Snow - What a Surprise!

First Snow 11/11

Front Yard

We woke up to snow yesterday morning; not really surprising, I guess, for this time of year, but still unwelcome nevertheless.  The weather had been so mild that, as is often the case, we were lulled into a false sense that it would not end... for the time being, at least.  I have to admit it is quite beautiful, though. This morning there is hoar frost on all the trees and bird feeders and deck railing which are sparkling in the morning sunshine and are quite dazzling!

Frost on bird feeder sparkling in the sunshine

Two days ago my feet were happily crunching the thick layer of fallen leaves on the lake trails. The duck pond (slough) was frozen over (it being very shallow) and the dog and 2 cats that had accompanied me on my walk  wandered out on it. Strangely enough, there was also a cloud of about 4 dozen mosquitoes hovering at the end of the pond which is surrounded by tall weeds. Mosquitoes in November??? That lead me to the mistaken conclusion that maybe our warm weather was going to continue for a time....

Yesterday late afternoon, our dog Spirit and one cat,(Lexy) went for a walk with me to the lake. As we were getting close, I could hear the loud sounds of many geese taking off. Through the trees, I saw wave after wave of geese leaving the lake in a southerly direction. Once we got through the trees, I was amazed by the sight on the lake. Hundreds upon hundreds of ducks and geese were floating on the surface. I had never seen so many all in the same place before. I know that Buffalo Lake is on the water fowl migratory route and it was breath taking to see.

Some of the flocks were a little spooked by our sudden presence and the took off in groups to land further away from shore. There were flocks flying low over the water in all directions. I reminded me of an airport where you see planes landing and taking off only a hundred times more activity. Quite an amazing sight to behold! And me without my camera!
The leaves on the trail home were covered with a thin layer of snow. Here and there you could see evidence of rabbit activity, their cute little footprints in the snow. I had just being saying to my husband 2 days before that I hadn't seen very many rabbits on my walks this summer. (They probably saw the dog with me first!) But the tracks proved that they are still here.

Time to get the winter tires put on the car... no more procrastinating!  :)

No more morning coffee on the balcony for a few months...

Autumn Birds

We shut the greenhouse down on Oct. 31 this year (2011). The tomato plants were not growing anymore, and we had picked most of the tomatoes anyway. The hours of sunlight is minimal right now and the greenhouse requires so much heat all night long. The temperatures have been about -6C or so, really not that bad, but during the day the temps now are only between +5 and +9 C. (Although on Sunday it was about +16C! in Red Deer during the afternoon- lovely!)

We composted the plants and harvested the rest of the tomatoes.  We have sooooo many tomatoes and have been giving them away to everybody! We had already made a batch of 'chow chow' ( pickled green tomatoes) and a batch of tomato salsa, which turned out superbly, if I do say so myself. :)  Two days ago Chris made a second batch of tomato salsa, plus we have been eating tomatoes every day, either sandwiches or in a tomato salad, which is the easiest thing to prepare... just slice tomatoes and add a bit of olive oil, vinegar and salt- you're done! Or sometimes we add a store bought vinegarette dressing.  I guess next year I won't start so many seedlings. Had about 26 plants, LOL! But I did give a few away to people.

Maybe next year I will have a competition, greenhouse tomatoes VS deck pots. :)

Now to the birds....

The wax wings have been visiting us. I think they might be bohemians which are a bit bigger then Cedars and a bit darker colored. I stepped out on the deck a few days agoand could hear there whirring sound. They are pretty 'flighty' though and hard to photograph because they disappear so suddenly ( just as you are getting your camera ready... )

Bohemian Wax Wings

The berries on the Mountain ash and the chokecherry trees attract a lot of birds. We actually saw 2 robins on the weekend. I wonder if they are going to stay all winter like one poor guy did 2 years in a row, LOL! Or maybe they are just migrating through.

The geese have been passing over in huge flocks. Again, you have to be ready with your camera if you want a photo. By the time you hear them overhead and run inside to grab the camera, they are quite a distance away. I am amazed by how fast the can fly. I love to watch the big "V" of geese in flight and see them change positions, how the front bird suddenly drops back from the 'pole position' and someone else automatically  flies into that first position.  Apparently that's the most difficult position to fly because they are getting all the wind on them. The flight positions further back are easier.  I always wish them a 'bon voyage' (safe journey) as they fly by and an 'auf wiedersehen' (see you again). I miss them when November sets in and the lake is empty of birds.  The arctic birds are passing through, too. Saw some trumpeter swans on the lake last week, but only from a distance.

Pine Grosbeak

Yesterday I saw an unusual bird in the ornamental cherry tree next to the deck. I looked in my Alberta bird book and it looked similar to a Pine Grosbeak but not quite. I sent photos to my friend Charlie Bird  who knows more about nature that anyone else I know. He asked a few of his knowledgeable friends and they think it was an unusually colored female or possibly young juvenile male Pine Grosbeak.

My wonderful Husband built us a new bird feeder. Our old one in the front yard was pretty beat up. It was here long before we were! Chris took the old one apart and used the pieces as a template to build a new one out of 3/4 inch plywood. The base is 9 3'4 " X 19 1/2" . The end pieces are 9 3/4 " wide by 10 1/4 " high at the point. The plexiglass sides are 6 1/2 " by 20".  The hole in the top (roof) is 4 inches wide and the door flap covering the hole is  7"X 7".  Chris stained in with one coat of med brown stain and it looks great!  :D

New bird feeder all set to go!

 Back to gardening :  I still have some deck pots next to the front door which are struggling along. Sigh! I know, I know, it's time to face reality.... It's November! 

Bird patrol

Cat Chasing Dog

You always hear about dogs chasing cats.  Seldom do you hear about a chase where it's the other way around!  I witnessed a hilarious incident here on Sunday. I wish I would have had a video camera!

Milo, our ferocious protector

 I was going for a walk down the trail towards the beach with our dog, Spirit and 3 kitties following behind, (Harley, Lexy and Milo), which they often do.

 Harley and Lexy are both females about 5 years old and Milo is a one year old neutered male. (Got him last summer from friends who own a farm near here so he's a real outdoor boy.) Milo is friendly and loves to cuddle. He has loads of energy, and runs along keeping up with Spirit on our walks.  If fact he usually runs ahead and has to be first!

The 2 girls were lagging behind on the trail so I turned around to check if they were still coming. I saw Lexy suddenly run 20 feet up a tree on one side of the path and Harley went bolting up a tree on the other side. A large young blood hound called Hank came jogging around the corner at that moment, explaining the cats' behaviour.  Hank is young, dumb and relatively harmless, and has come to our house a number of times in the past to play with Spirit and bay at our cats.

Lexy up a tree

 















Milo was standing next to me on the path at that point.

Harley, our expert tree climber

 He suddenly puffed himself up and rushed down the path towards Hank, hissing and spitting. Hank took one look and turned and ran! Milo chased him down the path all the way back to our neighbor's place. Even Spirit quickly got out of Milo's way. I quickly walked to the top of the hill near our house and broke out laughing as I watched the chase.





Every time that Hank stopped and turned around, Milo ran after him again and they ran all around our acreage, around the neighbor's yard and through the environmental reserve, out of sight behind the trees. It was so hilarious to see this little ferocious cat chasing this huge dog 10 times his size!!!  

View from the top of the hill towards the house

Hank is nothing if not persistant and he finally caught up with Spirit and me at the top of the hill, but so did Milo. Hank was determined to walk with us, but Milo kept him at bay, and wouldn't let him come too close, until Hank finally gave up and left.

Spirit, our shepherd/husky cross

Milo at rest

Lexy

Harley

End of the Season

After several hard overnight frosts, I guess it's time to admit that the gardening growing season is over for 2011. I have continued to cover 4 of my deck pots at night, bringing them up close to the house in a little group.  My tuberous begonia was still blooming so beautifully and so were the gorgeous gazanias, that I didn't have the heart to let them go yet.  But since I will be away from home for 4 days this week, I doubt that my diligent husband will remember to cover them, so it's time to say goodbye.

I have been doing the last bit of fall gardening clean up in preparation for the deep freeze of winter.  I finished covering my rose bushes with garden clippings and peat moss to make a nice cosy covering. I think I will try and put a sack over my "Love" rose as well since it is only a zone 4 and will need extra protection from the uncaring elements. (I also realized that one should roll down their sleeves when working around rose bushes, and I have the scratches and gouges to prove it, LOL!)

Last flower bouquet/ tomato salsa/ a few plums

I also made a stealthy attack on my dandelion infested lawns in the hopes that this attack would work to get rid of many of them for next year. I had read online that in the fall the dandelions pull down nutrients into their deep ugly roots to give them the strength to over-winter. So, ideally, if you spray them with vinegar/ water at this time, they will pull it down into their root system and it will ultimately kill them. Hopefully this theory is true or I will just end up with the ugliest dead patchy lawn  imaginable! (Um, no, I didn't tell my husband my plan, I just went ahead and did it. Come spring, we'll just blame all the brown patches on winter kill....)

One last flower bed still needs to be clipped down and cleaned up and that's my new triangular shaped stack stone bed. The deer have been there helping themselves to the sunflower heads and they also tried to eat a bearded iris (which the deer proofing experts claim that deer don't like...) which resulted in the iris being unearthed. I had moved that one recently so the roots weren't established. I had to replant it so I hope that it makes it through the winter since it won't have time to set its roots.

Weird tomato

My greenhouse is still running but needs to have the heater on all night. The tomatoes in there are slowly coming to the end of their life and are starting to dry up even though we have been watering them well. I guess they know it's time to go back to nature, become ONE with the compost pile... lol!
 Next week we'll pick the last tomatoes which are still ripening on the vines and close the greenhouse down.  I have a lily, a hyacinth and an ameryllis growing in pots in the greenhouse, so they will have to come in the house and find a spot among the many geraniums that I 'rescued' from the garden.

There are still leaves on the trees which is so unusual for mid October. I like it, though! Maybe it's because we had so much rain this year... The ducks and geese are still here on the ponds in the area, but likely not for very much longer. I will miss them when they go. Then you know for certain that winter is just around the corner.

Fall Clean up

This is such a sad time of the year for a gardener. It's clean up time. Most of my flowers are done. The annuals in most of the deck pots are touched by frost or worse and I have stopped watering them. I still have 4 pots that I can't part with just yet, though. My red tuberous begonias are still looking so wonderful and I have brought the pot up close to the house. My 3 pots of gazanias have also avoided the frost and are still blooming.  They are in the same location as the begonia pot and I have been throwing a sheet over all of them to cover them at every night. Oh, and one pot of pink geraniums with a tall stately spike in the centre....  It's hard to go down to nothing!  :)

As I may have mentioned, I dug up a half dozen geraniums to put in pots and bring into the house for the winter. They often bloom in the dreary winter months and provide a welcome burst of color.  My dahlias have made it back into the paper bags of peat moss and stashed in the Rubbermaid container in the laundry room.   Still have some glad bulbs to dig up and my canna lily as well.  My canna did not bloom this year. I'm hoping that next year I can give it more of a head start in my greenhouse and maybe I will plant it in a pot on the deck instead of at the side of the house.

I'm still clipping perennials as well, and making pretty good head way there, but I am so reluctant to yank up or cut off anything that's still growing. Just seems to go against the grain somehow. I have used some of the plant clippings to mulch 3 of my rose bushes and I hauled a pail of peat over to my stack stone bed to mound around them, too. Amazingly my Love rose bush had another gorgeous blossom on it which I cut off to bring into the house, along with a blooming Hansa rose stem from the shrub at the side of the house.  Hate to let Jack Frost have his way with them...  3 more rose bushes still need winterizing. I have watered all six of them as well as my clematises. We have had next to no precipitation since early August.  Got a bit of rain this evening, but I'm not sure how much. Will have to check the levels in my rain barrels tomorrow.

 A few days ago I dug out some of the grass infested maltese cross plants in my long bed  and replaced them with 2 columbines which I had received from Janet R, a friend of mine, quite some time ago. They bloom a beautiful burgundy color and I am looking forward to seeing them flourish next spring. There are still a number of other Maltese crosses and a whole wack of daisies that will have to be removed next spring from the Long bed and the Angel bed as well. And I don't even want to think about the grass.... :(

My new stack stone bed has had nothing trimmed off yet either. If I don't get around to doing that I won't worry about it. There's always next spring. :)

Last Flowers

The last flowers of the season before Jack Frost's sneaky visit:

Milbert's Tortoiseshell Butterfly visiting the echinacea (purple cone flowers)

Purple cone flowers, sweet peas and blue sage's second blooms

My favourite gazanias, "Yellow Flame Big Kiss"

Huge Firebird cactus dahlias- I love this beauty!

Lavatara

We left for Thompson on Sept 23 and the 14 day forecast indicated that we would not get any frost until Oct 2.  Why, in heaven's name, did I believe that!?  We arrived home on Oct 1 to see that Jack Frost had indeed visited us at some point during our absence.  Luckily we had put all the potted tomato plants in the greenhouse before we left.  I had also dug up one of my regal geraniums and a lace leaf geranium and transplanted them into pots in the greenhouse. My hyacinth had started to come back to life in its pot and my amerylis was growing leaves. I moved them off the deck into the greenhouse as well .

Some of the tomato plants in the garden were fine and parts of others were wilted from the erratic, patchy frost that had come.  Most of the flowers in my deck pots were wilted, as well as the geraniums in the flower boxes on the stairs. The roots are still okay, though, so I am going to dig out a choice few to pot up and bring into the house to over-winter in my sunny bay window.  

It's a rather sad time of year when everything  that was so beautiful is dying. and there is so much work ahead to winterize my rose bushes, pull out spent annuals and clip off finished perennials. They say that you should leave some of your perennials alone and clip them in the spring instead. They look rather beautiful in the winter covered with snow. And it gives small wild creatures a place to shelter from the harsh weather... if you care about that kind of thing.... which I do. :)

Sept 21- Almost Autumn

The leaves are slowly turning color on the trees. I went for a walk along the trail to the beach today with Spirit , our dog and Lexy one of our cats.  I love the sound of the crunch of dry leaves under my runners and the twitter of the little chickadees in the tree branches. It was so quiet and peaceful! Not a soul was on the beach or on the water; no motors of boats and seadoos breaking the silence. Not one other human being on the shore as far as my eyes could see.

There were a few ducks bobbing around on the gentle waves, and our dog created a few ripples herself as she sat in the shallow water close to the shore. I sat at the picnic table there leaning my elbows on the top as I enjoyed the splendid view. Lexy sat under the picnic table in the shade patiently waiting for me to start back up the trail for home.

Buffalo Lake from Picnic Hill

It's September 21st and the temperature today reached 24 C! The rest of the week is supposed to be even hotter with +27 on Sunday! Not sure what's going on here with the weather. We have not had more than the tiniest skiff of a rain shower in the last 5 weeks!  The leaves are still mostly green and have only started turning color in a few spots. Maybe this unseasonable warm weather is confusing them into thinking it's not fall yet. (Technically the first day of fall isn't until Friday.)

 The lawn is turning brown in many places except for the part directly above the septic field. The flower beds are in constant need of watering. My Gardenia sprinkler is acting up and it doesn't want to ossilate anymore. It just sits there shooting sprays of water high in the air on the same spot.  I bought a new sprinkler in town this afternoon, a Yardworks this time and it ossilates just fine, but it hardly has any pressure at all and even on the 'large' setting it hardly wets very much.

Diligent husband checked all the hoses and settings and so on when he came home, but nothing seems to help. This Yardworks sprinkler is going back to the store. I knew I should have bought the one that is $10 more!

We are going away for a week to visit family in another province and I hate to leave my flower beds at Mother Nature's mercy. We have someone coming to feed the pets and water the tomato plants in the greenhouse, but when we planned this trip we weren't counting on anyone having to water the flower beds and veggie garden this late in September...  We usually have had a few frosts by now and most of the flowers would have been zapped. It's great to still have them looking so fabulous!

A male gold finch eating the seeds from the spent sunflowers

We have harvested most of the above ground veggies out of the garden, although there are still 6 tomato plants there ( as well as beets, carrots, potatoes and swiss chard.)  We harvested 7 little butternut squashes and 2 spaghetti squashes. Not a bad haul for a few seeds that I planted last March! :)

Happy fall clean up! :)

Fabulous New Greenhouse

Cedar frame and sides with polycarbonate panels

My new greenhouse is finished for the most part, thanks to my wonderful, diligent, talented husband, Chris!  There are no shelves or anything inside of it yet, and we still need to fashion a window to provide some relief from the heat. We hauled all 14 pots of tomatoes, big and small off the deck and they are happily sunning themselves in the greenhouse as we speak!

Smart husband put a big rain barrel under the garage down spout to collect the rain water there. It is quite full at this time and has provided watering cans full of warm rain water to nourish the hot tomatoes for 2 days now. I fill one of my big watering cans and it is enough for all the tomato pots in the greenhouse, so there’s not too much carrying of water involved, which is good. :)

The windows are made of polycarbonate, a 1/4 inch thick sturdy type of plastic made from recycled material with a 10 year guarantee which we got from a garden centre in Calgary, the Garden Retreat.  The lower part of the greenhouse frame is made of cedar logs which our generous neighbors, John and Christina  gave us. They were orginally half logs with dove tail ends salvaged from a cabin by  John and his father. Chris cut them straight into 4 by 4s with his saw and they add a fabulous smell to the inside of the greenhouse. The dimensions of my greenhouse are 8 by 10 feet, a perfect size.

My sweet husband is going to install an automatic system that works on the temperature to turn on the fan and open a window if it gets too hot, or turn on the heater if it gets too cold in the greenhouse. That’ll be great!  

I’m really looking forward to my very first greenhouse experience!  Next spring I will be able to start my tomato, squash and flower seedlings in there instead of cluttering up every surface in my living room, LOL!  It’ll be the perfect place to store bedding plants waiting to be planted out as well. 

We had a week of unseasonably hot weather for September and it got to be over 40C in the greenhouse. Had to water the poor overheated tomato plants twice a day. There are 15 pots of tomatoes in there which had been sunning themselves on our deck up until now. There are two types of beefsteak tomatoes, some Lemon Boy sweet yellow tomatoes and some Black Krim heirloom tomatoes. Two of these plants were store bought but the rest I started from seeds of tomatoes that we had eaten over the winter. For that reason I'm really pleased with how well they have grown. We have 6 more tomato plants growing in the garden. One is an Early Girl and it did get the earliest tomatoes which ripened first. Will definitely grow more Early Girls next year!

What am I going to do with all these tomatoes you might ask?  Well, we have had fried green tomatoes a couple times already and some of them have been ripening. They are so sweet straight off the vine! I will likely make some salsa and also give a lot of them away. Canning doesn't appeal to me, though. Seems too much like work! :)

Tomatoes, anyone?

September 1st, 2011 - Winding Down

Have been without internet service for over 10 days so this post is late in coming:

It’s September already! Where did the summer go?  Judging by the weather, which is fabulous, there’s still lots of summer left to experience. We are having hot sunny days with very little rain. That used to be the ‘normal’ summer weather here for the first number of summers, but in the last two summers we have had a LOT of rain, particularly this summer where we rarely went even 3 days without some kind of precipitation. 

We have however, been lucky out here at the south side of Buffalo Lake in that we have missed out on most of the hail! We did get a small amount twice, but my friend B in Red Deer had hail  8 or 10 times this summer alone!

Red Durango Marigolds

Some of my flower beds are no longer looking great, like my long bed where I clipped down all the maltese cross plants and the delphiniums to try and keep the reseeding to a minimum.  One lone little blanket flower at the far end of that bed is just starting to bloom. It doesn't get as much sun as the one in my round 'Angel bed'.  The sea lavender in my long bed still has a faint blur of tiny flowers on its tall stems to add a bit of color.  The lysemackia ‘creeping jenny’ has creeped its lime green tentacles  along the edges of that flower bed providing some great ground cover.

The tall false sunflower helianthus (or is it heliopsis, I’m never sure which to call it) in the middle of my round ‘Angel bed’ is still displaying a profusion of yellow multi-petaled blossoms.  

Arizona Sun Guillardia (blanket flower)

I cut back the monkshood and maltese crosses in that bed and the lilies are almost finished now. The Star gazer lilies are still looking fabulous!

Star Gazer lilies

The Arizona Sun guillardia (blanket flower) is full of beautiful sunny blooms and the annuals are looking great: gazanias, and lavataras especially. 

Gazanias

My cactus dahlias are impressively beautiful! There are 2 red ones, one in the angel bed, one in a pot on the deck. The most stunning one one though, is the orange/ yellow Firebird Dahlia in my old stack stone bed. 

Firebird Dahlias

In that stack stone bed the lavatara are looking great and the snapdragons started blooming again which adds a nice splash of color. The golden yellow Morden Sunrise rose is blooming in that bed for the third time this summer!  :)  

Speaking of rose bushes, on Aug. 31 we dug 2 small Manitoba Maple saplings out of my stack stone bed and I planted my “Love” hybrid tearose bush there. I hope that it likes its new home. It grew so fabulously well in the tiny pot which it was in all summer, providing me with 4 beautiful red and white roses. It is only a zone 4 rose bush, though, (and we are only Zone 3 here), so I will have to do an especially good job of providing winterizing protection to help it survive the cold winter weather we always get.

cactus dahlias

We planted the maple saplings in the wild brushy part of our acreage, behind the swing set.  (Many of the poplars there are dead or dying and we want to try and encourage more trees to grow to replace them. They provide privacy screening from the road, as well as dust collection from the dry gravel.)

Tall golden colored sunflowers have sprouted up in various beds, and some are gigantic! The biggest ones are in my new stack stone bed. I always try and imagine how those seeds came to be where they are, (since I didn’t plant them myself); It’s always a bit of a mystery. Most of the potted tomato plants on the deck also had sunflowers sprout in them so I know that those seeds must have originated in the Triple Mix soil bag. But who put them there??? I think it was one of the little rodents that live here in the environmental reserve around our yard...   

The rudbeckia are still fabulously gorgeous. The 'Autumn Colors' annuals are huge and the perennial Black eyed Susans are full of flowers this year. 

Rudbeckia "Autumn Colors"

 The echinacea coneflower that I planted 3 years ago are also finally blooming well. It takes about 3 years for them to really establish themselves, I understand. I had a few tries that didn’t make it, notably the ‘white swan’ variety of echinacea, but I have so many white shasta daisies that I don’t know why I tried to plant white coneflowers anyway... 

‘Nuff said!