Sunshine! Blue Skies! 60 Degrees!

For the last few weeks it has been rainy, icy at times, foggy and overcast all of the time. I was starting to think I might have SAD and need a sun lamp. It doesn't help that it is pitch black outside by 5 PM. I took off work a little early and took Quickbeam outside and lo and behold we saw blue skies. So it was time to do an inventory.

I know that everyone is probably sick of pictures of my phlox, but is still plugging away and I am extremely curious how long it is going to keep blooming. There are a few blooms on each of the plants. It also looks like there are a few buds opening up on the Alyssum plant.

Imagine my surprise to see a dandelion blooming in the yard. I have never been one of those that has to have a weed-free yard and I have always enjoyed seeing cheerful dandelion blooms.

There is a large bloom with probably 20 plus mushrooms in the front flower bed. Since I was carrying Quickbeam (and the ground was wet) I couldn't get down to get a really good picture. My camera lens seemed to be kind of fuzzy.
The lack of leaves helped to expose the bird's nest in my crepe myrtle tree. I tried to avoid getting too close to it this summer.

So that was our expedition today. It felt really good to get outside and get some fresh air. I let Quickbeam run around for awhile and she enjoyed the time outside also. Keeping her from eating leaves and grass definately keeps me busy. :)

Bird Bath

I saw today what was possibly the coolest thing I have ever seen in my garden today. I'm going to try and post a video that I took of it.

Here's what happened:

I was walking by the window in the living room and happened to glance out at my pond. I noticed that there were a lot of little sparrows (that's a guess, I haven't ID'd them) landing around the edge of the pond. And then I noticed what they were doing, they were hopping down on the lily pads and taking a bath on them. I had never seen birds do anything like that with either of my ponds. I would imagine if the birds had been any bigger it wouldn't have worked because their weight would have made the lilypad sink. So since I had my trusty video camera I tried to capture it. The video isn't too good for these reasons:

• My vido camera isn't that high quality, it's a small handheld that is meant to be very portable
• I had to reduce quality on it when I shrank it for a smaller file size
• It was taken through the screen on the living room window
• It is kind of shaky because I am holding it

I have tried previously to move to get a better picture angle, but the birds notice the movement and fly away. So I did the best that I could with it. I'm not sure if you will even be able to see them, they were pretty small.

P.S. I looked at it when it was posted and it was pretty blurry so I don't think you can see them. It did however remind me that I need to pull out the horsetail so that I have a better view of the pond surface from the house. I need to anyway because it is shooting out runners under the gravel as far as three feet away. :P

Spiders

As I was walking by the bushes in front of the house, this spider web caught my eye. I'm not sure how well it will translate in the picture, but it is half of an orb, with anchor points around it. It was such an interesting architectural design I had to take a picture of it. If you look carefully at it, you can see the spider sitting in the middle of it.
I am not typically one that has a fear of spiders, but the sight of this behemoth on our screen (outside) about gave me a heart attack. The leg span on this thing was about as as big around as an apple (lousy comparison but about the best I could come up with). The thought of having this sneaking under the door and running around the house about has me breaking out in hives.

At Work

There are holly bushes in front of the building that I work in. Some mornings when I come into work and there is a heavy dew, I notice that there are spiderwebs all over them, as seen below. In the middle of each web there is a tunnel, and in each tunnel is one of the spiders that are seen above. I've always been fascinated by them, and finally got the work digital camera out and got a picture of one. And then spent the rest of the morning scratching all over at imaginary spiders. ;)

Guests

When I got home from work today, Quickbeam and I went outside with our camera to see what we could find. We took some pictures of a new mushroom that looked like a doppler radar tower that appeared in the backyard.



We snapped a couple of pictures of my rain lily that *finally* started blooming.

We also got a picture of the Betty Corning clematis that is blooming.

Then I decided to go over to the crepe myrtle tree and get a picture of its new blooms.

When I got close to it, this is what I found:

There was a bird there that took off as soon as I got close. I didn't see any eggs inside, so I'm hoping I didn't scare it off. It makes me happy to know that it has made a home in our tree. I'll be keeping an eye out for it.

Bugs

This has to be one of the buggiest summers that I have experienced in a long time. There are dead june bugs littering the walkways around the house. There are spiders with webs all over the bushes. There's a huge thing that is slightly smaller than a rhinocerous beetle that is on my front rose bush. There are japanese beetles all over the rose bushes. There's a dead katydid on my back porch. Work is a similar graveyard for insects. They get under the front glass double doors and wander through the building. One of the rhinocerous beetle thingies got in and was walking IN FRONT OF MY OFFICE. I am feeling very creepy crawly now.

Gardening

We were able to get out this weekend and work on finishing up our gardening efforts for the spring. It might seem that it's a bit early to be finishing up since it's only mid-April, but today's 80 degree weather is an indicator of what we'll be getting soon. We want to get the heavy lifting and work done now while it's still pleasant outside. Through the summer I'm sure I'll still be picking up plants here and there, but no major landscaping efforts.

We started out the day by going to Across the Pond and getting some fish for the little pond that we're putting in. We picked out two Sarassa Comets and two Calico Fantails. I picked up a couple more plants at the nursery by our house - some purple Sweet Alyssum and two more varities of thyme. One of the thyme is a light variegated one and the other is Elfin Thyme which has tiny little leaves. I also got the bigger plants that I got for around the pond put in. We have an Umbrella Palm, Dwarf Papyrus and some Horsetail Rushes. So the pond is basically finished for now, we just have to let it grow in.

Mawavi spent his time working on cleaning up the beds in front of the house. I had planted a lot of perennials there last year, but they just didn't look right. A lot of them tend to look a bit weedy, and it makes it look like we haven't been taking care of our yard. So we moved most of the perennials into the back yard flower beds and put down some new mulch in the front yard. Coincidentally while I was planting the perennials in the back flower bed I almost stepped on our backyard visitor pictured at the top and almost gave myself a heart attack. He didn't seem to be too concerned about me though. We also got a new trellis and moved my Betty Corning clematis back to grow on it. It had started totally dwarfing the little trellis that it was on and growing all in the rose bush. So now it has plenty of room to grow in. So overall the front of the house is looking much better now.

So that takes care of our major gardening efforts this spring. Now we get to have fun with the challenge of keeping them all alive this summer. :)

Rain

Alabama has been in a drought status since las year, so I should be grateful for the rain. But how can I be when it made me miss out on a trip to Bennet's Nursery?We woke up this morning to pouring rain, thunder and lightening and hail in some places. The wind was gusting up to 40 mph. Alas, so much for planting things today. I did wait for a lull in the storm and ran outside to take some pictures.

In other news I have finally been able to attract the elusive garden gnome into my back yard. I've tried to carefully cultivate the proper habitat, but was unsuccessful. Imagine my surprise when I found this sturdy specimen under my rosebush.

Normally I am not much of one for garden ornamentation, but I've always liked the campiness of garden gnomes. My ultimate quest is to find one reading a book. Maybe if I left a few small tomes laying around in the back yard....