The Elusive Mr. Cardinal

Finally, I snapped your picture, you camera-shy little cardinal!

First I'd like to thank everyone who visited and left comments on my last post. It's nice to connect with others in the gardening community, and I love visiting different garden sites, both the veggie and floral kind. I'm drawn to the floral posts because I have only a few blooms in my garden, and I'm living vicariously through all of you who grow such beautiful flowers!

Bless my backyard neighbors. Our backyards face each other, and on their deck they have recently installed a bird feeder. Right now I'm sitting at my dining room table, typing away and looking out the back window, admiring the parade of birds that visit their feeder. I've hesitated to install one myself, as I grow vegetables in containers and don't want to provide more encouragement to the birds or squirrels that there is food on my deck. My neighbors' feeder has welcomed yellow finches, sparrows, blackbirds, birds that look like finches with red heads, and cardinals, my most favorite bird. I'm not stealthy enough to get close to the window and take pictures without scaring them away, and I need a better zoom, but I did manage to take pictures of this beautiful male cardinal. I've seen a female cardinal too, and with their pink-orange beaks I think they're just as pretty as the bright red males. Another reason I'm grateful for the neighbors' feeder is that it provides hours of entertainment to my cat, who sits at the back window watching the birds all day long.

Can I complain for a just a teensy bit now? Ugh, gone are the cool spring temperatures and beautiful, sunny days. This week it's muggy, rainy, and warmer. The East Coast is finally getting all that rain that hit the ret of the country last week. At least Mother Nature is taking care of watering the plants. The warmer temps mean it may be time to finish hardening off the seedlings and get them out on the deck, which will be my task for the weekend.

p.s. Check out this post by Julia at Polka Dot Galoshes about some determined birds in her garden.

In Bloom This May

While I anxiously wait for my vegetable plants to bloom so I can play matchmaker and pollinate the blooms, I have these friendly plants and flowers to keep me company:

The azaleas are finally in bloom, a few weeks late thanks to a cooler 2011 spring compared to last year.

hostas, ~April 15

 hostas, April 24

hostas now

Look at the progress the hostas made! I went into the backyard a week ago and was amazed at how quickly they grew, seemingly overnight. So hard to believe that just a month ago they were little shoots barely poking out of the ground. I feel corny as I'm typing this, but isn't nature amazing?

Next to the hostas I have a Heuchera "Beaujolais" plant. The leaf colors are a pretty deep red color, like the wine it's named after! It needs a little more sun than the hostas. It's in a pot, and I can move it around as needed. I repotted it last year, and it's doing well again this year, so I think I'll need to relocate it into a bigger pot soon. Supposedly these leaves are supposed to get silvery, but mine never have. I think this plant would go nicely with a lovely Camembert.

Lastly, I added some dianthus to the pot of snapdragons in the front yard. They filled the pot out better and added to the bright red and pink colors of the snapdragons. 

That's it for floral blooms this month. The hydrangeas haven't bloomed yet, but I hope to have pictures of those flowers soon.

In the Berry Patch

strawberries 4-24-11, originally uploaded by Bumble Lush.

aerial view of the bed

the net

First berry!

A few more details about my little berry patch this year-- Last year we tried growing strawberries for the first time. I say “tried” because things didn’t go so well. Some of the plants produced small, bitter berries, and the birds and squirrels ate most of the ones that were left.

This year we’re trying again. We bought plants about three weeks ago and put them in a raised bed that we used for squash last year. We thought this would give the berries more room to spread out, and we rigged a net over the top of it to keep birds and squirrels out. Bees and other small pollinators can still get through the holes, and we have a way of lifting some of the net to reach the plants and pick fruit.

Some of the plants have blooms already and we picked the first strawberry a few days ago! (I’ve been playing with the photo editing software to get those faded edges, but the blurriness is total operator error).

Do you grow strawberries, and if so, what are your tips for growing productive plants?