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Well good afternoon everyone! Here I am a day later and if it's possible to have a hangover from gardening, I most certainly do! I came in last night when it was dark and I took a shower. I scrubbed from head to toe, shampooed and scoured but I could still smell mulch! When I wrote that blog last night I was sitting here and I could still smell ....you guessed it....mulch. I asked the DH if I smelled like mulch and he laughed and said "No dear. You probably have mulch in your nose." I went to bed smelling mulch. I dreamed of mulch. I spread mulch in my sleep! I woke up this morning and could not move and you would think I had spent the night in a bar! I looked aweful!...lol. My eyes were swollen (probably from all that bending over) and I had a headache that would have made a college party kid proud! I do declare after yesterday I am convinced I picked my GG name to early. I should have signed up as Mulchin' Annie! I can hear the titles now. Instead of " Anne of Green Gables", it will be Anne of Black Mulch. "Annie Get Your Gun" will be Annie Get Your Garden Spade!" "Anne, Queen of Mulch." etc. And it's not over...not by any stretch! I couldn't wait to get some chores done so I could go out and take some pictures. Due to my hubby's schedule, most of the time he leaves in the dark of the morning and get's home at dark. He has little time to see changes in the yard. He didn't get to see the mulch last night and he left before dawn this morning. When he got home he saw how nice the mulch was and I told him I was going to take pictures for the blog. So I ran in to get the camera and came back outside. Before I could take the pictures, DH said "Wait wet the mulch down - it will look better." I hung my head for a second and thought...Okay....I'll wet the mulch down. I put the camera down and grabbed the hose. After having the wet t shirt contest for mulch, I turned off the hose and grabbed the camera again and started clicking happily away. :D . I excitedly ran back into the house to pull up the GG site and got my graphics program open in anticipation of resizing and uploading pictures. When I opened the camera to get the memory card out, I had another "hang my head" moment. I had forgotten to take the memory card out of the computer and put it back into the camera last night. Hence, I had to put it back into the camera, go all the way downstairs and out to the front and retake the pictures. Before my hubby left. He asked me if I wanted to put the last bag of mulch in the plow bed which is in our side yard. I said no, there isn't enough to do the whole bed. His reply was okay, we'll just go ahead and get a truckload then! My eyes got very wide for a moment and then I hung my head and shook it side to side and walked back into the house....
To Carolyn: I have never had problems with Cypress mulch either. I just noticed that the dianthus was dying and I wasn't certain why. There could be several reasons, but I think the slugs are the main culprit. Anyway, I think the dark mulch makes the colors of the bed really pop! Thanks for the comment :)
To Mountain Sprite: I live in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Western North Carolina. We have black bears, coyotes, foxes, ground hogs, bob cats, racoons and we also supposedly have mountain lions however rare or endangered. No one has reported seeing one lately. For birds we have a variety. All sorts of finches and grosbeaks, cardinals, eastern blue birds, titmouse(mice..whatever) hawks
, geese etc. I hope this helps.
To Mitzi: No need to be afraid of your lilies. If you keep them well spaced and trim the dead out of them and keep them mulched, you shouldn't have a problem. It's when they become too thick for mice and rodents to hide in there is a problem. The snakes hunt the mice and when humans come into contact by accident that's where we freak out. The crews cleaning out the interstate medians and rest stop areas that have daylilies have a severe problem with copperheads - but that is because those beds are undisturbed for long periods of time. I have only had the mistfortune of crossing spades with grass snakes and the occasional baby copperheads. As long as you tend your beds you should be fine. A piece of good advice and a cardinal rule for Girl Scouts. "LOOK BEFORE YOU REACH!" As for the rose graphic you inquired about. No, I didn't paint it but thanks for the compliment. I used my graphics program called Paint Shop Pro to create that signature tag. It's a process called "tubing" Tubing means to take a subject out of it's background and save it to a particular format. After it's saved you can create anything you want with it. Once you have learned to use the tools and to tube, the whole world is your oyster! You can create anything you want! You can create wall papers for your computer, email stationery, paper stationery, greeting cards, business cards, flyers and papers for all sorts of scrap booking. All of that led to the side job that I have now of photo restoration and enhancements.
I hope I have answered some questions and comments. Aside from the delerium, I truly do love my mulch and I am so grateful to have it. Below are the pictures I took. I hope you enjoy them :) - Karen
Good Evening All, It's late but I decided to post the bits and pieces of my week. First of all, I can't recall who suggested the bbq skewers for getting rid of slugs, but THANK YOU SO MUCH! I came across a few of them today and those skewers were very handy! After discovering the little buggers, I skewered them and threw them into the roadway to die a thousands deaths! I am convinced they have been the culprits that have been eating everything I have planted this year! But those slugs are not alone in the list of pests I have in my yard. I found that we had moles last year, but did nothing about it. I was too stressed out to deal with a lot of stuff in the yard. This yard as I stated in another blog was totally neglected. Daylilies had been planted all over the front yard. In fact, half of the front yard was nothing BUT daylilies. The neighbors had stated that they hated it because the owners would not allow any mulching of them and the weeds were impossible to handle so the former renters just let it grow up and it got very weedy out there making the house an eyesore. Now I don't exactly hate day lilies, I think some of them are quite pretty. However they tend to attract rodents which in turn attract snakes. So I don't care for them for that reason and another they tend to look tropical and I hate anything tropical looking. ( I know I am going to get some boos and hisses about that statement...lol) Please don't hate me! I was born in New Jersey and taken to Florida as a child. I never like it and I hated the heat so badly. I couldn't wait to escape Florida and come back north (but not so north that I had to leave the South. So anyway, DH and I kept the lilies mowed down, but they kept growing back. Then we noticed fewer and fewer and the ones we kept were dying off too. It finally came to me that the enemy of my enemy was my friend! The moles were eating the daylily roots, thereby killing them off. Now the yard looks a lot cleaner and at least well mowed. We still have lots and lots of weeds in the lawn, but we are working on that and the lawn is mowed and neat. The latest pest is cute, but a pest none the less, it's a racoon. We have 4 feeders and 2 suet feeders, but he chose this one particular feeder in the back yard. He would come about 1 am and sit atop the feeder post and then reach down and lift the bar of the counter balanced feeder and feast away. Of course I would watch him for a few moments always torn between scaring him away and delighting that a beautiful creature had come to our yard. Scaring him away is the best thing I could do for both of us and I was determined to find a way to keep him out of the feeder. I searched through the internet to find out what I could do and came across a website that described racoons as walking coyote pot roasts...lol. Apparently they are a favorite meal of the coyotes. I took some tidbits of information and I thought and I thought. I needed wire that he couldn't chew through and heavy enough to keep him from being able to un twist it. (Racoons are very good at that you know.) Finally I had that Ah Ha moment. I sailed by my husband and "I said I am going to fix that walking pot roast's little happy behind." and I got an old wire coat hanger and cut it with the bolt cutters. I twisted one end around the counter balance bar and then made a loop at the other end. On the post I screwed in an eye bolt. I then inserted a small padlock through the loop of the hanger and the loop of the eyebolt and voila! The feeder bar is locked down so tight he can't get the bar up.
So far it has worked. I have not heard a sound at night from the feeder and the other feeders are not disturbed. Now if we can just keep the bear out of it this winter, we'll be doing fine :D
That brings me to today. Today was mulching day for me. Actually, I have been trying to get it done for the last week, but I haven't had much success. Today I was determined to get the front porch beds done. I had cypress mulch in the beds there but I think it was killing the dianthus. So, I decided to rake out the cypress and replace it with hardwood mulch instead. You would think that would be easy enough, but nooooo. First there were the slugs that I discovered. Then raking and digging out I found little weeds here and there to be pulled. And oh yes, what to do with the old "new mulch" I still had two bags left of that to put somewhere. So I opted to put that around a large azaela bush, one of the suet feeders and the lilies that are around that so not pretty street sign in our front yard. After that, it was much too hot to work in the yard so I had to wait until the afternoon shade appeared. It was about 5 pm and I finally was able to lay the mulch in the beds and be done with at least the front. I laid down so much mulch I found myself making up mulch sales slogans. - Mulch! Get it while it's hot!: Got Mulch?: Mulch..better flowers for a better tomorrow. : Everything goes better with Mulch! I decided that I was having mulch delirium and that it was time to quit for the evening. So, after giving everything a good watering it was time to "go to the house" as they say here in the south. All in all it has been a good week ...except for the slugs. I can't wait to take some pictures tomorrow of the newly mulched beds. I hope all is well in your sunny patch tomorrow. take care, *hugs*-
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