osprey94's Blog

So this little guy and his/her twin were in the meadow behind our house today. They could not be more leggy and fuzzy and adorable. They smartly ducked down low in the tall grass when they saw us coming and were completely invisible from afar.

They and their momma ran through the yard this morning, too. So much fun having baby animals around. Reason number 5 million that I love summer.

I'll try to be modest here, but I really do think I live in the prettiest darn place!

After dinner, I went out on the porch to eat a popsicle and a five point buck was wandering through the pumpkin garden right in front of me!

Here he is:

Then, I walked to the front of the property, by the road to check on the wildflowers. Oh my...they are amazing.

Here they are from a distance:

But, close up is where the beauty really becomes evident.

Check out these close-ups:

Ahhh...I love flower close ups!

I went to the back of the house and right off the deck, I saw my buddy, the turkey. He's been out here all day waiting for me. If he could serenade me, I think he would. That's not conceited. I think he'd be attracted to a pinata to be honest. Can you see the love in his eyes?:

Then, out by the veggie garden, I watched our swallow feeding her young in their birdhouse we put in 2 years ago. It's the first family to use it! I got her just flying back out again, so she's a blur:

I haven't gotten a good enough look at her to tell but I think she's maybe a tree swallow. It almost looks like she's got white patches on the rump area, which might mean she's a violet-green, but I don't think so. I'm going with tree swallow.

The herbs in the veggie garden are wonderful. I've been using the basil (my all-time fave) on caprese salads:

And nasturtium blossoms for a garnish.

And the cilantro (a little bitter from going to seed a bit) in a corn and avocado salsa to eat with enchiladas tonight:

Delish. I love summer.

Speaking of cooking...soon I'll be able to make those caprese salads with my OWN tomatoes. Here are some early girls that will be the first I'll be eating if all goes right:

I just saw the buck running through the woods at the edge of the yard. Man, I'm lucky to have all this beauty around me.  

So, my neighbor's turkey is in love with...wait for it...me.

He had 3 female friends, but they died and now, he hangs out in our yard all day. He'll follow me anywhere until dusk and then he goes home. Last night, however, he spent the whole night on our front porch. The cats are FREAKED out. They sit in the windows and watch him suspiciously around the clock.

Here he is when I got up this morning:

And here is what he left me to clean up:

Wonderful.

As for the garden, other than killing 2 barberry  plants when I transplanted them, everything is going well. The stewartia seems to be making a comeback from the weird brown-crispy-leaf problem it had. The peas are gigantic and very tasty. The broccoli is all done. Leaf lettuces are still mostly okay, but some have bolted. The runner beans are growing like crazy and the asparagus looks great. We've harvested blueberries a few times now, and some raspberries are ripening. Pictures to come.

Things are really taking off in the garden, now that the sun is actually SHINING occasionally here! We're even having a bit of a heat wave...hold on to your hats, it's in the 80s!

This was the wildflower strip in early spring:

And, here it is now!

This particular guy with the round leaves  is unfamiliar to me. Look familiar to anyone?

Ones I can identify are allysum, calendula, bachelor's button and california poppies.

Here are the broccoli and lettuce a few weeks ago:

And, here they are now...

Here are the tomatoes and onions a few weeks ago:

And, now:

I don't have a lot of experience growing onions and I'm a little curious about the way the base of each of these looks like a cluster of lots of small onion bulbs instead of one big one. What's up?

Here are the peas a few weeks ago:

And now:

I harvested some for the first time this morning and got a little surprise. I don't REMEMBER buying snow pea seeds. I'm  pretty sure I bought sugar snap peas like I do EVERY year. Yeah, no. These are not sugar snap peas and are in fact snow peas. Oh well! I also harvested broccoli for the first time today. Looks like it'll be stir fry for dinner tonight.

The honeysuckle looks wonderful, but as it does every year, it's beginning to go all funny already. The leaves start to turn dark and fall off and by late summer, it's completely bare. Why? What is going on? Here is a pic of the diseased-looking leaves:

Gah, that's an awful picture, but it's the best closeup I got.

Here's the entire plant. It sure is awesome when it's in bloom. I just wish it wouldn't drop all its leaves each summer.

And, finally, take a look at my wild lilac. I have 2 huge specimens on either side of my hummer feeders and they attract so many bees that you can hear the collective buzzing and wing-whirring from around the house. It's astonishing.

You can just see of a few of them in this pic (little brown blurs).

Oh! And here's the stewartia illness:

What is going on here? I'm so worried about my little tree here.

We got back from a trip to Yellowstone last night. The weather there was perfect, and other than grizzlies, we saw just about every species of wildlife we'd ever hoped to see.

The camas and balsam root were in bloom all over the place as well as many other wildflowers I couldn't id.

Here is a close up of camas:

I just love camas. The Lewis and Clark crew would say that they made such unbroken swaths of blue that from afar they looked like a body of water. Apparently they were an important food source for native americans.

Then, what I think might be a balsam root, but the species I was familiar with was yellow. These are white. Either way I saw TONS of yellow-flowering balsam root, too. I just really fell in love with this field of sunflower-like white blooms:

First time I was introduced to balsam root, I was told they smell like reeses peanut butter cups. Sure enough, they do! If you use your imagination a bit!

At the end of our trip, since we were flying out of Bozeman, Montana, we took a day to explore the city. We went to the Museum of the Rockies and boy was that amazing! They had an incredible exhibit on dinosaurs that D and I totally geeked out on. They also had the coolest living history farm there. It was a recreation of a home/farm from the early 19th century. Women dressed appropriately were working in the kitchen to prepare a historically accurate meal and the house was decorated and appointed correctly for the period, too. The best part, though, was the gardens/farm. Only heirloom seeds/plants were used and the techniques used to plant the veggie garden were taken from a book written buy a guy who interviewed a native american woman on her tribe's techniques. The book was for sale, and I'm going to see if I can find it online. Can't remember the name of the woman or the author right now.

Here are some of the highlights of that garden:

These bleeding hearts actually made me gasp. They were so lovely. The picture doesn't do them any justice.

I can't remember what was inside these little protective covers, but I liked how cheap and easy these are. I wonder if it'd keep the deer away, or if they'd just pop their heads right in there and munch away? Oh, please. Of course they would.

Here were some tomatoes. Again, how simple and easy is this enclosure?

I don't have pictures of the Native American garden techniques, but basically, it was corn grown with squash so the squash would climb up the corn, interspersed with sunflowers, beans, and maybe one or two other plants. I wondered how much luck anyone would have trying to grow corn in Montana's short growing season? I don't know, maybe their summers are hot enough. I just know that we don't have the best luck in Wa.

Well, as far as the trip goes, even though it's not garden-related, I have to list the wildlife we saw.

Bison EVERYWHERE. One walked right past the car within 5 feet or so.

Elk, including a baby right by the road.

Coyotes close up and very far away. One walked in front of our car for a good while.

Wolves. Four of them in Lamar Valley. One gray and the rest black. Two coyotes were nearby yipping at the wolves.

A moose. D saw her, not me b/c I was driving. Pout.

A black bear right off the road.

Birds galore, including sandhill cranes (my first sighting)

Marmot

Ground squirrel/pocket gophers

Pronghorn antelope

Bighorn sheep. Twin babies w/ mommy.

We plan to go back to the park so D can do a guided fishing trip and we can both take a horseback trail ride plus a guided wildlife safari.

Also, I loved loved loved Bozeman and want to go back ASAP.

Ennis was also a cute little town, but West Yellowstone? Ugh.

More pics later. The gardens have progressed so much. Bad news, though. Two barberry plants look like they might not have survived a transplant and the stewartia tree I treasure appears to be sickly. Pictures later.

I don't have a lot of gardening news right now. Mainly, I'm just waiting for things to grow! Friday was the last day of school (today's Monday) and I'm LOVING the fact that I'm not at work right now!

Instead of posting pics of what I'm doing in the garden lately, I'm finally going to post some pics of plants I haven't yet identified that have been growing on my property.

These grow like crazy. I usually pull them out (because they grow where I don't want them and take over) before they could bloom, so I don't know what kind of flowers they might have. They get quite tall if I do let them grow at all.

This plant is in the woods. I don't know a thing about it. I just thought it was pretty and don't know what it's called.:

This one is in the woods too. They grow in large clusters and the white flowers smell like honey.

Here it is in large clumps:

This one's in the woods, too.

Alright, Garden Guides community, help me out if you know what any of these are.

When the cold, miserable weather we're having broke for an hour or so today (I'm bitter), I took a walk through the woods and my gardens to check things out. It was a regular wildlife smorgasbord! First, I found an alligator lizard basking in the sun:

Then, I found this little sparrow fledgling hopping around the rhodies:

I TRIED not to interfere with nature, but she was so tiny and vulnerable and I was pretty sure she couldn't fly well enough to escape a cat or other predator, so I gave in and found her nest. After I placed her back in it, and went off to do something else, she must've hopped back out of the nest because the next time I walked by, she was gone.

She must've been determined to leave that nest!

The birds were so active today. The chickadees were flying right over my shoulder and landing in the birdbath with me not a foot away. The hummers zipped right past me, fighting and/or courting. I took a pic of the handsome male at the feeder:

The black headed grosbeak was at the feeder today, taking turns with some finches. How does one say "grosbeak" anyway? I've been pronouncing it like "gross-beak" and a coworker pronounces it "grahs-beak". Which is right? Both, probably. If I've been saying it wrong this whole time, I'm gonna feel REALLY silly. Anyway, here's the feeder:

Now, some updates...

The clematis I planted at the end of the deck has died back for some reason, but both plants grew a new stem so I think all is not lost yet. Didn't get a pic of it, though, unfortunately.

The lettuce/spinach and broccoli look fine. In fact, I've had two salads from this bed already. I planted a few more lettuce and spinach seeds in the greenhouse to transplant later. Maybe lettuce doesn't transplant well...we'll see.

The tomatoes look good. The early girl already has a little green tomato in the works:

The apple trees are COVERED in tiny apples. I'm going to have to thin them in the next few weeks:

The peas are nice and tall but I've lost a few plants already to some burrowing animal. The sweet peas didn't survive this. I have maybe one left and I originally planted at least 6 of 'em. Grrrrrr. We set up the wildlife camera to see if we could catch the varmint responsible for this, but we didn't get anything on film. You can just see one of his/her holes in front of the pea plants. There are similar burrows throughout my herb bed and the lupine bed, too. Moles? There aren't any mole hills, though!

That's about it, I believe. Tomorrow is my last Monday of the school year. In 2 weeks, we'll be in Yellowstone National Park and my inlaws will have to take care of my garden while we're gone.

Maybe soon, it'll feel like June instead of January. Please?

I was checking out the rhodies today and I noticed this lil' guy in the vinca. I caught him while D got the camera, but he was ready to jump right out of my hand the entire time we tried to shoot him. The lighting was terrible, so this is the best I got. He's a Pacific treefrog. I was reading that the vocalizations of these guys are recorded and used in movies whenever a movie needs "nighttime" sounds.

I think he's just gorgeous, don't you?

I showed the pic to my students today (4th grade) and one little girl grimaced in disgust. Gah! How can a student of MINE be grossed out by wildlife? Ah well. I tried.

We took an after-dinner walk in the woods and saw some really lovely sites. Let me set the scene...the woods were afire with the setting sun:

As we walked down an access road...this little fellow let us get really close to him and posed for pics.

I found clumps of these beautiful iris-like flowers. They are stunning and EVERYWHERE.

I also saw large patches of these delicate little white flowers that smell like honey:

And my favorite...this lovely little bleeding heart plant:

Nothing uplifts me as much as nature. I am thankful every day that I live in the midst of it.

I plan on putting the grasses in the deck bed on the shady end and the daylilies to fill in a few holes down the length of it.

The wildflower plot is coming along. It’s a carpet of green seedlings now.

I have a compost pile, but it’s pretty sad. I never seem to have enough “green” and “brown” to get it to cook and it just becomes a pile of junk. But, left over a long period of time, it does break down into nice, dark compost. I would really like to make a lot of hot compost one day. To that end, I decided I needed a nice looking kitchen waste crock in the kitchen so I could make use of all the “green stuff” I would normally throw away when I cook. I found this one at Gardeners Supply online site. I love it. It’s nice and big and it actually looks good in my kitchen. It has a charcoal filter that fits nicely into the underside of the lid.

Try not to look too closely at the peeling paint on my windowsill. It's very scary.

I recently read that if you don’t have enough brown material for the compost pile, to keep a bale of straw or hay near your pile and use a layer of it for the brown. I have my bale all ready near the compost pile.

The greens and broccoli are really coming along now...

and the tomatoes and onions look good:

The peas are at least knee high and look nice...

The sunflowers in the veggie garden are coming up (but not enough to bother w/ pics). Still no sign of any asparagus - I’m trying to be patient.

All for now.

Ten school days left. Yes!

In the woods yesterday, I found this little guy:

I didn't get to take this picture, unfortunately. I got it from flickr.com. When I found the little stand of them it was already getting dark and I didn't have time to tie a marker to the tree they were near so I could find them again when I had my camera and better light. I just tried to memorize the location. Today, I got my camera and took a walk in the woods to find 'em again. I was dying to get a picture and then identify them. Well, no luck. I absolutely couldn't find them. I gave up, went inside and tried enature.com to identify it. It was easy looking up native northwest orchids; there weren't that many. And, this is what I found. I'm 100% sure this is what I saw yesterday. It's called summer coralroot (Corallorhiza maculata). I'm so excited I have a little orchid in my woods! I'm really going to have to pay better attention next time I see them, so we don't kill them when we're thinning the woods.

On my walk, I also found this guy:

The pic is pretty bad, but here is our native slug, the banana slug. They eat detritus, not growing plants, so they're good to have around. The brown ones we also have are introduced. They eat the HELL out of growing plants.

While I'm on the topic of wildlife, check out the mason bee house:

You can see how the females have cemented their eggs into the holes with mud. They fly all around the garden when it's warm out.

Here's what the deck bed currently looks like after I planted a few more things in it today:

I added a few rhodies, lady's mantle and a barberry from elsewhere on the property and added a few more purple fountain grass plants. I even experimented with a shoot from the wild rose plant by the porch. I just dug one up and stuck it in the dirt. You can just see it there right above the pink flowering rhodie in the middle. I added diluted fish fertilizer to each transplanted plant's hole and watered with it, too.

We've almost finished the inside of the greenhouse too:

After this was taken, we put in some wire shelving. We then need to install the "j board" I think it's called that contains the thermostat, and other electrical thingies. Can you tell I'm illiterate when it comes to these things?

I think I will buy a copy of this book:

(thanks for the image, amazon.com!)

I got it at the library and it seems really good. Very detailed instructions on growing just about every kind of plant in your greenhouse.

All for today...no work tomorrow. Yes!

I'm so behind updating this blog!

Today I finished off a new raised veggie bed in the garden. I planted two kinds of carrot, some bush cucumbers, and a few bush bean plants.

I finished settling the logs in for another raised bed and just have to fill it with some trucked-in soil and it'll be ready to plant.

I pulled some pea plants out on the east side of the garden. They were shaded by the shop and just not getting enough sun. The other row of peas on the west side were planted at the same time and were triple their size, so I figured I'd plant some lupine in their place since lupines take some shade and I need some color in the veggie garden.

The tomatoes are coming along well. Two of them have blossoms.

Our mason bees have been really active in this warm weather. There are now 14 plugs in the mason bee house. I'm so excited to have them around. The only problem is, the ants seem to love the bee house. They're crawling all over it. It's attached to a wooden fence post at the end of the veggie garden, so spraying the post with Pam won't really work like if it were on a metal pole. I don't really even know if they pose a real problem. Hopefully they don't.

I noticed a hummingbird eating from the blueberry blossoms today. That's great to see, because I'd like it if everything I planted was a hummingbird favorite!

The cherry tree is COVERED in blossoms this year. I wonder if we'll have one cherry after the birds are finished with 'em?

What else...what else? Oh! We hired a guy with this crazy brush mower machine to spend the day clearing trails in our woods. The machine looked a lot like this guy:

It just MULCHED everything in its path up to a diameter of 8"! It was nuts. I felt bad doing it during nesting season. Won't do that again. The end of summer would've been better, I think. We roped off the areas where we know the Coopers Hawks and also some nuthatches are nesting so they wouldn't be disturbed.

Now, we can walk right into the depths of the 10 acres and see things we never could before. There a number of beautiful clearings and some great old alder trees that we found.

The deck bed is looking good. Some of the heuchera and lady's mantle got a little crispy in the few days of heat we've had, but other than that it all looks good. The deer have left all the new plantings alone for the last few weeks, so they're starting to grow back a bit. Some plants they've never touched in that bed yet are:

1. Daylily (Stella de Oro)
2. Northern LIghts grass
3. Purple fountain grass
4. Autumn joy sedum
5. Loosestrife
6. Clematis
7. Flowering currant
8. Rhodies

They might (probably will) try them at some point in the future, but for now, they aren't. I'm tempted to buy more of the fountain grass and daylilies especially to fill in. I'd also still like to get one each of purple coneflower and frikart's aster  and see how they do. If they aren't eaten instantly, I'll buy more.

I want to keep transplanting plants into the deck bed as I get them, but I don't want to plant in the heat. I'm thinking of putting shade cloth over the bed, if necessary. I don't want to wait till fall to plant. I'm too impatient!

Besides, summer is when I actually have the time to plant!

Let's see if I can update sooner next time.

Countdown till summer break: 14 days. Only 2 more Mondays.

Yesterday was HOT! I heard on the news that the temps broke the record in Seattle. It was probably as hot or hotter here, which is south of Seattle by a good 70 miles or so.

We got up early (the cats never let us sleep in) and got a lot done before lunch. Let's see what I can remember.

1. We cleaned the bathroom that my husband and the cats use.

2. We gravelled in an area adjacent to the tractor parking spot (for hubby's boat)

3. I got all the laundry done.

4. I hooked up a soaker hose to wind around all my newest plantings in the deck bed.

5. I planted scarlet runner beans.

6. We (mostly) assembled a new wheelbarrow.

Not bad, I think. As the temperature rose, we were done with the big chores and could hide out in the air conditioning. We ate lunch and watched a movie.

Today, I'd really like to get the cukes and carrots planted.

And finish assembling that 'barrow, too.

And fill the fourth raised veggie bed with soil.

Oh! Updates...the sunflowers are coming up. The sluggo pellets seem to be working. The deer left my plants mostly alone last night. Oh, yeah and the wildflower strip in the front of the property is COVERED in little seedlings. Yay! Finally.

Is how you'd describe the weather here today. Golden, warm, clear, wonderful weather. 80 degrees and breezy. Hallelujah! Finally! Tomorrow's supposed to be even warmer.

When I got home from work, I planted two mugo pines (in the shed bed), a Lysimachia punctata (loosestrife 'Alexander'), a purple fountain grass, and a Stella de Oro daylilly (in the deck bed).

The deck bed had been ignored by the deer for a few days (just long enough for me to stop being afraid), so I left the little chicken wire cage off one of the beautiful, full, red-twig dogwoods in the deck bed and it was pretty much just twigs today. Also, one of the andromedas had been yanked right out of the ground and was lying next to its hole.

Also, they'd munched on heucheras and lady's mantle. Ah, well. I suppose that whatever they don't eat, I'll keep and whatever they eat, I just won't buy again. Or I'll fence in the entire 2 acres around the house. Sigh.

The greenhouse is almost done on the inside, now, too. The cedar potting benches are in as well as the potting soil tub. We just have to install the shelving and get all the electrical stuff done.

It was so hot in there today when I got home from work, that the thermometer we put inside couldn't display the temp. It was too hot. Must've been well over 100 degrees. Gotta get the shade cloth on the top if I'm going to attempt to grow seedlings in there this summer.

My asparagus show no sign of any growth. I wonder if there's something wrong. I need to read up on them and find out how long it takes to see something happening!

My herb garden is coming up. The lettuce, cilantro and spinach are too. The tomatoes look okay, the peas are doing well, but have a TON of little bites taken out. I've put "Sluggo", that iron phosphate slug bait/killer, all over the place. Hopefully that will help. The onions look good. I really need to sow carrots, beans, and cucumbers still. I'm so behind. I also need to fill the fourth raised veggie bed with soil mix so I CAN sow carrots, beans and cucumbers!

I got my first issue of Organic Gardening magazine today and it is GOOD. Combined with "Garden Gate", they have already made a great reference. I can't wait to get the next issue of both.

Well, no pics today. I'm tired, it's late (for me) and I can't even think straight.

Off to bed!

Well, we finally have a greenhouse. At least the outside of one! D and I spent a little of Saturday and ALL day today (Sunday) working on it and finally finished by around 4pm. We still have to install the shelving and the cedar work surfaces. Plus, once the electrician comes, I'll have to install the lights, misting system, thermostat, etc.

Once we had it all together, we put the thermometer inside and watched the temp. rise. It was in the mid 50s outside and within maybe a half hour, it was 92 inside the greehouse! We opened the two gable vents and soon, the temp went down to the high seventies.

When the temp is in the 80s this summer, I am DEFINITELY going to need to put shade cloth over the thing and keep the vents open unless I want to fry the plants.

My next step is to find some really good books on greenhouse gardening and see what I can accomplish. D is already wondering if I can work some magic and grow oranges in there! I don't know a THING about growing fruit entirely in the greenhouse. It'd be nice to try growing all kinds of exotic fruits and plants, but I really don't know what's reasonably possible.

I managed to get a few more things accomplished even though the entire day was spent building. I RE-planted tomatoes, considering the frost a few nights ago killed mine right to the ground! I was all ready to cover them in case of threat of frost, but I just didn't check the weather the night before. I should've know better, because it was a clear night.

Oh well, I got three new tomatoes at Lowes and planted them nice and snug today. I half-covered them with plastic this time. I bought sun gold and husky cherry tomatoes and for a full-sized variety, I got Celebrity.

I gave Celebrity the majority of the room in the bed and then the other two (indeterminate) got a corner each and a tower each to support them. And, this time, I covered them for the night. Even if it doesn't freeze, they'll get a little protection. I just hope I can remember to uncover them before I leave for work. It'd be just my luck to freeze the first three and then cook the next 3.

Here are the 'maters inside the plastic sheeting "house".

I also planted two containers for the shady front porch. They each have astilbe, hosta and coral bells. Here's one of 'em:

And, that's about it. I'm SO ready for summer break. I have much to do and work just interferes!

Oh, yeah. Monday, I added a bunch of new plants to the deck bed. So, here are the plants just home from Bennie's Nursery.

They are...

3 Andromedas...

One each of...

One each of...(except the coral bells - I got one large one and 6 small ones.

The astilbe, hosta and coral bells went into those porch pots I just mentioned. The rest (except for that loosestrife) went into the deck bed...

I don't know where the tag for that grass went. I don't even remember what kind it is. Crap. It'll probably be my favorite and I'll never really know how to buy more.

The lady's mantle in this shot have been transplanted from another spot in my garden. I love lady's mantle.

The other project going on is a strip of wildflowers we sowed along the road.

They haven't germinated yet. I think we might have to replant. Don't know what went wrong, we've been watering regularly.

And, one last project update. The edging on the deck bed has been dug. Now I just need to fill the little trench with bark mulch:

Okay, now I'm done. Phew! Time to sleep.