Seasonable

Daffodils, up and in bloom. Scilla, also. Lilac buds are leafing out.

Wish I knew more about which trees were which. There's a project for this year... or next.

Seen (and sometimes heard): Dark-eyed Juncos, Black-capped Chickadees, Tufted Titmice, White-breasted Nuthatches, Song Sparrows, American Robins, Mourning doves, Common Raven, Blue Jays, Eastern Phoebe (at our house, this one is known as "squeaky phoebe"). Possibly saw a Fox Sparrow.

Heard: My ear is woefully absent-minded. At my sister's, I heard (at least a month ago), someone saying "witter witter WET feet". At home, I'm hearing something like "maids maids kettle-ettle-ettle" (local dialect of song sparrow?).

Haven't been paying close attention, and we were away for a week.

Saw Eastern Newts and snails in High Pond. Three Gray squirrels this spring; two to four Red Squirrels (the end of the tail of one is patterned like a turkey feather!). Several Eastern Chipmunks.

My favorite spring observation so far: Kids playing in mud. (Me too.) We're building "gunk walls" to direct the water away from Pine Castle. The water comes from our spring, crosses under the road (in theory; there is a culvert again this year at least), seeps in more or less and eventually meets the creek. Pine Castle is a now topless white pine on a large mound, which makes for a good fort. Maybe photos sometime.

finding the borders after and under late winter detritus

About 3 inches of daffodils are up. Most of the snow is gone. So I couldn't resist being outside a bit today; I know it's too early but... or maybe it isn't.

Anyway, I raked some, just dumping slightly-mulched the leaves into either one of the garden-beds-to-make* or under the white lilac and excessive roses**. They don't need the mulch at this time of year, but I figure those beds need more soil eventually and this should slow down some of the silly spread-themselves forbs. Wish I knew more about what's native or not.

I pulled old stems and leaves and bits of gravel and some persistent spreading ground cover off the rocks that edge the flower beds (the ones with shrubs and perennials along the road). I cut away old daffodil leaves, sedum plants, peony stems. I'm not much of one for annuals unless they self-seed. I have mixed feelings about sedum and some of the geraniums, 'cause they spread so. And the snow-on-the-mountain! If only it would be well-behaved ... but it tries to take over and isn't even as useful as mint. I planted bee balm with it last year, that should teach it . Let 'em duke it out. The bee balm (non-native varieties, though I tried to find those) is nice for the Ruby-throated hummingbird when the lavendar (er, lilac?) lilac isn't blooming.

The daffodils come up through years of gravel dumped via snow (carried in snow shoved onto these beds by the plow) mixed with whatever I toss in the previous fall (generally their own old stems and leaves). Once I tried to move them. I dug down at least six inches and never found the bulbs. I figured they must be alright enough then, and put the dirt back.

I am a very haphazard gardener. And lazy... no, no, I mean efficient. (Thus choosing perennials.) Well...

* We're gradually, year-by-year, adding beds for vegetables or herbs or whatever. Some are raised beds; this area will be more terraced with river rock "walls".

** Moved from my Mom's; some are transplants of her old roadside roses, which we "pruned by the plow" every year. Some are just random things she moved or divided. I do not pamper roses (indeed, I barely give them any attention), so mine are thorny, leggy, sometimes buggy, and smell wonderful.

Hydrangea in bloom, cream and marroon. Sedum in bloom, magenta. Various small wildflowers, more lovely, nameless (to me).

our very own lettuce for dinner tonight

I mentioned R had built us garden beds. At the end of May we filled them with dirt (topsoil/horse manure mix -- I think 75/25), some old seeds (varying ages) and new seedlings.

As luck and remembering my mother's garden and his grandfather's, we managed accidentally do some good companion planting! Carrots (ours are wee tiny things right now) & Tomatoes (very healthy seedling), Marigolds and Melons, Nasturtiums and Cucumbers! Yay us! (Our cucumbers really came up... whew! thinning 'em now, I feel so heartless...) Have seen only a few possible spinach, beets, and beans (old, old and very old seeds); wish us luck for those. We also have peppers (hot and sweet; the driving rain took care of most of the aphids, wow); swiss chard (mmmmm); lettuce; 1 zucchini (who needs more?). I think that's all ... it's a wee tiny garden.

Companion plant links: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_companion_plants
http://www.lowes.com/lowes/lkn?action=howTo&p=LawnGarden/GardenResults
http://www.ghorganics.com/page2.html
http://www.organicgardening.com/feature/0,7518,s1-2-10-697,00.html

Happenin' In the Dooryard

A Boy
A Hose
A Mud Puddle

Sunlight

Orca (the dog)

Brand-new (mother's day) boxes for raised bed garden! (Made of old lumber and nails we had leftover around. No money spent for the exactly-what-I-wanted present!)

Chickadees
Titmice
Dark-Eyed Juncos
Rose-breasted Grosbeaks (a pair)
Nuthatch
Goldfinches (a pair)
Chipping sparrows
White-throated sparrows

Eastern Chipmunks (at least 4)
Red Squirrel
Bumblebee
White Butterfly
Dark brown teeny butterfly with white stripes

Blooming, or nearly:
Bluebells
Lilacs (white and purple buds)
Tulips (from [info]lepi's drive-by crocussing)
little purple-and-white ground cover
White Violets
Ruby and Yellow Pansies (from last year!)
Red and Yellow Primroses
Dandelions

Recently Planted:
Bee Balm (to compete with the Snow-on-the-Mountain)

A Slide and Large Rocks to climb on

Heard recently:
Black-throated Green Warbler
Oven Bird
Robin
Hairy Woodpecker
Eastern Phoebe ("SqueeKee Phoe-Bee!")
Wood Thrush

Birdly birds

LittleBirder and I started feeding the birds again last week, although he did it with Granddad a while back before that too (funny how right now I can't even remember when Granddad came up to visit... oh yeah, mid-September. I've not journaled much the past couple of months).

Today is very busy out there: between 8 and 9 a.m. we've seen a hairy woodpecker (possibly a female), a red squirrel who isn't Stubbs, a pair (or more) of juncos, two blue jays chasing each other, three or more chickadees, a titmouse, a white-breasted nuthatch. Nothing unusual, but pleasant.

We still have LittleBirder's pansies -- just 1 -- after 2 or 3 frosts. And sedum. And a few roses! The roses didn't do so well this year.

colors of fall

Decorative crabapple, I'm told .... they look a lot like cherries to me.

 

Maple leaf in our driveway... sugar maple? Red maple? I've got to learn these one of these days.

 

Rounds Road, up towards the dead ends we go...

 

Thinking Autumn Thoughts under the sedum

quickie garden catalog

Not to post twice in the same day, but at home, there are some lovely colors...

Dragonfly spp.

Blooming right now: yellow buttercups, pale pink geranium, purple columbine, red bleeding heart, purple lilac (but fading), white lilac.

Male Indigo Bunting on feeder with thistle seed

More color flutters about: several species of moths in various leafy browns, tiger swallowtails, more. One of these days I'll try to learn butterflies too. Not to mention this glorious dragonfly in gold and black, and the handsome Indigo Bunting.

white-spotted sable, pansies, sedum

Blooming pansies and sedum
in a little bed on top of stone wall

I mentioned the other day that LittleBirder's pansies were blooming. Grandma gave us a sedum as well (and in an unexpected move, I planted it promptly). I understand this will bloom in the fall.

White-spotted Sable
Starksboro, May 2007

I also was able to identify this little wee butterfly: a White-spotted Sable (I think). (Thanks to Google's image search that got me to the BugGuide.)

May is SUCH a happenin' month

LittleBirder and I put out more seed this evening. We watch. A chipmunk arrived. LittleBirder walks over slowly, carefully ... and 4 or 5 feet away, the chipmunk stops stuffing his face ... at 2 feet, the chipmunk leaves.

Bumblebees are happy in the purple-blooming ajuga under the lilacs, just loving it there.

I saw an American Robin up on the wires. I'd thought I'd heard it, but I'm still learning the differences between that and the Rose-Breasted Grosbeak.

We thought we'd heard a Ruby-throated hummingbird yesterday or the day before. Today we saw it on the bleeding-heart flowers and the first blooms of the crabapple.

The violets are fully in bloom now. And dandelions. And bluebells! Both the white and lavender lilacs have started this week. There's wild(ish) strawberry in bloom and I'm seeing birds on one of the geranium-type plants. LittleBirder's pansies that we bought are still blooming. Bedstraw (That's what I call it, anyway) is blooming white. Some weedy to-be-yellow things is coming into bloom.

early flowers

Toddler investigating pansy-like blooms on a spreading groundcover, May 2007

LittleBirder had a lovely time running about the yard this morning. Daffodils are blooming; leaves are budding; weather is warming...

This ground cover has a light purple and white pansy-like bloom, but it's only a centimeter or so across. I'd like to know what it is.

Both yellow and orange-centered daffodils are blooming. Some of these are old, old bulbs, so deeply buried under years and layers of adding to the garden bed that I cannot find the bulbs to move them. Some are much newer, thanks to a friends' "Drive-by crocussing" a few years ago.

The bluebells have their buds that are just about to open fully. These are leftovers from the previous owner, although I have moved them around the yard a bit as I slowly reshape the garden landscape. The violets are the same, except they're spreading under the crabapple on their own.

Spring is always a burst of journaling time, isn't it. My sister reports the same thing...

It's a crabapple, not a cherry!

Pink-flowering crabapple, just coming into bloom, May 2005.

So there's this tree that the previous owner planted. It's right off the front step, and lovely. I always thought that was a cherry, but nope. Our neighbor, who is an arborist, explained that it was likely a decorative variety of crabapple grafted onto the root stock of a hardier one. The stem that has grown swiftly in the last few years, overtaking the pink-flowering older one has grown off this stock. So we have a pink-flowering and white-flowering tree -- one tree, two varieties, two heights, different sizes and shapes of fruit.