The Garden Worm blog Digging up the best dirt on gardening!

July 27, 2010

Mid-summer!

Filed under: Containers,Flowers,Miscellaneous,Our gardens,Summer,Veggies — Judy @ 10:44 pm
Hummingbird moth

Hummingbird moth on butterfly bush

Here it is almost the end of July! So far, so good! It has been a good growing year with heat and rains coming at just the right time here. The growth of the plants has been wonderful and they are lush. We’ve been harvesting peppers, cukes, lettuce, blueberries, raspberries, and 66 luscious bulbs of garlic to dry.

Veggies

Veggies and Fruit!

Of course, the amount of rain over three days last week amounted to a little over 5 inches! Unexpected, and a bit much for some of the plants to handle. During a break in the downpours, I slogged through the soggy lawn to check on the vegetable garden. To my surprise, the peaches had this clear, oozy, jelly-like substance on them and my first thought was that there was a huge infestation of bugs and that was the result (sorry, no pictures). After searching the internet, I learned a new term – guttation. There had been so much water that the peaches were unable to absorb it properly and ended up exuding the excess in this sticky stuff. When I checked later in the day, it was gone! Yay!

And the containers are exploding with color!

Urns with begonias

Dragonwing Pink begonias, coleus, fuchsia, and sweet potato vine

Ceramic mixed flower containers

Sweet potato vines, coleus, verbena, petunias, gaura, calibrochoa, pennisetum, solanum jasminoides vine

Low urn with mixed flowers

Petunias, lantana, Diamond Frost euphorbia, verbena, sweet potato vine

Tall urn with mixed flowers

Gaura, petunias, verbena, Diamond Frost euphorbia, lantana, sweet potato vine

Aren’t they exuberant now? It’s getting to be a jungle out there!

March 7, 2010

Technicolor Day

Filed under: Creatures,Miscellaneous,Spring,Winter — Judy @ 5:16 pm

Late winter sky

Brilliant sunshine, temps moving into the 40’s – maybe spring is moving northwards? The snowdrops are blooming . . .

Snowdrops

and this yin-yang picture of crazy daffodils poking up through the snow and their leaf mulch shows that the snow is receding. Slowly, slowly.

Early daffodils

The dark-eyed juncos have returned now that it has warmed up a tad and it looks like this one is scolding Mrs. Cardinal about how much seed she is consuming.

Cardinal and Junco

A good day to take another trip to Mendon Ponds! In the woods, the little beech glows in the sunlight . . .

Beech in snow

and the rushes are golden.

Through the rushes

The ice is starting to go out of the outlet . . .

Outlet ice

So tell me, is Spring arriving in your neck of the woods yet?

February 26, 2010

Snow – woo-hoo!

Filed under: Creatures,Miscellaneous,Winter — Judy @ 10:27 pm

Well, folks, we finally got some of the intense snow that the rest of the country has been experiencing this winter. About time, I say, because I was feeling sort of left out. Sure, we’ve had a reasonable amount, but there is nothing like a good snowstorm to make things right. We shoveled a couple of times, as we prefer to do, but this morning we had to break out the snowblower so you know this was serious stuff. When all was over, we ended up with about 20 inches for this storm. Not a real “snowpocalypse,” or a “snowicane,” since we are used to such stuff in this area.

The Carolina wren has been hanging out under our deck lately. He is so cute with his little upright tail! I haven’t been able to get a good picture of him at the feeder because he bobs around so much, but here are his footprints in the snow.

Bird tracks in the snow

Carolina wren snow tracks

What says winter better than snow on an Eastern white pine and a white birch?

White birch and pine with snow

The snow has just about obliterated the Van Houtte spirea (Spirea x vanhouttei) echoing the beautiful white blooms that will come late in the Spring.

Snowy spirea

The flakes were huge and fluffy. What a scene looking out over the yard!

Snowy yard

And, after it was all over, the moon came out!

Snowy moon

February 24, 2010

Mendon Ponds Park

Filed under: Miscellaneous,Parks,Winter — Judy @ 5:56 pm

Yesterday’s trip to Mendon Ponds Park to do a little cross country skiing was a good thing. Although the day was gray and foggy, the previous night’s fresh layer of snow made for great skiing. One can always find interesting things to look at out there and you really should take a camera, but a cell phone set to black and white mode sometimes is handy to have.

Foggy Mendon Ponds

Mendon Ponds Park is the largest Monroe County Park with 2,500 acres of woodlands, ponds, wetlands and glacially created landforms. In 1969, it was named to the National Registry of Natural Landmarks due to its geologic history and presence of kettles (including a well-studied kettle hole known as the “Devil’s Bathtub”), eskers, a floating sphagnum moss peat bog, and kames. This park is definitely one to visit any time of the year – 21 miles of trails for hiking, skiing, horseback riding, and birdwatching (feed the chickadees, nuthatches, and tufted titmice along the Birdsong Trail!).

My favorite trail for XC skiing is the Quaker Pond Trail, a 2.7 mile loop of fairly easy terrain through decidous and conifer woods, and over a wooden bridge through the rushes at the pond outlet where you might catch a glimpse of the beaver lodges. There are other trails like the East Esker Trail that are great for harder-core skiing, but this trail lets you shrug off those worrisome cares and observe your surroundings without sliding into a ravine!

Quaker Pond outlet

At the Quaker Pond outlet

Yesterday’s adventure saw deer crossing my path not 20 feet in front of me, numerous birds chipping and calling, and lots of prints in the snow. Some I recognized, some I didn’t.

The first is a member of the dog family (dog, wolf, fox, coyote) and it’s probably a domestic dog since this is a walking trail too, but the front print has elongated middle toes. One can always hope that it is something more exotic! The second one I have absolutely no clue on. Voles make tunnels under the snow, but the center trail is not that wide. Maybe it is just a fallen branch print and not a critter at all! The next one is definitely a deer print, of which there were many, crisscrossing the entire trail.

Next time, I will have to remember to bring my camera for the colors of Mendon are many – and the camera has a bigger battery and takes better pictures than the cell phone!

« Newer Posts — Older Posts »

Powered by WordPress