Tree Swallow Nest Building

Tree Swallows choosing their bird house

The tree Swallows are busy pairing up, mating and building nests.
The female that is nesting in our Nest Cam birdhouse has been diligently adding dried grass piece by piece, trip after trip, only stopping occasionally to fly around and catch an insect meal. Look out mosquitoes!


One coveted item that the swallows love in their nests are white feathers. Yesterday I tried to pull a few white feathers from my pillow without a lot of success. Then I decided to take more drastic measures. I took out our huge heavy feather duvet and slip a small opening in the end. I took out a few handfuls of feathers and put them into a bag.


Outside it was quite breezy and I let a few feathers fly in the wind, rescuing any that got tangled in the lilac shrubs or landed too close to the house. ( Don't want the cats to interfere with the nesting business.)




One of the first feathers that I let fly was intercepted mid air by one of the swallows and quickly taken back to the birdhouse. (The Nest Cam birdhouse) Both males and females will catch feathers although only the female seems to build the actual nest. The male will proudly bring his prize to his new bride to add where she wishes. The male occasionally visits the bird house and surveys the work in progress.

In no time at all there were 6 or 8 swallows swooping around and vying for the feathers. Somehow all the swallows in close vicinity got the message. The bravest ones landed on the ground to find feathers. A few feathers I had to re-launch into the air, but by evening there were no feathers left anywhere on the lawn and I had let them go in 4 different places. It was quite comical to see the swallows chasing the feathers that the wind was carrying aloft. Some had to try several times before they caught them mid air. I guess blowing feathers act differently that flying insects. :)

cushy nest

So now we have at least half a dozen plush, feathery nests in our birdhouses. Talk about luxury accommodations!

'Nest Cam Mama' is doing a fine job today of adding grasses to her nest and it looks almost done. :)

Mama Tree Swallow surveying her handiwork.

Pear and Plum Blossoms Plus Peonies! May 20

Pear Blossoms

Pear Tree

The pear blossoms have been blooming for over a week now. They are always the first to bloom. Another sure sign of spring!
This year the plum blossoms popped open not long after. It smells so heavenly right now, walking up and down the deck stairs past them. The crab apple blossoms are showing a lot of pink and they are not far behind in showing off their beautiful display. By this weekend, I think they will be in full bloom.  One really has to make a point of going out an admiring them. They last such a short time.

The wild Saskatoon bushes in and around our property are all showing off their while blossoms now was well. Last year there were hardly any berries, so I am hoping for a better crop this year.

Last year's light pink peony (Triangle bed)

Peony success! For those gardeners who find growing peonies a snap, this may not sound like much,   but for me who has never had much success getting any peony to bloom which I have planted myself, this is a real milestone! The beautiful pink Sara Bernhardt peony which I transplanted last fall from under the spruce tree to the side of the house bed, has a lot of healthy growth and even buds! I thought that they usually won't bloom for a few years after transplanting but it seems to like its new location.  I don't know for sure how old these roots were, but they were already well established when we moved here 9 years ago.

Medium pink Sarah Bernhardt peony is doing really well from having just been transplanted!

Gorgeous Sarah Bernhardt blossoms from a previous year

 And the red Dominion peony which has never bloomed for me in four years has buds now, too!   I moved my red Dominion peony last fall as well. The wild bed that it was in was getting less and less sun as the nearby Saskatoon shrubs were getting taller and taller and it was not thriving there.  As long as I keep the peonies well watered, the buds should develop into flowers. Yay!  I fertilized them with blood and bone meal last fall but maybe it wouldn't hurt to give them another round this spring, or would that be over-kill, I'm wondering...

One Peony down side though, is that my white peony (Alba) seems to have bit the dust. I noticed last year that its location at the far end of my long perennial bed was very wet and after 2 or 3 white blossoms opened, the rest rotted and so did most of the stems. I wonder what I could plant there that would like a moist semi shady location???

I moved my Miss Kim miniature lilac bush from the side to the centre of my triangle bed. I dug out and composted my spirea.  It was mostly dead and really has not been growing well for several years inspite of trimming it, fertilizing it, etc.  I planted a new peony in the corner where the lilac had been (after digging up a massive amount of overgrown bearded irises.) The new peony is called Julia Rose. It faces east and will get mostly morning sun there, with a little noon day sun.  It only needs 3 to 6 hours of sun apparently so we'll see how it does. It looks like it have pink and pale yellow blossoms.

Julia Rose Peony new addition to our family

I looked it up online and I really lucked out with this choice. This is what one site had to say about it:
Paeonia x 'Julia Rose'. Full Sun to Partial Shade. Deer tend to avoid.

Impressive 8" flowers open strawberry red and lighten to apricot, then pale yellow with plum edges – gorgeous! An especially vigorous variety, with a spicy scent.  

This spectacular group of peony was originally created by the late Toichi Itoh by crossing herbaceous and tree peonies. The result is a dense, rounded plant only 2-3' tall and wide, with a great abundance of large 6-8" blooms in an expanded palette of colors. They are borne on strong, non-flopping stems atop handsome foliage that stays attractive all season. Even better, they bloom weeks longer than either parent, producing more than 50 blooms over an extended 6-week period from late spring into early summer. And they take more heat and cold.  

- See more at: http://www.springhillnursery.com/product/julia-rose-itoh-peony#sthash.IPlvukAV.dpuf
Sounds perfect to me!

New clematis called Integrifolia Durandii.

I bought a new clematis this year to plant in the side of the hues bed next to the Nellie Moser (which I planted last summer.) This new clematis is called Integrifolia Durandii. The flowers are a dark purple (it was blooming when I bought it.)  The tag says full sun to part shade so that east sun location should be perfect. It also only grows about 6 feet tall so it shouldn't outgrow the trellis. I think the tag said it was good to zone 2 so it should be able to survive the prairie winter here.   I thought that would be a nice contrast to the Pink and white Nellie Moser blossoms.

Penstemon Schmidel, Red Riding hood series

Two other new additions are a lavender Augustifolia which needs full sun, 6 + hours per day, and  Penstemon Schmidel, Red Riding Hood series.  I have another penstemon called rubris in my Triangle bed and it has grown and bloomed faithfully for 3 years now. Not sure yet where this new penstimon will end up. I looked it up online and judging by the colour, it might be a variety called Pink Chablis.

I have never had any luck getting lavender to live through the winter here, but I'm willing to treat it as an annual if need be. I love the blue spikes.

Another "new kid on the block" is a blue flox perennial that I acquired at the plant swap in town on Mother's Day weekend. Looking forward to seeing that bloom as well.

Tulips!  I am so pleased with my tulips this year. They are sunny and beautiful and lasting quite long. A few of my old red ones started blooming at about the same time as well, but they are all done already.
I noticed a couple of pink ones from a few years ago that just opened and are quite pleasing. The daffodils did finally bloom and were a welcome sight. I just wish they would last longer.


My pretty little creeping flox at the top of my rock garden are still blooming so prettily. It is a pleasure to see.

tiny creeping flox

And today I noticed that my wee little Forget Me Nots are starting to bloom in my Stack Stone bed. Can't forget them! :)

I'm thrilled to see my tiger lilies peaking out as well as some of my other lilies. I think it's time to spray another round of bobbed as I saw a little brown bunny running past me this morning when I was checking my flower beds. Our little grey car Nahla tried to catch it, but it easily out ran her and raced to safety in the environmental reserve next to our property. Watch out for the horned owls, little guy!

Spring is Springing and Springing!

Hooray! Spring is springing in earnest now!
The tree swallows came back yesterday and a pair of them have already claimed the new bird house that my sweet husband built out of cedar to replace some of the old worn out bird houses.

My rose bushes had started spouting shoots right through the burlap covers so I had to quickly take the burlap coverings off and remove all the peat moss and mulch. I don't remember them sprouting this early before. In fact last year most of my old branches were dead and the roses had to grow again from the roots except for the Morden Ruby. 

To Do- John Davis Rose bush in my Round Bed and Winnipeg Parks in Long Bed. I hope Parks survived as "someone" dug around it and removed a lot of the mulch and peat moss. The burlap wrapping was loose and then disappeared one very windy day. I will probably find it in the environmental ravine. Should go look. Not sure who the culprit was! The deer don't usually disturb my rose bushes.  Hmmm, maybe the dog decided to bury her ham bone there?  Interesting mystery.

I have dug out meters and meters of grass roots in the last few days and only have 2 1/2 beds done so far. There are still 3 large beds left to do and the bottom of my rock garden. By then the first beds will be sprouting all the quack grass that I had missed, so it is just a big endless cycle. Good thing I enjoy gardening! 

Greenhouse
I transplanted some Early Girl tomatoes into bigger pots 2 days ago and yesterday I did the same for some of my Lemon Boys, which are sweet yellow tomatoes.

Today I transplanted 3 Butternut squashes, 2 spaghetti squashes and some more tomatoes: 3 Tumblers and 3 Patio tomatoes. I'm running out of medium sized pots! Might have to go to Wal Mart and get a few cheap plastic ones or maybe just use some of my milk jugs to plant things to give away. I often give squashes and tomatoes away to friends and neighbours, but I seldom get the old pots back.

Peonies
The 2 peonies that I transplanted last fall are up and growing but I wonder if they will bloom this year. The last time I transplanted one, it actually did bloom a little the first year and then bloomed really nicely the 2nd year, so I consider myself quite lucky there. WE'll just have to wait and see! :)

Tulips!
My first tulip opened today! Yay!  It's one of my old red ones, but I can see the new yellow and pink ones getting ready to open, too!  My daffodils are slow this year, but I'm so thrilled to see things blooming, regardless! :) 
I guess I'd better dust off my bottle of Bobbex before the deer find the tulips. 

Trees

The leaves have popped out on the poplar trees and the crab-apple trees already which is early this year (April 29/15). The Mountain Ash shows no leaves yet, but thats not unusual to have it stout leaves a little later.

It is so gratifying to see the fresh green leaves again and know that spring really is here now, in spite of the ugly winter weather we had last weekend.

Old Man Winter's last present- April 24/25

This is more what I like to see!

I planted these bulbs last September/ early October. The package shows them to be more pink than this with a hint of yellow, but maybe it has something to do with the high alkalinity of our soil that they turned out looking so yellow.

Happy Gardening!