Our Garden Dirt: Flying Things In the Garden!

Thursday, June 12, 2008

I was out in the garden this morning by 7:00. I wanted to beat the heat. Unfortunately, that meant I had to deal with an insane amount of mosquitoes. It rained most of yesterday (thank God because we really needed the rains we've had this week), so everything was wet and the mosquitoes were everywhere. I spent a total of 3 hrs out there and that was my limit. The pests were awful and it was really humid. I have quite a few plants that I need to get planted in the baby garden but I am still having trouble trying to decide exactly where I want them and how I want it all laid out. I planted 8 Pink Sparkler Cleome, 3 Pink Jacobinia, 3 First Love Dianthus, 1 Karley Rose Pennisetum (Fountain Grass), and 1 August Beauty Gardenia. Bruce helped me dig up 5 of the Marcia Faye Daylilies that I want to move out of the baby garden (wrong color and there are 15 of them). I spent alot of time moving pots around, moving the statuary around. You can see in the photo below, this is my chair where I sit and stare (contemplating) at this garden. Then I'll get up and move something and then go back and sit and stare again. I cannot even tell you how many hours I have spent doing this since the beginning of this venture. I want so badly to dig it all up and start again. I know I wrote about all of that in a previous post so I won't go on and on about it now. So, I still have 3 Lullaby Daylilies, 1 Pink Muhly Grass, 1 White Buddlea and 2 Conversation Azaleas to plant. Hopefully I'll get them done this evening. I have book work to do the rest of today. There were many things flying in and around the garden this morning, mosquitoes, dragonflies, bees, butterflies, birds and hang gliders. No, wait, what??? Yes, you read it right! While I was out in the garden, I heard this very loud noise overhead and couldn't figure out what it was. A UFO perhaps or maybe a very rare giant bird! I looked up to see one of them motorized hang glider type thingys going right over top the garden. A minute later a second one went by. I can honestly say, I have never experienced that before. When living in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, one day my husband and I were out in the yard when a hot air balloon went over our yard so close to the ground that it was hitting the trees. Nothing much surprises me anymore! Here I took a photo. Is it really a hang glider or is it a UFO, a rare large bird or really it even could have been a very large mosquito (they get bigger every day!)???I have to tell you about our feline garden buddy Timmy. We found him as a tiny kitten out in the garden one cold night the day after Thanksgiving in 2005. Bruce heard him crying and investigated. We found this very tiney, forlorn kitty and brought him inside. He had an injured leg and hopped around on 3 legs. We were afraid if we took him to the Humane Society he would end up being put to sleep. We already had 3 cats and never planned on having that many. We are just so soft hearted when it comes to animals. All 4 of our cats we rescued and 1 of our dogs. So we decided to keep him and nurse him back to health. Our decision at the time was that he would not really be "our cat". He would stay outside and we would feed him and if he left, that would be that. BUT, he stayed around and we let him sleep on our back porch at night. Then we'd let him come in and sleep in the house when it was cold. The end of it is that he is a very spoiled indoor/outdoor cat and we love him immensely! We had him fixed and he is always current on all his vaccinations. We had named him Tiny Tim after little Tiny Tim in the Scrooge story that had the crutches. Anyway, Timmy loves when we are outside in the garden. He hangs around and even digs holes for us. (Hmmm). This morning when I was out there he was being so darn cute and of course I just happened to have the camera there with me. So the following are some shots of him, just being Timmy. Here he won't look at me, acts like he wants nothing to do with me, yet follows me everywhere I go. Silly kid!He decided to climb up on one of the tiny wrought iron chairs that we have in the Baby Garden. Only problem was he couldn't quite get turned around and get comfortable.Okay, so after awhile he figured, maybe this wasn't such a good idea. It's not that comfortable and I don't quite fit!

He settled instead for a tree stump that fit his feline spread much more comfortably! Ha!

Oh but laying here amongst the 'Marcia Faye' Daylilies is even nicer. He is quite a character!

In a post earlier this week I told you about my pots or container gardens that I did. Well, here are some photos of the one that I like the best, I think. The other two are identical to each other and so far I haven't gotten any good pictures of either of them. They are in more sun and in the evening it's been raining so it's been hard to get a decent photo of them. I am not really satisfied with those two and may make some changes with them. The pot above includes 2 Variegated Dianella (Flax Lily), 2 different Coleous, Black Alocasia (Elephant Ear), a rather large Variegated Rose Scented Geranium and some Maidenhair Fern to trail over the side.What do you think?