On My Morning Walk

Yesterday when I went for my walk I noticed that the sun rising was creating a quite dramatic moment so this morning  I put my camera in my pocket as I left the house.

Yesterday morning there as a little more mist in the air but this still looked interesting to me. I liked the contrast of the crane and wires against the early morning sky and the way the orange road sign echoed the colors of the sun.

On the side street I thought I had again captured that brilliant ball of sun but I see it was a little hidden. But here I liked the contrast of the groundcover greenery with the spider webs showing up along the top of the bank and that gap in the trees with the burst of light and the intrusion of the crane.

 Here is another seasonal flag - that tree (for shame, I can't name it right now) is covered in brilliant fall colored berries and the grass in the foreground is saying "enough already, I can't take this heat!"

As I got closer to home I suddenly noticed I was being watched. Yes, the deer family is still around.

I was having a morning walk but I made them have a morning run!

 Ordinarily I don't get this many wildlife sightings but this morning I did luck out. Turkey vultures perched along the roof ridge of this home. What were they waiting for I wonder? They were likely not there to admire the contrast of the shrubs in the front left.

 This view of the snake is not from this morning but from Saturday afternoon. I checked this morning and that creature is still there in the window well. Let me tell you, I hate snakes; they just creep me out.  This one has been here for a few days now and really, I would rather it packed it's bags and left. 

The last zone of the sprinklers was finishing its morning walk too. The weather forecast is for another hot and humid day with temperatures expected to be in the high 90's F. They say by tomorrow a cool front will come through. I do hope so and I can hear the garden agreeing with me.

Too Soon for Summer to be Over?

Things are a happening outside in my garden and beyond that suggest summer is preparing to be over. Oh please, say it isn't so!

Earlier this season I dug a couple of wheelbarrow loads of compost into this garden. A plant sprouted from that and I decided to give it a chance. Well, let me tell you, if you have never before grown butternut squash, then you are in for a treat! Just give it a lot of space. This is what the vine looked like on August 12.  Keep in mind this is growing on/alongside my front walkway! See that butternut in the front foreground - watch out for it later.

Here you can see what is growing - this photo taken on August 23 just two days ago.

Here's that one from the front foreground. Apparently I am going to have to get ruthless and cut back the vines (confession - I did some pruning this morning) because any squash just beginning to develop now will not have enough time to grow fully before the first frost. Wow, I hate having to cut things back.  But there are at least five almost fully grown butternuts on the vine now so that is a bonus!

Here's a tomato plant of an unknown type. I purchased it marked as a black cherry but it clearly isn't that. The fruits do not seem to ripen to a full clear red and they are a small roma style shape. Yet another of my garden mysteries.

Here's one of my volunteer tomato plants. The fruit on this one are great tasting and a little larger than a cherry tomato but not really a full sized one.

I had company staying for a week and I was not picking tomatoes as often as I should have been. Once I went out to gather ripe ones I found  a number of tomatoes that were over-ripe. Rather than bring them inside I left them on the brick edging thinking the critters could have them. Who knew butterflies liked to eat tomatoes?

Dinner tonight was porkchops in the slo cooker seasoned with rosemary from my garden, green and yellow beans from the farmers market seasoned with basil from my garden and a side salad of tomatoes also from my garden also tossed with basil as above. The sweet potato puree, potatoes and onions were from the supermarket.

The butterflies have been frequent visitors to the summer garden - not as many as in previous years but still plentiful in number.

This might have been a photo of yellow finches feeding on the coneflowers which have gone to seed...but the yellow finches don't like to pose for the camera. But you might want to note the fine dill plants nestled here in the front garden. We enjoyed dill from them with our smoked salmon and scrambled egg lunch today.

Last week we had a lot of hummingbirds fighting over the right to feed from the feeder. But on Thursday - pouff! - they were gone. Flown south for the winter I am left to understand. I thought I might as well leave the feeders out for a few more days and sure enough, this afternoon I saw a couple of hummers visit the feeder again so I guess they don't all fly south on the same day. It has been such fun watching them this summer.

And another place where you might have seen the yellow finches but alas, they did not wait for my camera here either. What you can see if you peer closely is how efficient the rabbit has been pruning down the back row of coneflowers - look in the right front for the stalks.

 

These birds are looking a little bedraggled as they pause on their way south - w a a a y south is where they come from!

 

A couple of weekends ago I was on the Chesapeake Bay and was introduced to Ospreys. And I have been totally captivated by them. I really did not know anything about them so when I got home I went to my friend google to have an introduction. In my googling I came across a livecam that has been set up on a nest that had seen three chicks hatch earlier this season. Here's a screen save of a couple of the chicks on Friday.

I have become very attached to this nest and have my laptop set up downstairs with the livecam left on during the day so I can see what's going on. It took everyone in my house a little while to get adjusted to continually hearing the chirping/squawking coming from the nest but they are fascinating to watch. You might like to join in - go here (that should be a live link but you can only see them in the daylight).
These birds are also about to fly south for the season.

Here's a sunset scene from the Chesapeake on August 10.

The equinox is still some weeks off but it seems to me that there are plenty of signs that the season is coming to an end.

Scenes from my garden today

A gardener can always find something to talk about on the weather topic. And without trying to bore the non-gardeners, this has been a weird weather summer so far. July was really really hot with day after day in the 90's F and loads of humidity. August, by contrast, has been much cooler with many overcast or rainy days. As a result garden items that need sunshine to ripen have been impacted.

 The butterfly bushes around the garden have been successful this year, as usual, in attracting butterflies. Look for the swallowtail in the top right area of the bush. The yellow finch are having a banquet every day as they flit from the black eyed susans to the coneflowers - but they are less enthusiastic about pausing for the camera.

 The tomato plant with the best crop currently is this one - but it is a volunteer so I don't know what it is.

 Next to it is this yellow pear tomato - this is also a volunteer albeit one I would really not bother to keep growing if I could identify it better as a seedling. The fruit splits very easily and it does not have very much of a taste.

 Now this one was a plant I paid money for. But something is not quite right. It says "black cherry" on the label but the fruit is neither a cherry shape nor black. H'mm.

 Usually by the third week in August I am picking this dish full every day. But not this year. I left more plants to grown this year but some of them barely have any fruit on at all. And the ones that do are not exactly loaded or fast to ripen. Guess the weather is to blame.

 The hummingbirds are enjoying my garden however. They seem to have slowed down a little today but in the past ten days it has been a really strong competition to get to the feeder with birds swooping around and driving the others off.

Out front is another of my volunteers from the compost heap. I thought the idea was that the heat buildup in the heap was enough to kill off weeds and seeds. But no. Earlier this season I dug in a few wheelbarrow loads of compost before I planted new bushes in this front garden. I got a number of tomato seedlings which I quickly removed but then there was this one plant that I was intrigued by so I left it alone. At first I thought it was a summer squash - maybe zucchini or yellow squash I hoped. This plant grew like Jacks beanstalk for a while and finally I had to go to google to see what I had growing. And the answer is a butternut squash plant. You can see one in the near foreground and there are three or more that I have been able to easily find and still loads of the big yellow flowers.

Fortunately I don't get a lot of people walking along my front walk. But those who do are quite amused by seeing my garden surprises.

Late June in my Garden

June is a big month for blooms in the flower garden. Above you can see some fine blossoms on a couple of new coneflowers (Echinacea) I planted out front after the big laurel bushes were removed.

 Remember my experiment to overwinter the two hibiscus plants? I cut them way back and they even had the odd flower while in their winter exile in the downstairs guest room. My plan is to have a red white and blue show on the front porch for July 4th. The white comes from a white petunia I planted in a tub a week or so back (but forgot to photograph for you) that sits against the wall of the porch. And at the bottom of the front steps I have a row of blue ageratum - well, until I can keep the rabbit from making them the main course each time they come by.

These are backed up by a volunteer white coneflower and some blue salvia.

 Out in the back garden some blue stokesia (stokes aster) are having their 15 minutes of fame along with some white yarrow.

On the deck there is the usual angst about what to do with the cherry tomato plant which has already outgrown the  8' high tomato cage and has hit the underside of the rain gutter. With the arrival of the summer sudden storm season I have already applied the tie down and chair brace system.

 Further round by the rear patio the volunteer garden is doing well with a few tomato plants and lots of dill. I planted a bunch of basil seedlings which were overgrown and lanky in the pot when I got them too late at the garden center. This season I tried to be quite ruthless in pulling out the volunteer tomato seedlings and there are now just four. I'll be interested to see how this experiment works out - as well as seeing just what type of tomato plants I get this year.

On the side garden I have this archway which has one very determined clematis plant growing on it. This is the highest it has ever grown but the result is the flowers are all on the top side and I can't even see them.

 Below the deck the astilbe are in bloom. For protection from that darn rabbit I planted one tomato plant in behind and you can see how well it is growing.

Speaking of that rabbit...to be truthful there are at least three although it has been a few weeks since I last saw even one of them. But look carefully and you can see it is still here. When planted originally this garden plot looked beautiful with yellow heliopsis, blue Russian sage and a few white coneflowers. Over the years the rabbits have taken out most all of the heliopsis (if you click on the photo I think there might be one or two remaining) and the sage has been overwhelmed but the echinacea/coneflowers really liked the spot and have been joined by some pink cousins. The yellow finches really love this garden. To the right are blue New England asters which have their bloom time in mid Fall.

The hummingbird is an avid visitor - look carefully to the right side of the feeder.

 A couple of mornings this week I was out before 7am taking a walk and saw this pair of fawns. This photo taken right here after they trailed their mother across my back garden. Oh, aren't they lovely I thought - but within an hour I found that the deer had the same thought about the petunia plants in pots on the driveway. The difference is that I did not eat the deer whereas they, yes, they ate my petunias.

The bird family that had taken up the lease on the birdhouse towards the rear have raised their family and left the premises. No more watching the constant feeding at the birdhouse while I sat at the dinner table each night.

And to close out here is a shot around dusk this evening. See how that tomato is peeking above the handrail of the deck? It is a new variety and I am hoping it will do well right there in the garden bed as I am getting weary about having to expend so much effort to tie down the plants in pots on the deck.

Hope you enjoyed the stroll around my garden!

To do this week in my garden

It seems that this garden season I am out and about visiting garden centers with much more result than planting out what I carry home. So this weekend, when I have nothing scheduled to take me away from home, I really must make progress on my "to do" list for the garden.

 This tomato suffered a series of unfortunate events including having the main stem knocked sideways and nearly severed. I know I really should have just thrown it out but it had been growing so well and already had blossoms on it. With help from a second pair of hands we took three toothpicks and created a splint on the main stem and bound it up with a tie. Now I will have to watch it carefully - so far it seems happy enough and has made more growth and even, as you can see if you peer closely, is developing fruit.

 This poor thing was purchased at the same time but is still waiting to find a permanent spot in the garden. The leaves are an unhealthy green but it has three fruit on it and is hanging in there so it has a high priority on the weekend "to do" list to get it into a better location.

 Ah yes, the gardenia. I have been hoping for a while to be able to have a white camellia in my garden. That flower was a symbol of the women's suffrage movement in New Zealand and I am currently working on a quilt project based on that topic and I have chosen to use the colors adopted by the New Zealand women. But getting back to the garden subject at hand, both camellias and gardenias are apparently pretty fussy to grow in my area. While looking for a camellia I found this new type of gardenia labelled as a frost hardy one and thought I would give it a try. But finding a spot for it in the garden has proven challenging what with it needing morning sun, shelter and certain soil requirements. I have at last found a spot just next to the deck and it can hopefully get planted this weekend. Maybe it will like the spot and thrive or maybe it will be a one season wonder. But for sure it is not going to be happy staying in the pot on the driveway all summer long.

 This is the reason I have been growing tomatoes in pots on the deck for several years. Yes, I garden with deer. But this was a delightful view on Friday, mid afternoon. There was a pair of fawns frolicking and playing in the back garden. This one in particular ran back and forth outside the window leaping in the air and seeming to have a grand time before heading out to the front and across the road. I think it was looking for the other fawn; that one tended to stay near the edge of the garden and retreated into the trees in back when I went out with my camera in the hope I might be able to get a photo. I think one of these must have been the very tiny fawn I encountered in late May and talked about in a posting then so I was very happy to see them still around despite the damage deer do to the garden.

 This week the astilbe seem to be the star bloomers in my garden.

 The lace cap hydrangeas cannot seem to figure out if the soil is acid or alkaline as the flowers are a mix of blue and pink.

 Here's a general shot of a corner of the back garden. The astilbe are out here too as well as the white yarrow. And the ever present orange flag to mark where mole bait has been set out. We just cannot seem to get rid of these critters.

And a final shot to show you the enthusiastic hummingbird who arrived this week. As I stepped off the deck looking for the deer I was buzzed by a hummer. The next day my tree service people stopped by to spray certain trees for undesirable summer bugs and as this crepe myrtle tree was one of the candidates for spraying I took down the feeder temporarily. Once the spray had dried I went back out to hang the feeder and as I was standing there putting water in the ant trap the hummer came right up and hung there like a helicopter as if to say, hurry up, I need to come in for refueling. This is one bold hummer as it flys quite close even as I pass by. This is a new arrival although I have had another one coming to the feeder for several weeks now.

Well, sitting here at the keyboard is not making any progress on the "to do" list so I better post this and get on outside.

Oh, in case you don't realize, you can click on a photo and it will enlarge it so you can see the detail better - I think it is a left click.