Note to future me #2

You may have done some record keeping in 2018 you were (or maybe still are?) proud of, but you really need to remember to note where you planted certain flower seeds if you haven’t figured out a good way to start them indoors without artificial lighting again and decide to direct sow.  If only for the possible amusement of what flowers grow nowhere near the spot you think (or even know) you planted them.

It just might save you a plant ID search when it’s growing but not quite obvious yet since we get so many great volunteers here.  That’s time better spent doing other things.

Another happy surprise we had last year hidden in chaos.
Posted in Indoor Musings, Plants, Progress, Stories

Let your garden grow

Posted on by Lily

Sometimes you don’t have a lot of time or resources to do what you want.  Life happens and postpones things.  You just can’t make up your mind.  Mistakes can be made even by experienced gardeners that cause setbacks as well.

Most of what we have done last year and so far this year hasn’t felt like enough even though I’d be a dunce not to acknowledge what has changed and acknowledge we really couldn’t do much more with the time and resources we had to spare.   Continue reading “Let your garden grow” →

Although they do enjoy perching on many plants in our backyard, they also love the clothesline.
Posted in Creatures

A short tale of Damsels and Dragons

Posted on by Lily

Despite knowing that Gardner has many wetlands, ponds and waterways, because we don’t really see any of it from even the upper story of our home, you wouldn’t consider our home sited terribly near any of them.  Yet if you look at one map that shows various water features, there’s quite a bit in our portion of the Greater Gardner Area, especially wetlands to the south and west.

We're in that area marked
The light blue patterned bits demarcate wetlands.  We live near Greenwood Hill.

Continue reading “A short tale of Damsels and Dragons” →

Posted in Creatures, Oh noes!

We need a dust bath decoy

Posted on by Lily

I am an idiot.  Of all the things to forget about with gardening, I forgot about sparrows and dust baths (aka sand baths).

If you don’t know about this habit, the crazy almost rolling popping they do in such cases is them trying to fluff their feathers out to get the dust as near to their skin as possible.  The dust on their skin helps act as a deterrent to pests that would live there and annoy and possibly sicken the birds.

So if you see something like that, the bird hasn’t gone mad.  A cluster of them fluffing and flinging doesn’t mean they are a performance group.  It’s just self care. Continue reading “We need a dust bath decoy” →