Gardening — Here in the Bonny Glen

Archive for the 'Gardening' Category

June 4, 2010 @ 7:34 am | Filed under: Gardening,Photos

1 comment

April 13, 2010 @ 7:56 pm | Filed under: Crows,Gardening,Nature Study

It has been troubling me in a quiet way that I’ve not seen many bees in the garden this spring: an occasional lone native bee, one carpenter bee, and that’s it. But just now I checked my archives and I see I was worried about the same thing in late April last year. The carpenter bee appeared in early May, and it wasn’t until mid-May that the honeybees began to dominate my posts and pictures.

Whew, then.

I did have sunflowers blooming last April, but the birds had planted those in February: overspill from the feeder. This year the feeder is in a different spot, shadier, unwatered, and I had to plant the sunflowers myself. They’re coming up nicely, taller now than Wonderboy, not as tall as Beanie.

The Monarchs arrived in late May, not long after I planted my anniversary milkweed. The milkweed is blooming nicely now, despite hordes of yellow aphids, but we’ve seen no trace of caterpillar nor butterfly yet.

Also in bloom: pincushion flower (just barely), nasturtiums galore, enough sweet alyssum to supply Rilla with endless bridal bouquets for her daily weddings, geraniums in red and pink, cornflowers, bougainvillea, ice plants in red and white and magenta, snapdragons, brown-eyed susans, thyme (whoops), cilantro (whoops), the cooking sage (whoops), and the other kind of salvia, loads of it, waiting for the bees.

Goldfinches, bushtits, purple finches, sparrows, hummingbirds, a phoebe, and the marvelous crows: our April birds. We saw a scrub jay on the sidewalk today, a block from home. I love jays, the cheeky, arrogant things. I wish they’d visit our yard more often.

Tags: bees

4 comments

December 29, 2009 @ 5:42 pm | Filed under: Advent & Christmas,Family,Gardening

purplebells

Well, it has been a funny old Christmas in these parts. About half of us, including me, were sick with a rather vicious bug on Christmas Eve & Christmas Day—fever, chills, aches, cough—and others succumbed over the weekend. Today, Tuesday, the fifth day of Christmas, most of us have climbed back to normal. I’m sitting in the playroom watching three girls ride scooters in rings around the patio, while half a dozen sparrows scold them from the bushes. The feeder sat empty since Wednesday (you can tell I was really sick) and the birds are very happy to have their feast before them at last.

ribbons

On Christmas Eve, around light-twinkling time, I was starting to feel a little sorry for myself, knowing I’d miss Mass the next morning. Then I thought about Billy and started writing the post I’ve been carrying in my heart for a very long time, and that snapped everything back into perspective. We had a lovely Christmas, fever and chills nothwithstanding. Happy children, the Babe in the manger, candy canes, beeswax candles tied with red ribbon, sparkly lights on the neighbor’s palm trees, a snuggly blanket and a little girl at just the right age for that stack of Jan Brett books she found in the basket. Scott took the healthy kids to church on Christmas morning and I stayed home with the little ones. Later he made a ham dinner. A good day. They are all good days, even the hard ones.

Today I feel almost back to normal, except for the lingering cough. I wandered into the backyard this morning and started pulling weeds, and suddenly there were pruners in my hand and I was whacking away at three months’ worth of neglect. I chopped the overgrown salvia bushes back to reasonable clumps, and beneath their straggly branches we found legions of seedlings: columbine and nasturtium, mostly.

seedling

And in the veggie patch the delightful surprise of a tomato plant and some tender cilantro seedlings. It’s all looking very springy back there and I know that must sound so strange to all my friends in the wintry parts of the world. Three years here, and this climate is still a wonder to me.

Against the back wall, a geranium is blooming: here’s where I find my Christmas red and green.

redandgreen

Now it’s later, and Scott is chopping potatoes for soup. It got cold here fast when night fell, chilling my toes, but the girls are still out there riding. Rose’s Christmas present was a new bike, inspiring a new passion for all wheeled conveyances, it seems.

Whack, whack, the knife on the cutting board. Shrrr, shrrr, the wheels on the cement. “You know what just occurred to me?” asks Scott. “Meryl Streep really did have to learn to chop onions at a dizzying speed.” He’s thinking of Julie & Julia, and he’s right, that was one of the scenes where I forgot I was watching an actress play Julia Child. Tonight, after the kids are down, I think we’ll watch part three of Lark Rise to Candleford, which we started last night. I’m so enjoying seeing Lydia Bennet of the BBC Pride & Prejudice all grown up and doing well. (Though I wish she’d spend less time riding horses with the Squire. Worrisome.)

That’s the fifth day of Christmas in these parts.

6 comments

October 3, 2009 @ 6:30 am | Filed under: Gardening,Photos

capehoneysuckle

This is one of those weeks during which I filled up my drafts folder with fragments of posts but never had time to finish anything. We’re having such perfect weather here, perfect even by San Diego standards: brisk, not chilly, not hot. Glorious. I’ve been working on the garden again after neglecting it during the sweltering months. I love how a garden reinvents itself every couple of months.

oldpod

Looks like our last monarchs have left us for the winter. Early last week I counted four caterpillars and the usual flurry of butterflies. This week, none. The milkweed is stripped to the bone. The yard seems so still now, so hushed. This is an illusion, since the salvia is thick with bees (hooray!) and the finches and sparrows gossip all day long.

salviabee

Our big backyard excitement this week was the sighting of a number of very small birds in the bushes. (The salvia and cape honeysuckle are bushes now.) They looked a lot like sparrows, but they were too small. Tiny little things! And they had gray backs, not brown. They weren’t juncos—too big, not gray all over. Going by size, I’d have said chickadees, but again, the coloring was all wrong. They startled up from the bushes to the back fence and then to the trees on the other side, chattering agitatedly. When I came out with a camera later, they were gone.

An inquiry on Twitter and Facebook resulted in an ID within minutes. (Thanks, Helen R.) Our little visitors were bushtits. This caused a flurry of hilarious comments on my Facebook page and I suppose it’s going to attract all manner of unsavory search engine traffic now, but this is a brand new bird for us: an exciting sighting.

I went out early this morning hoping they would return, but they have moved on. Our hummingbirds never leave us, though. This fellow kept buzzing my head when I was trying to get my camera to focus on the bees.

salviablur

The other day we were about to prune the flowertips off the neglected basil when suddenly we spied another kind of visitor. He’s so cleverly colored it’s a wonder I didn’t prune off his head.

green

When we left Virginia (three years ago last week), I asked my friends Sarah and Lisa to dig up some of my flowers and move them to their yards. Our house hadn’t sold yet, and I had worked hard on my perennial bed and didn’t want my beloved posies to go to ruin while we waited (and waited, and waited) for a buyer. “You should especially grab the milkweed,” I urged, “and the asters.” Those asters were the stars of my autumn garden and their starry display had been the setting for a spectacular farewell party for ‘our’ butterflies the day before we rolled out of town.

asters

Now those asters and that milkweed live in Sarah’s yard a few blocks away, and every fall I watch for the photos of the monarch gathering. The time has come again. Our borrowed garden here in San Diego is a tangle of pink cosmos, blue salvia, and orange cape honeysuckle, and I can look upon my dear old asters in Sarah’s yard without the ache I felt the first couple of autumns. But oh how I ache for the dear friend herself, and those bonny lasses of hers! Thank goodness for blogs, during this season of little ones who make phone calls a near impossibility.

littlesun

2 comments

July 23, 2009 @ 6:18 am | Filed under: Butterflies,Gardening,Nature Study,Photos

How many times have you read The Very Hungry Caterpillar aloud?

It’s got to be in the hundreds for me. Seems like every single one of my kids has had a time when that book was the favorite above all others.

But in all these years, I’ve never actually seen a real caterpillar egg—until now.

egg

Can you see it? The little white dot on the underside of the leaf, quite near the stem. I watched the butterfly lay this egg and immediately afterward I ran inside for the camera, so this photo was taken no more than two minutes into the egg’s existence.

I hope the other caterpillars don’t eat that leaf. They are munching away and growing quite fat. We’ve counted up to eleven at one time but it’s likely we’re missing a good many. Counting callerpidders has become Rilla’s favorite thing to do. Mine too!

duo

Butterfly watch: two monarchs, a tiger swallowtail, several painted ladies, and assorted sulphurs and cabbage whites. Also a possible viceroy sighting but Jane, my resident expert, wasn’t there to confirm.

As for our blue flower…Jenn, I was sure it was a cornflower too, but the rest of them are coming up—

pink