)
"You?" he replied.

He knows me quite well and knows that I try to find a new home for most of the plants I dig out even if it's a shady location among the trees in the ravine next to our house. He knows that I scoop insects out of the dog water dish when I see them helplessly flailing about.  Well, I think every little act of kindness and thoughtfulness helps create a better world.  I even rescue the wasps and give them a second chance if they mistakenly find their way into our kitchen and I see them rattling against the window panes trying to escape...  My theory is that any thing I rescue is not going to come back to sting me or do any harm in my garden. I believe that 'what goes around, comes around', for the most part anyway...

So now maybe you have a better understand of why my husband laughed at that statement.
But I meant it in all seriousness and I usually follow through on whatever I commit to!

Besides, the daisies are making it difficult for my saponica (soap wart) to grow, (did I mention it has little pink flowers on it now, too?) as well as shading the roses, the nibbled gazanias and the pansies. (Did I mention they were blooming) And soon the daisies will be going to seed! Then if even merely 1 /100th of the daisy seeds grow, I am in BIG trouble next year, so removing more daisies is an absolute necessity and has to be done soon.

And THAT is no laughing matter.

Lupines, Columbines and Gaillardia

The lupines have started to bloom in my garden and so have the columbines! These perennials only bloom for about  4 weeks and it is really exciting to see their first blossoms of the season open!

My first columbine is a pretty pink and white variety. The flowers are 3 dimensional and remind me of underwater sea creatures for some reason.   I also have some yellow and white columbines and a pure white one. Some of them are growing in my wild flower bed at the far end of the yard, but this year with all the rain we have had, the grass has grown really tall in that bed and is trying to take over. It will have to be clipped or much of it removed, not a job I look forward to...

(One more thing to add to my 'To Do 'list, Lol!)  Yes, the war with the grass roots and the infernal dandelions never seems to cease!

Columbines (aqueligia) are easy to grow and the flowers also come in blue and a deep burgundy. They prefer some shade, but will tolerate full sun.  Butterflies are attracted to them. The plants get old after about 3 years and it's a good idea to let them seed themselves and start some young ones nearby, the same as lupines.

Lupines have interesting foliage and beautiful tall spikes on flowers in a variety of colors. The leaves are compound leaves with 5 to 7 long 'fingers' on them. The lupine of mine that is blooming is dark pink and the other one in the same bed seems to be purple (judging from the color of the buds so far.)

Lupines are short lived perennials. The plants only live 2 or 3 years and then stop coming up. That's why it's a good idea to let some of the lupine flowers go to seed. That way they will produce new little babies in close to the same spot as the 'old mama' and you will always have lupines. They have a long tap root that grows deep into the soil and so they do not like to be moved once established.  (And neither do columbines for that matter.)  Lupines are members of the pea family and they take nitrogen from the air and return it to the soil, making the soil richer (which is called 'fixing nitrogen').   They are poisonous to animals (sheep and cattle) if eaten in large quantities.

At this time of the year you will often find perennials on sale for a song!  I'm a sucker for a bargain and I bought 2 Robinsom red daisies (also called red painted daisies) and planted them in my wild flower bed. The leaves are very ferny and delicate looking. Not sure if they will actually bloom this summer or not, but as most gardeners, I have enough patience to wait till next year to see them bloom.

I went looking for a coreopsis today, but ended up coming home with a stunningly beautiful healthy Morden rose ( yes, another one!) with beautiful dark red blossoms on it.  I have no clue where I'm going to plant it yet, but my patient husband bought it anyway. (Patient gardeners need to have patient husbands... :)

I also bought a $2 Veronica which gets blue tufted flowers; "Almost free!" as my husband says.  If need be, I'll move some annuals to make room!  Realistically, who knows if they will even survive the winter and amount to anything, but I'm always willing to try.

Last year one of my new acquisitions was 3 blanket flowers (gaillardias) which look like short daisies with light green leaves. My favorite variety is called Arizona Sun and that's exactly what the flowers look like, yellowy red suns!  They also remind me of our orange 'Arizona cat' who we rescued from an abandoned home in Arizona 2 years ago. We named the cat Phoenix and he is the biggest cat that I have every had ( and I have had many over the years!)

Gaillardias are quite drought tolerant once established. That has been an attractive feature for any plant around my flower beds, up until this year at least. (This spring and early summer we have had more rain than most people in this area can even remember!)

 Gaillardias are very slow to make an appearance in the spring, though, so it is a good idea to put a plant marker there once they die back in the fall so you don't accidently dig them up.  The wait is well worth it!

annual gazanias, pink dianthus and gaillardia -Arizona sun 2009

Happy Summer 2010 & Clematis

second summer we were here, a General Sikorska, which gets large dark blue 3 1'2 inch flowers and a Ville de Lyon which has a bit smaller pink flowers.  The General Sikorska grew much faster and more prolific, and had far more blossoms than the Ville de Lyon, altho Ville's pink blossoms were gorgeous!    I thought it might have been because the General got a little more sun because of the trees nearby seemed to create more shade for Ville de Lyon, although they are both located in the same bed, up against the house on the south east side.  The Ville de Lyon only lived for 2 years and last summer it did not make an appearance at all.  What a disappointment!

General Sikorska in full bloom -2009

I went to PJ's Plantation (a local greenhouse) looking for a replacement and ended up with a Jackmanii. I 'ran into' a little old lady there who raved about her Ville de Lyon! It seems she has had it for many years and it outperformed all the rest.   But the greenhouse personal told me that Jackmanii is known to be hardy and grow well, so I thought that seemed like my best bet.  It had a couple of dark purple blossoms on it at the time, but nothing very impressive.  I planted Jackmanii in the same location as the Ville de Lyon had been in, up against the house facing south east.

General Sikorska on left, Jackmanii on right... early June 2010

This spring I was pleasantly surprised to see  the Jackmanii burst from the ground first and grow like gangbusters up the trellis! It beat the General Sikorska  coming out of the ground by 3 or 4 days and it is about 20 inches taller already than the top of the trellis!  But the General does have a lot more shoots and many more leaves on it now and I think it will also get a lot more blossoms in the end.

I am a sucker for a little plant that needs some TLC and this week I fell for that again. I found a small Alba Luxuriana clematis which is supposed to get 3 inch white flowers (eventually). It looks like it will do well once it gets established. It has a lot of tiny healthy looking leaves and a couple of new shoots on it. I planted it in the space between the General and Jack. I'm looking forward to the day, a few years from now, when all three plants will grow together in a profusion of leaves and stems with blue, white and purple blossoms intertwined! :)

The bad news for my tall "Jack-in-a beanstalk" clematis is that I read on Alba's tag that the first summer you should cut back the clematis to the second set of strong shoots.  So I am heading outside now with the scissors to do just that! The race goes to the strong, not to the swift Jackamanii!

Marmot Woes

Livingstone daises- gone! Gazanias', chomped, Pansies ignored! Calendulas- return visit! Is more Plantskydd going to help???

I'm pretty sure it's that cute, but hungry little Marmot and his mate who are eating the flowers that I planted in my rock garden (right up next to the deck railing).  I had planted some Gazanias there which had started blooming  and had lots of other fat buds, as well as some dark blue pansies and a pink Gaura.  I sprayed Plantskydd on most of them, but must have missed 2 gazanias. Those 2 gazanias were chomped down to twigs!  The rest were nibbled on.... The pansies and the Gaura were left alone.

Gazanias

marmot varmint


(There are some perennials there, too, clumps of white daisies in full bloom right now (nothing eats them!) and 2 large unpleasant smelling, but attractive looking Blue Sage plants, as well as a maltese cross, an echinacea coneflower and 2 liatrises. More on them later).

Blue Sage


I knew it wasn't a 'Deer Job" since they don't come up to the top of the rock garden that close to the deck. I dug out the 3 worst looking Gazanias and replaced them with new ones. I put the 3 little stumpy ones in pots on the picnic table. They are still alive, but will take a couple weeks to grow back if not longer. I'm hoping at the very least that they will grow in nice and bushy!

Pink Livingstone daisies at edge of flower bed


At the edge of the lower tier of that rock garden I planted some Livingstone Daisies, (low growing, fleshy-leaved pink daisies), some alyssum and some calendulas (yellow daisy-like annuals which bloom most of the summer if you deadhead them.)

I sprayed Plantskyyd on the calendulas as I know they are edible for people so I figured wildlife would probably like it, too.  I didn't spray the fleshy Livingstone daisies for 2 reasons: many animals don't like fleshy leaved plants so I thought they were safe (As they had been in previous years) and also I thought the spray might damage the plants. Big mistake!  Somebody ate the Livingstone daisies right down to the ground! Nothing left!

The calendulas were 'tasted' the first night.  The leaves were chewed off, but left lying on the ground like a challenge or something. I thought maybe that would be it, but no, never trust a hungry Marmot!  It came back 2 days later and chewed off all the leaves of all the calendulas, leaving just the buds on the stems. Then the next night, it chewed the buds off and left them lying on top of the soil like accusing eyes!  Yet, the sweet smelling alyssum was ignored completely.

Back to the greenhouse, I went! I decided to skip the Livingstone daisies this year as they seem to be far too popular around here. I  bought some fuzzy leaved rudbeckia called "Autumn colors" and more white alyssum. I left the munched calendula stems in place, thinking maybe they will get a second chance to grow....  I "plantskyyded" everything in that bed including 2 Mimulus and a Minuet Wigela shrub which is trying hard to make a comeback.  (I didn't spray the perennials there - the bearded irises, or day lilies, or shasta daisies or maltese cross.)

Rudbeckia

I checked that bed regularly the last 2 days and it hasn't been touched, but I'm wondering if the furry little fiends are just trying to lull me into a false sense of safety!   Waiting to catch me off guard. Sneaky, plotting  little beasts.
 Then" bam!" when I least expect it......  Am I starting to sound paranoid???  

Persian Cornflower, and More

persian cornflower perennial

These Persian Cornflowers are beautiful purpley blue perennials,which look much like blue Bachelor Buttons only bigger. They sometimes die right back to the ground in mid summer, so it is best to plant a lot of other things around them. 

Jacob's ladder

I really like the foliage, the lacy leaves of Jacob's Ladder. Jacob's ladder gets its name from the variegated leaves with white that resembles rungs on a ladder. The tall stems with little clumps of bluey purple bell shaped flowers at the top are quite pretty. Jacob's Ladder continues to bloom for quite a while, usually until end of July, especially if you cut off the spent flowers.  I doesn't like to dry out and actually prefers a location with not too much hot sun, much like the Monkshood.

Cactus dahlia and monkshood starting to bloom

The smallest clump of my 3 monkshood is blooming first! Monkshood are highly toxic, but only if the plants or seeds are eaten.  Monkshood plant also known by aconitum, turk's cap, friar's cap and wolf's bane.  It likes sunlight but will grow in shade as well. I used to have 2 big clumps of Monkshood on the north side of my house in northern Manitoba and they grew fine there. They bloomed about 2 weeks later than the one growing at the east side of the house.  

I love this gorgeous red cactus dahlia. It is blooming early this year! I have been growing this particular dahlia from tubers for 7 years now! Each fall I dig the tubers up and store them in a bag of peat moss in the laundry room until they start to sprout like potatoes in March. Then I plant them in a pot where they grow until it's warm enough to plant them out in the flower beds.  I have another identical twin to this plant in another bed but it took a bit of frost in late  May and has only tiny buds so far.  The third Dahlia is a fire colored cactus flower, (orange and yellow), quite dramatic when it blooms ( but no sign of that so far...)

 Rudbeckia

I love the look of this Rudbeckia also called black-eyed Susan. It's called Tiger Eye. I  bought it at a green house and planted it last week. I know that's like cheating, but you need some color in your garden at the start. Not sure if it's a perennial or not, but I'm going to enjoy it for this summer anyway. :)

Another bonus is that the deer don't like them and I hope that pesky, hungry little marmot doesn't either!

(More on him coming up!)

Gardeners are Optimists

The wild roses here along the trail to the lake are blooming!  And so is the little shrub put against the house.  :) Quite a feat considering the little sunshine we have been getting this spring. (Rain and overcast/ rain and overcast/ sun/ more rain, more clouds....) Sigh! It seems that Mother nature has been trying to catch us up on our lack of moisture (a deficit we have had for many years) all at once!

Wild rose bushes starting to bloom

 But on the plus side, most of my flowers are continuing to grow and flourish. I have 5 peony plants in various stages of growth depending on which flower bed they are located in.  The best one has a large number of healthy stems and 6 or 7 big buds. A huge improvement from last year when it grew like crazy, but only had one flower!  Although I consider myself a successful and knowledgeable gardener, peonies are not my forte. I tried growing them for many years without too much success.

 I lived in Red Deer, AB in the late 1970's and was a beginner gardener.  I planted 4 peonies one summer, but never got them to bloom. When I moved 3 years later, I dug them up and moved them with us to a new location, further north in Alberta,  planting them again with great care. Although they came up and had lovely greenish red stems every year, they still never bloomed.  "You have to wait 3 years", I was told. After 3 years... no flowers.  "You planted them too deep", I was told.

I moved again, this time to northern Manitoba, leaving my uncooperative peonies behind. But a few years later I bought another peony (just stubborn, I guess) and I tried again. This peony plant was already blooming when I bought it and it looked great in my flower bed!  I was very careful not to plant it too deep. I tried to plant it at exactly the same level as in the pot like the directions stated.

The next spring... nothing came up.... At that point I decided that maybe peonies were not for me. I could grow almost anything else, I told myself, so forget the peonies! Did I listen to my own advice?  Not a chance. I guess I saw it as a challenge! So, yes, the following year I bought another peony in full bloom and tried again. That one did come up the following spring, but again, no flowers!

It broke my heart to see the peony bushes next door being ignored and neglected by their owner and still blooming their little hearts out, when here I was, bending over backwards to no avail! Was I trying too hard?

Fate intervened and we ended up retiring and we moved here to this idyllic location at Buffalo Lake. Guess what was in the flower beds here???    Peonies!  They bloomed beautifully with no help from me!

The one nearest the house, right close to the pond is doing the best  again this year.

Peony budding (More photos to follow when it blooms!) 

This peony gets deep pink blossoms and, as long as I remember to apply the 'Plantskydd', the deer will leave the buds alone.  I should be able to enjoy those peony flowers opening in another week or two!

Two other peony plants are at the far end of the yard in my 'wild' flower bed. The trees have grown so much there, even in the last 4 years since we have moved here, that the peonies no longer get a lot of sun.  Thus they seem to have fewer and fewer buds each spring.  I trimmed some of the tree branches last summer to try and improve that.

 I got a pleasant surprise one day last summer!  I noticed a flash of color one day in behind some of the trees which shade that bed. I ducked under the tree branches and went to investigate. There I discovered one beautiful peony blossom blooming away in the shade! I had not even known that plant was there! At one time it had probably been a sunny location, but now the trees had grown around it.

In the fall I dug that peony out and moved it to the front of that bed.  This spring I thought at first that it hadn't survived the winter, but it has sprouted now. I know it likely won't bloom for a couple of years, now that I have transplanted it, but I think it will do far better in its new spot since there is a lot more sun there.
One of  the old originals at the north side of that bed is always really slow to sprout shoots. It still has none so far, (June 17), but each year, just as I'm about to give up on it, it does sprout and get a blossom or two, although quite late into July.

I planted another new peony last year too, which I bought at a local green house, (thinking that the above mentioned peony had died...)  I think it's called Sara Bernhardt.   It came up and got leaves early this spring, but I don't know if it will get buds this year or not. But true gardeners have a huge amount of patience. Like my friend B always says, each year we think that this year we are going to have that perfect garden and that thought gives us energy and incentive to plant and weed and water in expectation.  Reality soon sets it some time around July and we make the best of the conditions that Mother Nature has provided and try to enjoy those things that are doing well.

By August we have realized that we don't have the perfect garden this year either and we start thinking and dreaming about what we are going to change next year to have that perfect garden then.
Gardeners are perennial optimists, right Barb!?

(I know these are not peonies... couldn't find any good photos in my files... these will have to do for now! LOL!) 

Vegetable garden

The deer fence that we put up in May seems to be doing its job well.  No deer damage or rabbit nibbles in evidence!

The potato plants have sprouted out of the hills and are growing well. The 3 spaghetti squash plants that I started from seeds in April (which I had collected from a spaghetti squash that we ate for supper this winter) are slowly growing.   The 3 zucchini plants that I planted out seem to be in limbo and don't show any growth yet.  (I hope that the 'Miracle Grow" that I put on everything a few days ago will make a difference.)
The 6 tomato plants (against the fence ) are all doing well and I am anxious to see which variety will do best. We have 1 Health Kick, 1 Super Fantastic, (wonder if it will live up to that name?)  1 Bush Champion, 1 Husky Red (it already has 2 small tomatoes on it) and a Lemon Boy (which gets sweet yellow tomatoes.)  The cherry tomato is growing in a large pot on the deck.  The competition has begun!!!

Giant rhubarb

The 3 rhubarb plants (which came up many weeks ago and have been here much longer than we have!) are huge and last week I cut 18 stems off them and baked 3 strawberry rhubarb pies! They turned out really well, if you don't count the mess they made at the bottom of the oven! :)

The vegetable seedlings are all sprouting now too. The first to sprout were the radishes. There are also a half dozen spinach plants that must have self seeded because they popped up in strange places around the garden and have already grown 3 or 4 inches tall (8 to 10 cm). (And one has even sprouted in a flower bed!)  The spinach seeds that I planted myself a few weeks ago are also up, but are quite tiny in comparison.

We somehow have 3 green onions that stayed in the ground all winter and have grown to an edible size already. The ones that we planted this year are only about 2 inches tall (5 cm, in case you think in metric! :)
But its gratifying to see that things are growing!
It never ceases to amaze me each year how a person can put a few seeds into the ground and for such little work, can get such a wonderful and bountiful harvest!

I can't forget to mention the chives! We have a huge clump of chives in the veggie garden that comes up as soon as the snow is gone and it is one of the very first things to turn green. It is a pleasure to go out and cut down a few fresh chives for a salad or to put in an omelet when everything else in the yard is still brown with little signs of life!  Chives are also self seeders and we have 3 or 4 chives plants in other locations, too. One huge chive plant is growing in my flower bed near the birdhouse, and 2 are growing under the deck stairs, just a few steps outside the door. It doesn't require a lot of effort harvest them, just snap off a few leaves and they quickly grow more all summer long.

Tiny strawberry plants, next to rhubarb. We are using grass clippings as mulch here.

We bought 10 new strawberry plants at the farmer's market today for $1.00 each. My diligent husband went out and hoed the chickweed which was trying to take over the strawberry bed, then planted the little strawberry plants into the ground. (I wonder if the fact that he wanted to go golfing tonight had any bearing on his helpfulness?  - "Whatever it takes!" I say....  :)


Tiny evidence of dill is showing, as well as tiny lettuce seedlings and miniature swiss chard. The carrots are being elusive, but I don't think they will be far behind.

This year we decided we would skip the battle to try and get the broccoli and cauliflower bedding plants to grow into anything worthwhile. We had such tremendous luck most years growing broccoli, cauliflower, and brussel sprouts as well when we gardened in northern Manitoba! Our garden there got a huge amount of sunlight and we harvested broccoli until the frost came.  The brussel sprouts did extremely well also and doesn't mind the cold weather in late September, in fact, I believe it helps the yield! But here in our central Alberta garden we have too many beautiful lush spruce trees around the garden providing shade. I guess we could always cut them down, but I really hate to do that! Some of them are over 20 years old now and very tall and beautiful.  So, we'll just have to make due!

What's Blooming?

I love to go out side every day and make my garden checks. It's so interesting to see the changes in the garden from day to day. This time of the year it's exciting to see the perennials come up and start to bloom. Various types will bloom at different times of the season. 

The first things to bloom in my garden were the tulips and daffodils (both bulbs) and the creeping flox was the first actual perennial to bloom. 

 Late blooming tulips still looking good June 13, 2010




Creeping flox is a short perennial which grows tiny green lacy leaves on last year's growth and blooms early. I have several at the corners of one of my flower beds. This variety gets tiny blue flowers. There is a pink flowered variety too, but my pink ones didn't make it through the winter, whereas the blue ones grew like gangbusters and seem to be very hardy. It is so easy to start a new one, too, as I found out almost by accident. Just take a piece of the plant and stick it into the ground and it readily gets roots and starts growing!

It is a good ground cover.

Creeping flox

The Forget-me-nots bloom really early too. Tiny, but cute!

The next perennials to bloom were the forget-me-nots and the Siberian iris.  The Forget-me-nots are short little plants with tiny blue flowers . They are not a long living perennial, but they will self seed for a few years so you will always have a clump or two. 


The iris has long narrow leaves and light blue flowers. This is only it's 3rd summer and I can see that the tiny clump it started out as, has increased in size 3 fold.  The flowers last for several weeks.

siberian iris

Blue Sage, the 'May Night' variety is an early bloomer, as well.  I really like the tall spikes of midnight blue flowers!  It attracts the bees and they seem to love it, even though to me, the plants have an unappealing smell. The upside is that the deer avoid it for that reason.  

Blue sage will self seed quite a bit, too, so you get several new little plants every year which you can transplant to other flower beds or dig out to give to other gardeners, if you are so inclined.  

After it finishes blooming I cut it back and in a couple weeks it has a second flush of blossoms, although not as abundant as the first. 

Blue Sage- 'May Night' variety

I also have a pink sage similar to the' May Night', but it is about 2 weeks behind in growth and blooms later and less abundantly. I think part of the reason for that is the location. It doesn't get nearly as much sun where it is. Both the blue sage and pink are in their 3rd summer. 

Last year I planted a white variety of sage as well and it only had 2 stems of flowers then, but it is growing quite well now and I have high hopes that it will do better this year.  The bed where it is located is one of the last to lose its snow in the spring so that does cause it to grow slower...

Sea of white daisies

The shasta daisies are opening their buds now and each day more and more of then are blooming. As I mentioned in a previous post, I have had to dig up about 8 or 10 clumps of daisies this spring to make room for other things in my garden. If you let them, they will take over and crowd out everything else. They are extreme self seeders!

The next thing to bloom was the bearded irises. The first of them just popped open today!  They are a beautiful light blue and white.  (photo to follow...   :)

 

After 4 Days of Rain

June 12, 2010
(OOPS! Forgot to publish this post on the weekend..... :)

We finally got some sunshine today and after 4 straight days, the rain stopped. We got about 3 iches of rain this week added to the 3 inches we got last week. More than enough to last us for quite some time, thank you Mother Nature! (Hint, hint!)

It was great to get outside and check out the progress of the flowers in my beds.  I was nice to see the lilies had grown since I had checked them last and good to note that nothing had been eaten. The Plantskydd seems to be doing its job. I noticed a couple calendulas had 2 leaves bitten off, but they were lying next to the plant. "Someone" must have thought they looked tasty only to change their mind once they had it in their mouth! I know last year the calendula were always getting decimated by the rabbits and the deer.  This year, judging by the location, I think the culprit might be our bold little next door neighbor, the marmot twins!

I set to work and cleaned up the last of my flower beds (well, okay it's really only the second last, but it was the worst one...).
This particular bed had a massive amount of shasta daisies in it which were trying to take over that entire bed. The daisies were just starting to open and there was a sea of white buds at the tops of tall green stems. I hated to dig out the healthy clumps daisies, but some of them were growing at the front of the bed and were choking out my oriental poppy and my minuet wiegela (which, low and behold, was not dead as I had first thought)!  I like shasta daisies because they are one of the first perennials to bloom and often they will bloom a second time later in the summer although not as profusely. But once you have them, you have to be ruthless because they are self seeding in a HUGE way. Very pushy daisies!

I cut all the tall daisy stems off before I dug out the clumps of daisies. (I now have 3 vases full of daisies in the kitchen and dining room. :) I have plans for some of the daisy clumps. My neighbor wants a few and I think I will plant the rest in various locations around our acreage and in the environmental reserve. I hate to just throw them in the compost.

I had to dig out quite a lot of grass roots again, as well. After all the rain we had, the soil was very soft and the grass roots came out easily. I planted calendula and ice flowers (Livingstone daisies) at the front of that bed and added a few white alyssum.  I also transplanted the oriental poppy closer to the front of the bed  and planted a new echinacea (cone flower) there as well. I hope this one is a little more successful than the last one which really struggled for a few years, but now has given up the ghost, it seems.  I love cone flowers, but they are very slow to come up in the spring and they take several years to get established before the growth really amounts to anything. I have one echinacea that looked great last year after growing for 2 years, so I have high hopes for that one again this year, but the rest are still pretty small.   I also added a couple mimulous annuals to that bed. They did well there last year, so I thought I'd try them there again.

After 4 hours of planting, weeding and dead heading spent flowers, I felt like I had accomplished quite a bit. (And also felt quite exhausted!) It's a very satisfying feeling, though, having planted so many of the bedding plants from the picnic table on the deck out into the flower beds or into their designated pots now, into their homes for the duration of this gardening season. 

The summer birds

What a sweet little slice of heaven to go out on the deck on a sunny morning with  my first cup of coffee and listen to the busy birds singing happily in the trees nearby. They have already been up for hours by the time I join them!  "Lazy bones!" they sing...

tree swallows

Sunday morning was such a warm, sunny, inviting morning. First I noticed the tree swallows with their irridecent royal blue wings and backs and their natty white chests perched on top of any available place with an aerial view. The tree swallows especially love sitting on the very tip top of the tree snags, the dead trees planted, one in the front yard and one in the back. They love to have an open view of their environment.

You're probably wondering... who would plant a dead tree deliberately? Most people cut down dead trees and in town when you have a small yard, I can see the need to do that.  What most people don't realize is that a so called 'dead' tree is actually teaming with life! There is a huge amount of activity going on in a tree that has died. Insects invade it and make their homes there. Then the insect eating birds visit there regularly to make a meal of the insects. The lichens and moss also love to grow there, so it may look dead to you, but after a tree dies it actually sustains a great deal of new life!

I love when the tree swallows first show up in the spring. Then we know that spring has definitely arrived! It usually happens in early May out here, that we look out the bay window at breakfast and low and behold see that the swallows have reclaimed their birdhouse! This year, though, they came about 10 days early! We thought we were in for an early spring! Little did we all know that the "early spring" was going to change back into "late winter" 2 or 3 times before Mother Nature relented and finally gave up on throwing frost at us every night, somewhere around the 1st of June!

The swallows make their presence known as they swoop around the yard doing aerial acrobatics munching on the mosquitos and any other flying insect they might encounter. I sometimes wish I had twice as many swallows and could entice them to stay all summer, but once they have weaned their little ones, they all disappear till the next spring...

Downey woodpecker and sparrow

Then you will notice the little downey woodpecker sitting on the 'dead' tree snag hammering away for its breakfast. The little Downeys are the smallest woodpeckers and they stay here all winter. They love the suet blocks that we hang out in winter and also the oiled sunflower seeds we put in the feeders.  They get somewhat possessive of the feeders and won't let any other birds come to feed while they are there if they can help it.

American goldfinch

Then a little flash of yellow catches your eye! The little American goldfinches flit around the yard from tree to tree, rarely staying in one place for very long so they are tricky to try and photograph.  These hyperactive little birds are mainly seed eaters and love to eat the little black nyger seeds in the bird feeder. Apparently goldfinches also like to eat dandelion seeds, so that is why they have their young later in the season than many other birds, to feed their young the plant seeds and most plants produce an abundance in the late summer.
The goldfinches have definitely come to the right place if they like dandelions! LOL!

There were  2 pairs of waxwings flying about by the pond following each other around. I couldn't tell if they were cedar waxwings or bohemians. They are very close in appearance. The cedars are a little lighter colored, and so I think these were bohemians, but according to my bird book, bohemians usually come in the winter and cedars in the summer....

One bohemian waxwing

And do they ever! They show up in huge flocks of 60, 70, 80 birds and more on a cold winter's day! You suddenly notice movement outside the window and there will be dozens and dozens of them sitting in the trees eating the chokecherries, the mountain ash berries, any saskatoons or other dried berries left over from the fall. They make a high pitched 'whirring' sound and as you watch them they will suddenly all move to a new location or disappear altogether sometimes showing up again days later to finish off what they missed the last time.

Winter flock of waxwings

The sparrows are greatly unappreciated birds, but they are a species that stay here all year round.  I had no idea that there were so many different kinds of sparrows, over 40 different ones I believe. The ones I saw on Sunday were a dark grey/ brown with black on their wings and a black stripe on their heads. 

Many people don't like sparrows because they say they can be quite aggressive towards the song birds and will drive them out of their nests in order to steal the location. Many people won't let sparrows nest in their birdhouses, but I think that all things in nature have their purpose and I also believe that Man needs to be careful not to upset the delicate balance by interfering too much with the whole scheme of things. 

We have 20 birdhouses here on our acreage and I have not seen the sparrows taking over more than their share of the houses. On the contrary, the swallows seem to be more aggressive.  One day while looking out the kitchen window at breakfast, we saw a fight going on between a swallow and a sparrow. The swallow had chosen that particular birdhouse 2 days before and a sparrow came that morning to check  it out. The swallow flew back to it's chosen home in a fury and a midair wrestling match ensued! With a flurry of wings they both wrestled to the ground and the sparrow quickly flew away. Satisfied, the tree swallow flew off to feed some more, but minutes later this whole scenario repeated itself with another midair struggle between the same pair until the swallow finally seemed to triumph and the little sparrow quickly flew off and did not return again.

The tiny hummingbirds are back and they have already used up all the sugar water in the hummingbird feeder. I'll have to replenish it tomorrow. It's easy enough to do. Just boil 4 cups of water and then mix in 1 cup of sugar. I add a drop of red food coloring just so that I can see the volume of water left in the feeder. Hummingbirds love the color of red apparently, but they are attracted to the feeder by the smell of the sugar more than the red color. 

Do you have any idea how hard it is to photograph a hummingbird? They move so fast and are  quite elusive. Here is a photo of a ruby throated humming bird I managed to get last summer...

 I had a magical hummingbird encounter last summer while working in my flower bed. The maltese cross were blooming their red clusters of flowers and the hummingbirds were there every day. This day I heard the 'thrum' sound of the wings and I knew one was nearby. I stood up from the flower bed slowly and the tiny bird came and hovered about 2 feet in front of me. I stood stock still and enjoyed the moment as we stared at each other. It was over too soon as  the hummingbird flew off, continuing its busy day!  A hummingbird is the only bird that can 'hover' and the only one that can fly backwards. This tiny bird can fly up to 85 km per hour!  (More late on attracting hummingbirds.)

The little house wrens are making their presence known by the cheery tune that they sing, starting just before dawn at around 4am and continuing all day until dark. I 'm quite fond of them because they eat a lot of the pesky insects that try and feed on my flowers. They eat the caterpillars right off the monkshood and delphiniums so these little helpers are always more than welcome in my garden!

  

Let's not forget my favourite little bird, the perennial little chickadee! I love these polite little clowns! 

Today this particular one is in my flower bed doing acrobatics, hanging upside down on the tomato cage which surrounds the dahlia.  :)

Chickadees reside here all winter and feed at our feeder every day. They are not fussy about what you feed them, unlike the magpies and crows who will come to the feeder and throw massive amounts of seeds out in search of the perfect one!   

The little chickadees sit on the tree branches near the feeder and politely take turns flying to the feeder to pick up a seed, then fly back to the tree to eat it, while the next chickadee takes its turn to fly to the feeder and back to the tree.  Some birds will sit at the feeder hogging it and not only eat nonstop, but not let anyone else eat while they are there.  

I have never seen chickadees fight either. They seem to get along well with each other and with other species of birds as well. The chickadees often eat the seeds on the ground that the other birds have thrown there so I'm glad it doesn't go to waste.   I'm ashamed to say that I have no photos of these little fellows. Guess I'd better rectify that!

The Dear Deer and my Flower Beds

Wow! Just noticed that I have had 199 'hits' on my blog! But rarely a comment... hmmm ... does that mean everyone agrees with everything I say!??  Lol!
More likely, they wander through inadvertently and so really don't stop to read it....   But no worries, I am writing this thing for myself anyway. Kind of like a diary, I guess; one where you don't mind if other people read it! No lock and key like on the one I had as a teenager. (And really, what huge earth shattering secrets did that one contain anyway!) This diary (blog) is sort of a journal for me to keep track of my gardening experiences through a whole season of gardening.
On the other hand, maybe this blog is really not a good idea. What if I realize when it's done in the fall what a HUGE amount of work gardening actually is, and what if I decide to give up gardening?!!

Nah, can't see it!

Winter deer

The deer have been staying away from my flower beds which is a first, but I think it might have something to do with the new things in the yard. The wire fence around the veg. garden and also all the sheets and towels draped over various vulnerable plants  to protect them against the frost  almost every night for 9 days straight, which hasn't happened in past springs since we've been here. Deer are very wary of new things in their environment, but they get used to new things quite quickly, so I knew I would be pushing my luck if I didn't do something soon to protect the tender green shoots of the lilies  which had sprouted and especially the bedding plants which I was putting out.

Last evening I mixed a cup of the dry Plantskydd powder I had left over from last year with a litre of water and funneled it into a spray bottle. Then I went outside to spray some of my "Deerlicious" plants.

(Did I mention what a messy job it is trying to mix this stuff?  It gets all kind of lumpy and the dry reddish powder floats on the top of the water even as you try to mix it well. I diluted it a bit after that because it seemed to be far too thick and kept getting stuck in the funnel. After I have used up all the Plantskydd powder in the box, I think I will buy the ready mixed spray bottle of Plantskydd instead. A little more expensive, but far less hassle.)

There are pros and cons to using this product:
Pros:  It works! The deer stay away from anything that has been sprayed with Plantskydd. It also doesn't wash off with rain or when you water the plants. It doesn't harm the plants. And it lasts over 3 months! Last summer was the first summer that the deer did not eat my lilies and I actually got to see them bloom and enjoy them!

Cons:  Don't spray it if it is windy at all. It will blow everywhere and on everything. (But it doesn't hurt the plants). When you first apply it, it leaves a reddish brown residue on all the leaves and flower petals. Rather unsightly to say the least.  Also my dog is attracted to the smell of it and was following me around smelling all the plants.  Humans can't smell it unless it gets old, then, believe me, it is putrid! (But you can keep it in the fridge for up to 4 days to use later.) Another 'con' is that you need to reapply it to all the new growth of the plants.

Last year's Gazanias

Got quite a lot of plants in the ground today, 8 blue convolvulous vines, 5 calendulas, 8 gazanias (which I love) some tall Ribbon Snapdragons, and some dark blue pansies.  I finished off the vegetable garden planting 3 zucchini squashes and the spinach seeds now that I finally got some.  And of course I watered all of them.

The mosquitos are what finally drove me indoors! They are tiny this spring, but they have a huge bite! The bites itch for 4 or 5 days running and applying SSSTing Stop only gives temporary relief.
I find myself scratching in my sleep!  I hate the idea of spraying Deet on myself so I use a citronella spray which has a more pleasing fragrance. Only problem is that it only lasts about an hour and then you have to remember to reapply it, (emphasis on "remember"). But my plants are safe from the deer.... for now! :)

Phoenix and Spirit my garden helpers