Saturday, July 30, 2005
Field Trip
My garden madness may be partly hereditary; I went to visit my sister, Dorothy, who lives about 80 miles north of us; this shows the front of her house. She has built a house on our old family homestead of 5 acres of wooded land, with a small creek running through it. The property is now smack dab in the middle of town, so is quite the oasis, and she has filled her yard with flowers, ablaze with color even in late summer; some more pictures of her garden follow.
Joe Pye weed; being in the milkweed family, it's a magnet for butterflies and bees.
My sister has a great friend, Bill, who has gotten into making garden ornaments and gates, out of copper tubing. This is the gate to her vegetable garden.
This is the top of a trellis they made, complete with dragonfly on top.
Tuesday, July 26, 2005
A Walk In The Garden Today
Monday, July 25, 2005
A Walk In The Garden Today
Sunday, July 24, 2005
Saturday, July 23, 2005
New Boid
Every year I add a few new birds to my sighting list, here in our garden, and I also add a couple of "call sightings", from birds off in the woods and ravines. Today it was the call of Bell's vireo, a very distinctive call if ever I've heard one. My bird book mnemonic is Cheedle cheedle chee? Cheedle cheedle chew! (I kind of like tippie tippie toes). They write of the bird sounding like it's singing through a clenched beak... to me it sounds like the bird gargled with razor blades... anyway, kind of a neat thing to hear.
A Walk On The Wild Side
There is a 12 foot retaining wall along a ravine that runs right by our house, leaving a nice, flat area at the top, and I've planted it all in wildflowers; this time of year it's mostly rudbeckias. I'd never realized what a sweet perfume they have until I massed them in this big bed. It's a haven for butterflies and bees, and later in the fall, goldfinches and other small birds in profusion, feed off the seedheads.
