Daily Archives: May 23, 2020

A Walk Through My Garden and Other Things

Some people say the time is going slow for them during this quarantine time. I have to say time has been absolutely flying for me during these beautiful Spring months. Where has March, April and May gone?  My three favorite months are almost a thing of the past for another year.  I’ve tried to enjoy each day as it comes and goes. It has been a cold Spring, so I’m hoping warmer days are coming.

I’ve knit several pairs of stockings,  pieced four quilts and almost have one of them quilted and bound.  We’ve painted a bedroom and organized another and can finally see the bed again after David stacked all my quilts on an old trunk and in a closet.   I’ve planted tomatoes.  I bought twenty packets of flower seeds which I don’t know why I did because we have very little space in the garden for any more flowers.

We started raising more chicks. Here they are huddled under their heat lamp despite the fact we bought this…..

A heater that simulates a mother hen.  If you’ve ever felt the underneath of a chicken when she is setting you will know just how warm it is.  Anyway, the chicks can get under this and feel like they are underneath a hen. You can actually buy feathers that fit on this to make it feel more like a hen, but we didn’t go that far.  The cone on top is to keep them from trying to sit on the heater and pooping all over it.  You can just see the corner of the cone on the above picture.  The chicks were just getting use to the heater and still were under the heat lamp, but I’ve seen them all go underneath so I know they are using it.

Soon the chicks will be big enough to join the big girls.  That one in the front is the talker who demands her cracked corn even to jumping up and pecking the bowl of it I am holding.  She is very demanding.

The chickens have been providing us with a lot of eggs.

They all usually lay in the same nest even though they have five to choose from.

Because we have very little room left to plant my seeds, we are using these boxes which are really the steps of our old back deck turned upside down. Just the right size to plant flower seeds in.

This is my dog gardener. At least she thinks she is. She has dug up some of my flower beds. I think she was looking for moles. I can’t get angry with her about it because I always have called the back garden the dogs’ garden.  Mostly they keep the moles and snakes out for which I am very happy.   They’re good dogs.

Now the garden is busting out all over. My very favorite flowers, the peonies are starting to bloom.

Isn’t this so pretty?

I can never get enough peonies.

The snowball bush is, alas, almost gone for another year.

It was so loaded with snowballs the branches were bent down.

It covered one whole end of our porch.

David’s grandmother gave us a start of her snowball bush years ago and from that we now have two snowball bushes.  I always think of his grandmother when I look at our snowball bush.  She was a gardener, too.

Now the snowballs fall like snow all over the ground.

Makes me a little sad to see them gone for another year.  I hope whoever lives in this house after us will get the joy out of the snowball bush that I do.

The honeysuckle by the pool house is blooming the best it’s ever bloomed. The hummingbirds love this.  David saw our first hummingbird on this  bush this week.

A hollyhock I found in an abandoned house’s yard one year.  It keeps coming up although I forget about it from year to year until it appears.  Last year it had so many flowers on it.

David’s grandmother’s poppies bloom every year and are spreading all over.

Then there’s the iris. What can I say about iris?  I’ve planted hundreds of them through the years and they keep multiplying and spreading. It’s one of my top five favorite flowers because they are so easy to grow. We mow them down every year and they keep coming back year after year.

I have several shades of purple.

 

David found these in a little woods by the place where he worked and dug up a few and brought them home to me and they have multiplied over the years.

Soon the Day Lilies will be blooming. There is always something growing in my garden.

Someone asked me years ago if I do a lot of weeding and I told them that I don’t.  I just plant a lot of flowers and plant them close together. They smother out the weeds after a while. I do have a lot of Creeping Charley in my yard, but it compliments my plants so I leave it alone.  Some call it a weed, but it has the cutest, little blue flowers on it and it keeps the soil moist beneath the plants so it’s doing its job.  It is from the mint family. Mint is very invasive. I saw where Creeping Charley was actually for sale on some garden pages. I wouldn’t recommend it unless you don’t care if it creeps everywhere. It’s nearly impossible to get rid of so you either learn to live with it or it will give you high blood pressure.

Sometimes I miss things in my garden if I don’t walk around it every day.  I had forgotten about this salvia. It is so dark and brilliant a color. It just glows.

Paired with purple and yellow Iris, it makes a stunning picture in the garden.

I could go on and on about the flowers and I haven’t shown half of them so I will save that for another day.

Molly says, “Hello.”  She enjoyed having David home for six weeks. Ralph Lauren opened his stores again this week, so he’s back to work.  I miss him.   Before, I was use to being home alone for days while he worked, but I got use to having him home so I was not happy to see him go back to work, but he loves his job and it keeps him busy and active.  So I had to get use to being alone again and I will.  Hope you all are finding things to keep you busy and occupied during this quarantine.  Many are not use to having so many hours in a day to fill that isn’t a job. Me, I’ve never had any problem finding things to do. I can honestly say I have never been bored in my life. There’s too many wonderful things in this world to discover and enjoy.   So I hope you are  discovering a wonderful world around you whether it be your family, your garden, your hobbies, books or anything else.  This time will pass and will become part of all our histories so we may as well enjoy it. Bye.