A Week in Wildlife

Flower longhorn on the oregano which is always loaded with bumblebees. I counted 5 on a single flower this day.

Water striders devouring a beautiful, iridescent bee that had the misfortune to fall into our pond. The striders don't actually walk on water, but instead skate about on the water's film.


Dragonfly by the pond. There have been several around dipping their bums in the water which I assume means their laying eggs.

Millipede on the front step. Bedtime was delayed until I found my camera and took a couple of shots. I was never sure if they stung or not, but apparently they don't. Instead, they'll only curl up in a ball. Think of this though, according to the Virginia Cooporative Extension, "There were several locations in which the numbers of millipedes were so excessive that they swarmed over mulched flower beds and invaded basements and other ground level rooms in houses. At times there can be thousands of millipedes moving across lawn areas and into houses." Can you imagine? That's the stuff nightmares are made of.


The daddy (I think) bluebird peeking at the world.


I give up! I've been looking and looking for this one. I think it's some kind of skipper, but I'm just not sure. Any ideas out there?



A painted lady on lavender flowers.

This guy was floating in the lily pads. I love that you can see his webbed foot floating to the surface.

Hey, Guess What's in the House?

He knew he didn't belong inside at 10:30 p.m.!

With the promise of freedom, he took himself out of the corner.

He was so grateful to be back where he belonged he didn't even pee on me!

Chicks and Seeds

We have babies! The bluebird babies in the bluebird house are very noisy and their parents are very busy flying back and forth to feed them. I don't begrudge a single worm they take from the garden for their hungry hatchlings. Next to the porch, on the gutter, we have four finch babies. These chicks are very quiet, and very cute! We have a great view of them; looking around inquistively as they wait for their parents, mouths wide open as they hope its their turn to eat. If you look to the left in the picture you can see a little head looking back at me through the screen. Their parents aren't as busy as the bluebird ones and that's partly our fault. If we're on the porch and move when they're on their way in they do a quick about face and head to the safety of a tree.

This was a big planting weekend in the kitchen garden. I put in the tomatoes and lots of seeds. Lettuce, carrots, spinach, corn, pole beans, borage, basil and dill. Some I'm afraid I've put in too late for the hot weather we've been experiencing (lettuce, spinach); some too early if we experience one more frost (corn, tomatoes.)

The asparagus is doing great! Some of it is almost as tall as the fence already (4 ft tall!) Pretty impressive for a 3 week old! I planted them in a trench as I was told, but was confused about when to backfill. Most of what I read said you do it over the developing fern, but I didn't exactly have ferns at first, I had asparagus spears that were shooting straight up and then developing thin little leaves. Was that what I should be backfilling? Finally, I confirmed that yes, that was it. Hopefully, that's right.

Friday night, Simon and I spent some time watching the snake; seeing him swim is really cool! As you can see, I got a new picture. He was very entertaining, much more so than the fish. They were friendly at first, but then our part Labrador dog who thinks the pond is his playground, scared them into a seemingly permanant hiding. If they don't start coming out soon, we may decide to keep the snake no matter how big he gets!

Saturday, we woke up to find frog eggs in the pond! Thank God! While I've been very supportive of their efforts to find love, they're so noisy about it. We tried to have the patio door open the night they finally found it, but we couldn't hear the TV over their song.

Mike and I finally moved that boxwood! He dug out the yucca that was on the corner of our front bed and just didn't fit with the plantings of boxwood and holly shrubs. Digging out the boxwood wasn't too bad. I think Paul James' trick worked for getting the roots adjusted to rootball size, but getting under the shrub was still hard. Lifting it was the worst though; it took both of us to lift it into the wheelbarrow. Hopefully, it will be happy in its new home. It sure looks great there! No picture I'm afraid...the camera died.

The Results of a Week Off...

They said it was going to rain today, but when I woke up this morning it was quiet outside. I had just decided to get up and head out when the rain began. There was a lull earlier this morning so I put on my gardening clothes and the minute I stepped out of my bathroom, the rain began again. Some things just aren't meant to be...

Asparagus Anyone?
I should have plenty to share in three years! Ready or not, the kitchen garden now has 3 asparagus beds! Yes, we do really like asparagus, but I ordered way too many plants and then started to worry that the soil wasn't rich enough or that the deer would eat half the plants and then I wouldn't have enough. I did some research and you can move asparagus plants, as long as you don't try to harvest from them right away, so I decided to go ahead and plant in as much of the Kitchen Garden space I felt I could spare for a year or two. This way, if my fears come true, I can fill in the one bed I had hoped to have with some of the plants from the extra beds. Hopefully, I'll just have extra plants to share with friends next year!

A colleague of mine once described some bamboo creeping into her yard from her neighbor's as penile. It seems an appropriate description of the newly planted asparagus too.

The Pond
Okay, so I redid the waterfall yet again, but this time through necessity! The first picture is before, the 2nd after. We had major problems with the pond this winter. Even though it wasn't that cold temperature wise, the pond froze over with thick ice, all three of our koi died, some of the concrete cracked, ice slugs blocked up the tubing and twice, the tubing broke due to freezing. My Dad, in Stafford, has had a pond for probably twenty years and never had problems like this; it has to be our proximity to the river! Next year we'll have to get a heater.

After the fish died, we didn't rush to fix the waterfall for the 2nd time so we just did it last weekend. We raised it several inches so that we could also fill the pond higher, I adjusted one side where the concrete had cracked so that it too was higher and, using some leftover fieldstone, finally built up the back so that the filter was completely covered, but by moving a rock or two we still had easy access. I like the way the back looks so much that I can't help but wonder how great it would be if the front looked the same way...

It turns out Shoeless Joe was right, if you build it they will come. You know last year we were inundated with frog and toad tadpoles, but what I never got around to blogging was our bullfrog tadpoles! These take two years to come to maturity and luckily they survived the winter! We've also seen some kind of mollusk, have a variety of water bugs and are also currently home to a young water snake! We think it's a Blotched Water Snake, you can see my picture here, he's hiding in the iris leaves, and a picture where you can actually see what one looks like from the Herp Journal on the Internet. He will have to be moved before he gets large enough to eat our bullfrog tadpoles or brand new koi. We're not sure how we'll do that, but we figured we'd start him out in the creek below our house and then take him to the river if he finds his way back.

The Woods
A few weekends ago, I used the brushcutter to thin out the smaller stuff in the woods on one side of the back of the house. This week, my Dad cut down some of the smaller trees that I couldn't get with a brushcutter. Now more light can come in and the beautiful hollies and dogwoods can come into their own. I also have space to plant some native trees, shrubs and plants.

Compost
My son was assigned the hateful duty of removing the pachysandra from the driveway bed last summer. Unfortunately, once the compost bin was full much of what he pulled up was dumped outside, partly on the path. It is now, like most of the stuff in the bin, mostly ready to use, but still had some pockets of pachysandra here and there. I bought some stiff, mesh netting, stapled it to some stakes and created a compost sieve. Once I was done, the mesh wasn't wide enough to span the wheelbarrow or garden gate so I needed another piece. Then the gap between the two pieces was a problem and meant that un-sifted compost was falling through. One morning I spent about an hour weaving a piece of wire to sew the two pieces of mesh together. It now works like a charm and the compost is beautiful!

The trickiest part to using it now is to watch for skinks and earthworms scooped up with the compost. I have to shake the compost so that the usable stuff falls into the wheelbarrow and that requires an action similar to using a cheese grater. Not a pleasant way to go, but by going slowly and watching carefully, I think I'm saving everyone. There's still more to get, but so far the finished compost has been added to the cutting and vegetable gardens.

Surprises

Tonight my nightly garden walk had nothing to do with deer, instead it was much smaller creatures! Moving a branch of my climbing rose so it draped on the brick wall I discovered this...Looking at all of those spines, the message was clear, DON'T TOUCH! To protect it from birds, I un-draped the rose so it was hidden again.

This proud Mama was in the crawl space. Note the newborns

leaving the egg.

Pulling up some stray liriope in the driveway bed I discovered this guy hunkered down in the mulch. Something about the expression on his face reminds me of the toad from Pan's Labyrinth, a testimony to the special effects folks.

Finally, just when I'd decided it was getting too late to see anything else, this spider was on my front stoop. Simon says those are babies on her back!

The Garden Pond

We had always wanted a pond; my dad had one and every time we visited part of our time was spent sitting next to it and feeding the fish. Once we moved, Simon in particular was ready! Unfortunately, we moved in May which quickly became HOT. By July, we had picked our site, but what fool would start digging a pond then? A determined fourteen year old one.

Ground was broken July 3rd. Simon would dig a little, get the hose, hose himself and the hole , then dig some more. It was actually quite an effective way of doing it. Digging continued over the months and everyone helped out, even our dog Archie. By the Fall, our hole was ready and with my parents help we installed the liner, built the waterfall and lay the flagstone. This spring planting began and on May 23rd hundreds of tadpoles could be seen! Of course, many also disappeared, but over the past couple of weeks several batches of frogs and toads have magically appeared! We have to tiptoe around the pond because there are tiny createures everywhere!

We have also added some fish, the first two I have dubbed Mr. Dickinson and Judge Wilson much to Simon's dismay. Both were representatives from Pennsylvania on the Continental Congress. In the musical 1776, Judge Wilson, desperate to go unnoticed, always followed Mr. Dickinson around and did what he did. These two fish behave much in the same way; I think you can now see why Simon is dismayed! We have worked very hard to get the fish used to us and we had finally succeeded in getting them not to disappear every time we walked up. Then one day last week, they were gone, no sign of them anywhere! By Sunday we had finally seen three of them and it became obvious that one had been permanently removed. No wonder they were hiding!

When we planted the Japanese Maple (Acer palmatum dissectum "Green Hornet") we needed something to help shore up the ground. Looking around for something, I spotted an old cedar log in the woods. Simon and I took turns digging it out then moved it in place. Simon added some lichen which seems to be happy! The only problem is the maple is a little too threadleaf so the leaves don't show up well. Any ideas?

Future thoughts: Keep filling in plants, add more koi and, oh yeah, there's the "expansion project." We have some leftover liner and well, what else would one do with it, but build another pond a little further up the slope with a stream connecting the two...Little and Lewis warn that water gardens can be addicting...