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

February 23, 2014

Birdwatching: Winter birds

Filed under: Birdwatching,Creatures,Winter — Judy @ 11:09 am

With all the snow we’ve had this winter, I moved a feeder close to the house onto the deck railing so I wouldn’t have to shovel a path all the way out to the pole feeder. We’ve had a lot of birds feeding there and it has been fun to see them up close and personal, but, of course, the dastardly squirrel has found his way up there too. He is quite a menace, however a quick, loud click of the door lock seems to chase him away pronto.

Anyway, I wanted to share some pictures of our cuties!

Robin

Robin in the crabapple

Hawk

Cooper’s or Red-tailed hawk way out in the willow tree

Chickadee

Chick-a-dee-dee-dee!

Tufted Titmouse

Tufted Titmouse captures a sunflower seed!

Rose-breasted Nuthatch

Rose-breasted Nuthatch

Blue Jay

Blue jay-jay-jay! Squwaaawk!

Northern Cardinal

Really? Why are you taking my picture!

Northern Mockingbird

Northern Mockingbird up close and personal!

Dark-eyed Junco

I’m eating, don’t bother me! says the Dark-eyed Junco.

Northern Cardinal

Looking good, Mrs. Cardinal!

Carolina Wren and Tufted Titmouse

Carolina Wren and House Sparrows with Tufted Titmouse peeking in on the action!

Red-bellied Woodpecker

Red-bellied Woodpecker on the post!

The Northern Mockingbird was an unusual one to see – he showed up for the Great Backyard Bird Count and I hadn’t seen him there before or since then! Good thing I was able to take a picture to document it! Do you have any feeders out? What birds are you seeing?

February 20, 2014

Sorry!

Filed under: Uncategorized — Judy @ 10:56 am

I have had some computer issues including a total hard drive failure that wiped out a lot of pictures and such. However . . . it is a new day, the sun is shining, and I will be back with more things to share. Thanks!

April 6, 2013

Garden Artisans Expo

Filed under: Shows and Tours,Slideshows — Judy @ 11:41 pm

With the usual venue for GardenScape under renovation, some of the landscape designers in Rochester took a different approach and developed their own show called Garden Artisans of Rochester Expo running from March 14-17 this year. All in all, it was a much smaller show and lower key than GardenScape. There were 8 non-juried garden displays with much of the plant material supplied by Oriental Garden Supply. These displays were mostly not as extensive as the ones you might have seen at GardenScape in past years, but the few bigger ones did not lack in creativity or excellence of display. We visited on Friday and there weren’t many people there. Hopefully, more came on the weekend, but I didn’t think the show was very well advertised or promoted. Quite a few seminars and talks were scheduled, but we missed catching any of them. The number of vendors was low, and for the most part uninteresting.

The light at the venue made it difficult to capture many of the beautiful garden vignettes, but hopefully you can enjoy the gist of it in this slideshow.

Garden Artisans slideshow

 

The Expo participants worked hard to try to make this a good show, but the people (person?) behind the scenes didn’t carry through on what needed to be done. Too bad, because we Rochesterians crave us some flowers and gardens in March!

March 14, 2013

Plantitudes: Amaryllis

Filed under: Flowers — Judy @ 10:54 pm

Plantitudes – plants with attitude, i.e., a new feature series with plants that I find interesting in some way.

This amaryllis was a gift from one of my sisters for Christmas way back in 2007. The variety is ‘Apple Blossom’ and, although it is a fairly well-known variety, it is definitely a winner!

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The botanical name of amaryllis is Hippeastrum and it is a a flowering bulb originating in South America. My method of bringing it to bloom every year is to cut off the flower stalk after the blooms are done, give it a little bit of liquid fertilizer, and summer it outdoors. In late September-early October, I cut off any of the remaining leaves and bring it indoors. At this point, I stop watering the bulb and wait until it decides it is ready to start again with a little green leaf shoot poking up before watering it again, generally about 10 weeks or so.

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Soon it will send up a flower stalk about 24″ tall.  Sometimes the stalk will have up to 5 flowers on it. This year it has only three, but I noticed that there are a couple of new leaf shoots off to the sides so the bulb (s?) probably need a slightly bigger pot. The flower color is mainly pure white with a beautiful streaking and edging of pink.

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It has a yellow-green throat

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and the huge flowers soon explode with a beautiful sweet fragrance.

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This is a beautiful easy-care flowering bulb that blooms for me indoors in the deepest of the winter when its beauty is so needed, and it keeps on blooming year after year with just a minimal amount of attention. Definitely a plant with attitude! Thank you, dear sister, for giving it to me!

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