the little wild kingdom

[flowerbug]

making progress, finished up planting the North Garden and all watered, then finished planting two other gardens inside the fence so now i just have one garden in there to finish planting and another big garden outside the fence to plant and that will be it for planting.

flowers, bees, birdies all happening out there, some harvesting of green onions, strawberries, dill is good (i use it for anything that takes parsely)...

i'm going to take a bit more of a break and then try to see what pictures i can get. trying to capture a birdie in the potbelly stove, think it is a tufted titmouse. nice birdies. i have a pic already that will work if i can't get something better, but i can take some time today and see if it will let me get a better one.

 

[flowerbug]

@digitS' finally got a picture of this birdie. i see it is a bit too dark so i'll lighten it up eventually. Looks like a Tufted Titmouse to me.


Thumbnail version:

Full size picture:

Surprise Toad

 

[flowerbug]

got the box out of the back of the storage shed so i can use it to screen gravel. was thinking i would do some this morning but that didn't happen. watered and puttered around.

inside now, started cleaning up after planting, getting beans and boxes put back where they belong. wish i had more stuff in here to do other than cleaning so i could do that instead.

gardens planted, some will need some replanting due to animal grazing. not sure if i will or won't do that. depends upon how i feel and how involved other projects are and if i forget about it.

 

[flowerbug]

i was hoping after getting some weeding done earlier in the day and then taking a break of getting back out and working on the end of the driveway to get it back into shape again, but Mom had other ideas and didn't want me to do that so i finally got the screen box back out there along the pathway so i could get some of the gravel ouf of that garden. it's only been 10-15 years since i put it there to begin with (which i found out later was a big mistake). if you've ever tried to weed compacted gravel and mostly clay soil you'd know what i mean.

today will be much the same, start off by a few hours of weeding until i get tired or hot enough (won't be too hot to start since it did manage to get down into the high 40sF last night - it was really cold out there when i went out to fill up the birdbaths this morning) and then take a break and then a few hours of screening dirt/gravel.

i only have a few more hills of mostly gravel with a little dirt left to do which is much easier than the gravel i have in some other spots where i've piled it to eventually get screened too. considering how much time i do spend when i'm weeding or working in this garden anyways picking up the gravel out of the garden soil it does end up saving me a lot of time to spend a few hours all at once to screen it out, plus it returns the gravel back to the pathway where it belongs. with the several thousand square feet of gravel pathways and decorative areas and all the edges picking gravel out of gardens is a pretty normal event and i do have to do a lot of it, but in the case of gravel in the dirt in gardens where i'm trying to grow vegetables and also keep them weeded it's pretty hard to use a stirrup hoe for weeding if there is gravel and clay mixed together.

at first when i had all this gravel and dirt mixed together it was from another area where i had to lift and replace the gravel and there was no way i wanted to put the dirt and gravel back where it came from, so i thought i would just put it along this edge and i'd gradually pick the rocks out of the dirt as the rains cleaned it up. well after a year i decided to plant some irises in that instead and it worked nicely enough for a few years until the weeds started getting into those irises and it was really hard to get the weeds out of there if they had a chance to get started. thistles and sow thistles were the worst and what made me decide finally after many years to remove the irises and to get that gravel out of there at last. i did get a lot of it removed last year and the year before but now i'm working on the half that is further back which hasn't had as much effort put into it and rescuing the gravel to be reused for some other place eventually is also worth the time spent. we did pay to have the gravel brought in to begin with and i moved many tons of it so the idea of just leaving it mixed in the garden soil didn't appeal to me either aside from the problems it causes with trying to weed or just the looks of it. nope, it had to come out of there...

it may take a few more rounds of screening eventually to get it really back into shape completely, but not having so much gravel available to easily mix in with the neighboring garden soil will also keep the chaos level down. we'll see how it turns out...

 

[frustratedearthmother]

Wow - that sounds like a huge job!

 

[flowerbug]

Wow - that sounds like a huge job!

it's all a huge job, every day i have some things that must get done and then there are projects where i'm trying to chip away at the messes and to clean things up and even more importantly somehow make it all easier for me to take care of for the longer term. by combining gardens and getting rid of some pathways, that gained me many hours that i used to have to spend weeding a pathway that wasn't really serving any purpose. so putting that space back into vegetable garden space and also making it easier to take care of freed up further time that i can now spend on similar projects in other gardens. it's all things i enjoy, being outside, birdies and just doing whatever. picking gravel is very therapeutic for me, like picking rocks at the beach. think about whatever and just get it done. i'm not at all upset by mundane or tedious tasks as it fits with OCD stuff pretty well.

 

[flowerbug]

finally some rains last night and this morning. it gives me a good excuse to stay in and get some of my mess cleaned up here in my room.

 

[flowerbug]

i've just had some fun watching a killdeer family wandering around the North Garden. two parents plus three babies. in watching them i was able to finally see some behaviors i'd not seen before like the Momma (i'm assuming) calming down and squatting on the ground and then the three babies would all run towards her and hide under. without the window being open i couldn't hear if there was a specific call that she was making at that point or not or if it was a posture driven reaction.

i did get some pictures of her with them underneath or nearby, but none of the pictures are nearly as good as i'd like them to be, but as a reminder of the event they are good enough.

 

[flowerbug]

we've had the killdeer family back wandering around at times and it has been fun to watch them. i'm still mostly taking it easy with some light weeding and watering as needed.

just in case deer can read i should not mention here that they've so far left the garden out back mostly alone - it is also outside the fence. a few wandering tracks through and some small grazing damage at the far end but so far the most of it is ok. hope it will keep going this way.

in the North Garden some of the bean plants may survive. i'm keeping it watered just enough to make sure any survivors have a chance, but i also need to get into the whole garden for weeding and cleanup. that is next week's task.

 

[flowerbug]

finished weeding and cleaning up the North Garden this morning. just in time for a tour/visit from a few friends from the garden club.

deer really made a mess of things in there plus it was almost completely covered in purselane and some oxalis. looks nice now. i should go out and get a few pictures while it looks as it does. the positive part is that the creeping thyme is still looking good and filling in even more. can't wait until that is done as each part of the edge it covers is that much less that needs to be weeded as much.