Deer and great expectations

Last fall I planted something like 200 bulbs in my front yard. I waited all winter, hoping that my bulbs were doing what they do to get ready for the show come spring. A few weeks ago, I was excited to see some of the plants emerging from the soil. And then the deer struck. They nibbled most of the emerging plants down to nibs, and here is an example of the results:

There have been a few survivors:

But it's nothing like the show I was hoping for:

The few that made it are very pretty, and I've been enjoying them. It's more like a display of 10, rather than 200, but I'll take what I can get:

In the back yard, the wild violets are blooming. They're some of my favorites:

My garlic is a success so far, something between 25-30 bulbs have come up from the fall planting:

And here is the first of my asparagus spears:

Over the weekend, I finally spun up some of the fiber I dyed with natural dyes a few months ago, this is roving dyed with pokeberries and marigolds, ready for spinning:

And here is a skein of yarn spun from the roving I dyed with cleavers root, it's a very pretty salmon color:

My expectations for a glorious spring floral display didn't pan out this year, but my yarns are colorful, and I'm excited about the garlic and the asparagus, and ready for the planting of everything else to begin as soon as the frosts pass.

Can you believe these gorgeous colors are from natural dyes? The yarn on the left gets its color from cleavers root, the middle gets its color from marigolds, and the right gets its hue from pokeberries:

Our new rose is blooming!

We have a few rose bushes in the front yard. My son added a new one this year that he saw in a catalogue and liked. It's a Dick Clark grandiflora. We got it as bare-root stock, so it took a while for it to wake up out of dormancy. Two buds were just about to bloom about a week ago or so, but just before they opened, some deer came along and nipped every bud and bloom off of the roses. That was frustrating, we were anxious to finally see the flowers.

Well, the Dick Clark quickly put out another two buds, and they've bloomed! The blossoms are beautiful and have a mildly spicy scent (click on any of the pictures to see them larger, then hit back arrow to return to blog):

It's so pretty!

Our Princess de Monaco has one bloom right now. It's also lovely:

At the garden center earlier in the season, I found these delightful petunias. I lost the little tag, so I don't know the variety, but I love the colors:

Here they are cascading out of a planter:

What are some of your favorites from the garden this year?

Finally! Wintergreen!

I've been searching the wilds for wintergreen plants for a couple of years now. I haven't had any luck. This year I broke down and ordered some from a nursery. I placed the order at the end of winter, but they wouldn't ship until this month.

A couple of weeks ago, I was informed by the nursery that their wintergreen wasn't doing very well. I thought that my search for wintergreen would have to continue, but today I received two wintergreen plants in the mail!! They were a smaller size than the ones I ordered, but I was credited the difference in price.

Here is one of my wintergreen plants in its new home, I'm so excited!:

While out snapping pictures of the wintergreen, I noticed that my weigelas are sporting more blossoms than the last time I looked. I have two kinds of weigela - don't ask me what their names are, I don't remember. I just think of them as the light ones and the dark ones.

Here is a sample of the light one with its light, variegated foliage against pretty, dusty-pink flowers:

And here is the darker one, with its bolder foliage and darker blossoms:


I also have a rare cat plant sprouting from a pot on my porch:

Here's a shot of the two weigelas together:

The cat plant is very hardy and this particular variety is dog-resistant:

Happy gardening!

Everything's coming up roses!

My son and my husband and I planted three rose bushes out front. It's been cloudy and rainy, but when the sun came out for a few brief minutes, I sent my son out to take a few photos:


We put them up by the mailbox, behind the lilies. We had to raise the bed a bit for the roses, so I hauled a bunch of stones from the back (left behind by the ice-age glaciers and piled up by the farmer that used to farm these environs) to ring the area and hold in the extra soil.

My son and daughter gave me these two beautiful hanging baskets for Mother's Day. They look so pretty along with my young azaleas:

There is supposed to be a hard freeze tonight, so in honor of Mother's Day, everyone will have to help me cover tender plants in my gardens this evening. Hooray for Mother's Day!

Signs of spring!

The Bees are out:

And the crocus are blooming:

In purple:

And white:

And yellow:

My garden, such as it is...

I had such plans for gardening this year. I was going to grow mostly veggies in the plot at the back of the yard, and prepared a new plot in a half-circle design in which to plant herbs.

Well, we left for our marvelous vacation at a bad time garden-wise, and in the rush of a million things to do (one of us didn't have a passport until three days before we left because this particular person had to send in more proof of citizenship before the passport was processed - slowly; and we had a large, dead tree taken down, the aftermath of which had to be cleaned up; etc., etc...), the grand garden plans became drastically altered.

The back garden plot didn't get turned or planted, and the new plot was barely prepared enough for me to throw seedlings into mere days before we left. The result:

Our only garden plot, a haphazard mix of herbs and veggies, before:

and now:

The veggies consist of four varieties of tomato - three of which we started from seed - peppers, cucumbers, zucchini, and I just planted some peas and some bush beans, as an experiment. They are sprouting as we speak and it will be interesting to see if they produce anything before the frost sets in.

The herbs here are medicinal, evening primrose, elecampane, holy basil, motherwort, calendula, and sage. The sage, of course, is also culinary, and we have a few other culinary herbs in pots around the patio.

In one large pot we have two types of basil and a pineapple sage. Here's the pineapple sage, not only is it pretty, it smells just like pineapple:

I also have a couple of gladiolas growing alongside the patio which are beginning to bloom:

Here's a bud ready to unfurl:

One of my favorite medicinal herbs that I'm growing is the holy basil it smells wonderful, I wish the picture was scratch and sniff:

And, of course, the calendula is always so bright and sunny. It just started blooming in the last week or so. It'll continue to bloom until the frost finally takes it:

Unfortunately, the Japanese beetles have been a huge problem this year. Whole trees have been denuded by the pesky buggers. They really like my evening primrose, too, darn it:

The garden plot in the back has reverted to the wild, but wonderful things can be found there if you take the time to look:

The black-eyed Susan is the state flower of Maryland, where I grew up. It's nice to have it make an appearance back there:

These tiny beauties, baby's breath, are a remnant of some mixed wildflower seeds I spread out back there several years ago, they were the only things to grow from the seeds I spread:

And so goes the gardening this year. I had such grand plans, the half-circle herb garden laid out so nicely, and wonderful veggies in the back. The reality turned out a bit hurried and mixed up, but there's always next year!

I've already got my eye on several varieties of heirloom seeds I want to try out in the back, and I'm planning on doing my little medicinal herb garden right, and with a few more varieties of herbs.

I was able to plant a small patch on the side of the house with some yarrow and two types of lavendar, which are doing very well and I hope they overwinter and come back in the spring.

In gardening, hope springs eternal.

In which we go on an ADVENTURE

My daughter and doggie and I headed out into the wild for an adventure. My daughter claimed that she had found a bubbling spring several months ago and she wanted to take me to it.

We headed out into the old farmer's field whose last crop of corn was harvested seven years ago. It's now full of goldenrod (note, you may click on any of the pictures to see a larger version and then click on the back arrow to return to the blog):


A brave aster rose above:

We walked along a deer path while we could:

And still we were swallowed by the goldenrod:

In the field we spotted a garden spider busy on her web:

And a mantis with one green eye and one black eye:


Here's one with both eyes the same color:

When the deer path petered out, we made our own:

When we finally reached the forest, we were met by the muddy, upturned roots:

Of a new-fallen tree:

At times the forest gave way to swampy areas inhabited by tall, reedy grasses. Here are a few at the edge of a much larger patch:

A raccoon had crossed the still-muddy bottom of a drying creek bed and left his prints:

Bark on some of the larger trees formed interesting patterns:

Moss peeked through the detritus covering the forest floor here and there:


As did other interesting things:

My handsome doggie always loves to go for walks in the woods:

This mushroom looks as though something tried to eat it:

The colors of fall aren't up in the trees yet, you have to look around more closely to see the colorful bounty the plants have worked all summer to produce:

A large tree fall. We've seen this one before:

When we emerged from the forest again we encountered a type of thistle with the softest fluff:

And other interesting things:

This leaf brought to you by the letter "J":

My daughter captured this beautiful flower with her camera:

And that's not all that she captured:

Here is an interesting, if gruesome, story. Last winter in about a foot of snow, we trudged through the goldenrod field. At one point we noticed that our footprints were bloody. The blood was not from us. It was a large area in which the snow had been soaked in blood and then had been covered by fresh snowfall. Icky. Upon reaching the woods, my daughter spotted more blood. She found a deer with a newly missing leg which had somehow hobbled to a place underneath the branches of a fallen tree, lain down, shut its eyes, and died.

We don't know how it lost its leg, but it had traveled quite a long distance without it, as evidenced by the blood trail. We hadn't been back to that spot since winter, so we went to see what was left of the deer. We found its bones in the same spot, though they had been moved around a bit by scavengers:

We found the part of the leg bone with the trauma caused when the deer lost the rest of the leg:


Here's a comparison of the injured bone with the same bone from the other leg:

We don't know what happened. It looks more like a clean slice rather than something that might have happened in an encounter with a car. If a car or truck had done this, I would think that it would have been smashed, rather that have such clean-looking trauma. But I'm no expert. To us it's a mystery.

Well, we didn't find the bubbling spring, but it's been very dry here for the past few months. We'll go looking for it again after the fall rains have replenished the water table. We did, however have a run-in with one more deer. This one very much alive.

On the way home, we skirted the goldenrod field at its edge where we could make use of a deer trail so we wouldn't have to blaze one of our own. I said, "Thank goodness for the deer," and as if on cue a giant buck jumped up from its resting place not five feet away, off to the left in the goldenrod. He rose, facing us with a huge rack of antlers, then instantly turned and bounded off into the expanse of goldenrod, velvet hanging from his antlers and swaying as he leapt.

I will tell you that it was scary facing those antlers for that split second. My daughter remarked that it's getting to be rutting season and she was glad he wasn't feeling crazy enough to attack. We wouldn't have fared well in the encounter.

The goldenrod was too tall for our dog to see what had happened. He was so startled that he just froze. Usually he'll try to chase deer if he sees them. I'm glad he didn't this time.

It all happened so quickly that I wasn't able to get a picture of the buck, but I snapped this shot of his nest of squashed-flat goldenrod where he had been bedded down before we startled him. I know, it's not a great picture, but I was holding the camera up over the goldenrod in front of me so I could take it:

And that was our adventure. We made it back home, tired and full of little burrs, but happy. Thanks for letting us share our adventure with you.