Saltwater Purls

Look who came to visit

Its a praying Mantis...Yes it's big ~10cm long

Eating lunch at the nasturcium snackbar...okay not so cool eating my bees, but the next snack was a fly.

Testing out my new macro lens

Garden Gnome Infestation

Now you see them...now you don't....

Gratuitous flower photos

Well I have a new FO and I started a new project....but to show you I would have to take some photos...except that it has been too hot and I've had a post-airplane cold. Instead I'm going to show you flowers from the garden.
 

Top left: Coreopsis 'Snowberry', Top Right: Lily

Bottom left: Oriental Lily, Bottom Right Toadlily 'Taipei Silk'

How Does Your Garden Grow

Ingrid, Ingrid
Quite green fingered
How does your garden grow?
With tomatoes and lettuce, cabbage and beans
And monster zucchini in a row

 

Left: Zucchini flower; Right: Lettuce flower

Left: Bush bean flower; Right: Cucumber flower

Post-Holiday harvest

another new garden

I finally finished the front garden with the help of my mother.

We began 3.5 years ago with the removal of sun blocking cedar.
 
Then came the new path.
  
Then last year we added the garden under the front windows.
 
The final touch is the garden beside the path. The shrubs are a flowering almond, a dwarf red japanese maple 'garnet', a yellow barberry and a white rhododendron.

Next will be new lighting (solar). I still have hostas and dwarf irises to add  as sales bring them in.

Digging Up Some Good Dirt

When you last saw the vege garden it was too BIG. I took one layer of boards off and it looked much better. Next we had to fill it with dirt....a dirty job but someone had to do it. Finally the fun part...planting veges! We have such a short growing season that I like to start with plants where possible. I do have some bean, corn and squash seeds planted, otherwise you are looking at basil, thyme, tomatoes, peppers, strawberries, red cabbage, crinkly lettucs and a miniture pear tree.

Finlay was extremely helpful and had a lot of opinions on the dirt

Finally I wanted to show you this part of the backyard when we moved in...

Frogging Garden Style or What was she thinking?

When we were looking for houses I wanted one with a nice sunny backyard, a vege garden and an exit from the back of the house. This turned out to be difficult in the entry level price range...see Michiganders don't go into their backyards for 1/2 the year so why have a back exit (now I'll get rotten fruit thrown at me but I swear most houses=no backdoor). Vege gardens were very rare (I think I saw two behind over 50 houses). So when we found a house with the potential for a great backyard...all I had to do was build my own raised beds...simple.

Three years later we broke ground for the vege garden.

Brought a load of wood

Finlay reminds you to always wear safety glasses when using powertools

As I was building it, hubby kept saying 'its too tall'. 'Nah...look I can reach the beds kneeling'. 'Its too tall'. I refused to see it until I was inside screwing in one of the last screws and I glanced at the wheelbarrow (means by which the compost will travel around from the front yard where it will be delivered). I did a little calculation of how many wheelbarrow-fulls I needed (about one million) and realised....its too big.

To Be Continued...

A new take on the Fox and the Hound

Sometimes I wish I had a little camera to capture images I pass on my daily travels like the day when I saw a cute sports car being towed with a large air conditioning unit punched through the bonnet/hood.... owww! That had to be a punch in the stomach for someone. But even if I had a camera I couldn't have captured this. We usually drive into work via a back route because we live near a school and 8am traffic is pretty bad. This morning as I was slowly driving through the quiet residential back route a fox raced across the road....leaping and skipping at high speed. We agreed it was a fox when a larger animal bounded in front of us at equal speed after the fox...a deer. My husband asked 'Do deer chase foxes?' and that friends is the big question to ponder today. I'm glad we slowed down for the fox otherwise the deer would have hit us.

Heading indoors for winter...

This time of year always brings critters into our house as they seek somewhere to wile away their long winter nights. Two nights ago there was great excitement amongst the felines in the house as a rodent of some sorts made an appearance. Unfortunately both our felines are 'gimpy', Mowgli because he is front declawed (he came from the rescue that way) and Jester because he is unfit for any life beyond the one of being the most neurotic cat on the planet. 24 hours later the excitement was over and an exhausted rodent was unceremoniously left in the food bowl. 'Is it still alive?' Hubby asked in doubt...sure enough it was so I put it in a jar and took it back out to the great cold outdoors, but not after a little IDing. It's a young deermouse (Peromyscus maniculatus), otherwise known as a lyme disease, hantavirus, and plague spreader It's good to know that the household felines are hard at work while we sleep.

Toad lillies

The garden isn't too glamorous this time of year. The leaves are turning gorgeous reds, oranges and yellows, but they're mixed in with dying foliage so you have to see the beauty around the tattered remains of the summer. One plant I have admired for a few years in the toad lily (Tricyrtis hirta). This year I planted a couple in spring and then found another potted plant at my favourite garden location (one of the local Lowes has a large garden section...and I am in love with their 75% off plant section). So this fall I have flowers!

The garden has been fairly neglected of late. I am trying to get out and plant a few more bulbs for spring. The late warm weather hasn't helped because some of the bulbs have  collapsed before I could get them into the garden, while others that I got in before the most recent warm spell are putting their heads up. As always we'll see what spring brings...