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!

Geraniums and Flower Bed Clean Up

More  Geraniums

Slipped some more dark red geraniums today and also some of my favourite pink ones. I will be leaving these in the house to get roots, though. The ones that I left in the greenhouse look very winter. I might have to bring them all inside for a couple of weeks.

How to get slips/cuttings from a geranium:

It's a very easy process.
Using a sharp knife, cut some of the stems off your existing geraniums, especially those stems that are tall.  Let the cut geranium slip sit for an hour or two to let the cut part dry over.  Then just plunk them into a pot of dirt and water generously. Keep it well watered  for the next couple of weeks after which it should have a few roots. (It will root from the joints of the stems. ) You should be able to take them out of the pots and put them into your flower beds or deck pots in a few weeks, about the May long weekend or shortly after.

Do harden them off first. (Put them outside for a while every day to get them used to direct sun.)

Flower Bed Clean Up
My usual nemesis, the quack grass is at it again. It has sprouted quietly in my flower beds and is stealthily trying to take control again.

Today I dug a lot of grass shoots and roots out of the top of my rock garden bed. It was great to see that the tulips that I had so diligently planted last fall were sprouted in that bed. Unfortunately I think my Marmot buddy is back or the rabbits are getting brave enough to come up the steps to the top of the rock garden. It looked like "someone" had eaten off the stem and part of the first tulip blossom! I guess it's time to get out the Bobbex again and spray that peppery stuff all over my tulips to deter the "lunch crowd"! :)

After that I dug up another pile of grass sprouts and roots out of the east end of my Stackstone bed. The Lambs Ears look like they are trying to sprout now as well as some of the False Dragon Heads there . No sign of my Ligularias yet. They are slow to come up.

The very first thing to bloom in my garden flower beds is my Pasqueflower. I call it my 'tame crocus' as it has a similar appearance.

Pasqueflower

The tulips in the side of the house bed are about 6 inches tall now and are starting to get buds now. Some are the old red ones and at the far east end of the bed are the newer ones that I just planted last fall, a pink and orange combination. I planted 30 in all, some it this bed, some at the top of the Rock Garden and some in my Stack Stone bed.   I wrote the name down somewhere, but can't remember it off hand.

The peony that I had transplanted there from my small" Spruce Tree bed" has sprouted shoots already! Yay! I loved that peony, such a beautiful medium pink colour. It had pretty mud stopped blooming in its original location though. Too much shade from the trees now.

Peony shoots

I wonder if it will bloom this summer. It often takes a year or two after transplanting to bloom again, but the one in my triangle bed did, so who know!?
Gardeners are the perpetual optimists! We believe every year that we will have the perfect garden. :)

Greenhouse Gardening

Greenhouse Gardening

Left: Spaghetti squashes, Early Girl tomatoes, pink lavatara.  Right side: Mystery Day dahlias

The little seedlings have almost all started to sprout in their pots which I have transferred from the living room window to the greenhouse. We started up the heater and have it on a timer to come on at night. The night time temperatures are still single digits below zero, but during the day the sun warms the greenhouse  up to 30C or higher.

Tomatoe seedlings that have sprouted:
Purple Russians  (the first to sprout- produces oval purpley-red tomatoes)
Early Girls  (usually develop their fruit first)
Lemon Boys  (sweet yellow tomatoes)
Tumblers  (small thumb sized tomatoes)
Patio  (compact growth, good for small spaces)

The New Zealand tomatoes seeds have not come up yet.

Firebird Dahlias

Squashes
all 3 types of squashes have sprouted, spaghetti, Butternut and one lone acorn squash.

No English cucumber seeds have sprouted. Might have to buy a couple of bedding plants like last year.

I planted 4 more pots of flower seeds from flower seed packets that were in the greenhouse;  sweet peas, more cosmos, nasturtiums and some foxgloves.  Not sure if they are still viable seeds since they likely froze there all winter, but I thought it was worth a try.

Red "Thompson" dahlia

I had potted 2 more Dahlia tubers recently, a new two tone purple colour called Mystery Day which I bought at Wal Mart. Thought it was appropriate since I had taught elementary school for the Mystery Lake School District in northern Manitoba for many years. :)   They took about 10 days to sprout above the soil in our warm laundry room and yesterday I transferred them into the greenhouse to continue their growth.

Geraniums
I over wintered about a dozen geraniums from last years garden; some beautiful pink one from my flower boxes on the deck stairs landing, some perfect blue/red geraniums from the tubs at the far end of the driveway, a Samba red and apple blossom white from deck pots from previous years.

I cut slips from the apple blossom white plant, and from the Blood red plant which are all in the greenhouse.  I need to fertilize them to encourage them to root. (A fertilizer with high nitrogen- a large first number.)

Still to do : pink geranium slips.

New bird houses

Diligent husband has started building 7 new birdhouses in the garage. We have about 20 birdhouses on our acreage, but many of them are old and starting to fall apart. I'm sure the Tree Swallows and House Wrens that usually nest here will appreciate them. :)
Happy planting!

Start of a new Gardening Season 2015

Firebird Dahlia*

Started planting some vegetable and flower seeds yesterday.  It doesn't look much like spring outside. Almost all of our snow was melted but Old Man winter reminded us over the weekend that winter isn't over yet!  Dumped 2 more inches of snow on us, then even more on Monday. Looks like the temperatures are warming up now so it should start melting soon.  Was quite slushy today when I took the dog for a walk.

I had harvested a bunch of tomato seeds last fall, putting them on paper towelling, letting them dry for a couple of days, labelling them and then sticking them in zip lock bags. I had done the same type of collection method for my squashes and the English cucumber that we had grown in our greenhouse.

I potted 3 small pots of Early Girl tomatoes (3 seeds in each pot- about 9 plants), 2 pots of yellow Lemon Boys, (3 seeds each- 6 plants if they all grow), 2 pots of Patio Tomatoes, (with nice compact growth) about 6 seeds, 2 pots of Tumblers (6 seeds), one pot of New Zealand tomatoes (3 seeds) and 2 pots of Purple Russians, heirloom tomatoes.  The New Zealand tomatoes grow long thin leggy branches which require a lot of staking and the fruit is slow to develop, but they eventually get quite large and tasty tomatoes. The patio tomatoes are the opposite and are ideal for deck pots.

I also planted 2 pots of Spaghetti squash ( 6 seeds), 1 Butternut squash ( 3 seeds) and about 6 seeds of English cucumber.

Pink Lavatara*

Flowers: so far I have planted 2 small pots of pink lavatara, one medium pot of about 8- 10 cosmos and some snapdragons seeds which I brought in from  the dead stems left in the tub at the bottom of the deck steps.

Snapdragons and regal geraniums*

Regarding Snapdragon seeds, I learned the hard way that they need to have the cold winter weather in order for them to sprout at all. It's a process called scarification; the cold cracks the seed coats so they can germinate. Two years ago I brought snap seeds in the house in the fall, planted them in pots in the greenhouse,  and none of them sprouted!  I found a few seed pods on some of the dead stems in one  flower bed, which had been there all winter, shook some seeds out on the soil and planted some in a pot under 1/4 inch of dirt in the green house. Guess which ones sprouted?!
Yup! You guess it! Only the ones that I had sprinkled on top of the flower bed soil. Turns out that there arts some seeds that need light to germinate and snaps are like that! Babying them are a big mistake.
Calendula seeds are similar.

Red Thompson Dahlia*

My Dahlia tubers had sent out long white shoots, much like a potato would if kept in the dark long enough. I should have checked my dahlia tigers a few weeks ago as I had intended. (I was over wintering them in a rubbermaid bin in the laundry room/ furnace room. It is very warm in there and likely not the best conditions for over wintering a root. Maybe next fall I'll stash them in a container under the stairs which is a bit cooler.)  I cut back the eyes and just left a few thicker shorter ones on the tubers. I potted 2 of the big clumps in large pots, filling them with good potting soil and a bit of the peat moss they were sitting in.  One is my old standby, the red Dahlia which I have had since we lived in Thompson over 8 years ago. I have been growing that particular dahlia for about a dozen years now!

The other pot has a firebird dahlia in it which gets large orange and yellow flowers in August. That dahlia I have had for approximately 4 or 5 years now, digging it up each fall after the frost and over wintering the tubers, replanting them each spring.

The new small two tone pink and purple dahlia that I bought last year shows no sign of life, but I'm going to pot it and see what happens…. Also have one other big clump of Firebird dahlias tubers to pot.

The bright orange tuberous begonias that I dug out of my big yard tub and tried to over winter look a bit moldy, (maybe not enough peat moss); But I'm going to try and grow them anyway. I'll leave the tubers to dry for a couple more days and then try and plant them.  There doesn't seem to be much there, though.

Orange Begonias from last year*

I soaked some Morning glory seeds last night and they are ready to pot up as well.
I ran out of potting soil yesterday, but now remembered that diligent husband had bought a new bag of soil and left it on the deck.  Time to finish up my planting!

(* Photos are all from last season)

Goldfish Transfer/ Pond Clean Up Oct. 2014

October Goldfish Transfer/Pond Clean up

8 medium to large goldfish

October 10 we brought our goldfish into the house for the winter. We often have had to do this at the end of Sept. in past years because of cooler weather, but this fall we seem to be blessed with a boute of prolonged warm weather! 

I had set up the 30 gallon tank in the laundry room a few days before to get ready for the goldfish transfer. Our pond is very small and much too shallow to leave the fish out all winter as many people do. We drained the pond using a combination of the pond pump and the shop vac. :)  The shop vac worked fastest, but we used just the pump for the first while till we netted most of the goldfish.  We were afraid that if there were any little babies, they would get sucked up in the shop vac.

A lot of leaves had fallen into the pond and were stacked on the bottom in a wet layer. That’s where the goldfish were trying to hibernate. When the weather is chilly the fish are sluggish and easy to catch. (It was a warm sunny morning, about 12C, but the pond water itself was still quite cold.)  

The pond water was as dark as tea so we were 'fishing in the ark" so to speak , randomly running the nets through the water….We scooped out a lot of wetsoggy leaves, then had to poke around in them to find the tiniest little grey fish we have ever had!  🐟
We also rescued 5 big fish and 1 medium sized one. Not very many really, considering that we had put 24 fish into the pond last May to begin with!  But after 2 unfortunate pond disasters this summer, we were glad to get any goldfish!  There were 14 little babies altogether, but I think 2 got eaten during the rescue since we only ended up with 12.  😐

I had to set up the 2nd fish tank in the laundry room in a big hurry, a new home for the tiny babies. The water in that tank is cloudy right now, but I think it is under going “new tank” syndrome. I put a lot of Cycle in the water so it should help establish the bacteria level. After that the water should clear up.

The 7 big goldfish are in the bigger 30 gallon tank which is nice and clear.

March 25, 2015
All the goldfish survived the winter well. The teeny tiny babies have grown a lot and have all turned gold. They started out about the length of a nickel, but are 2 to 3 inches long now. There are 7 big fish and 1 medium sized in the larger tank; 12 small ones in the smaller tank.

12 small goldfish

In about 5 weeks we will get the pond ready for another season and put most of the goldfish out. I'll probably keep 6 of the small ones inside as "spares" in case we have any 'goldfish disasters' this summer.

Looking forward to a new gardening season! :)