Flocks of phlox, and other spring miscellania

These are recovering nicely along our stone wall after I shifted them out of the pots they inhabited unhappily for several years:

The alium bulbs I planted last year are alive and well! This is a minor miracle, since the rest of the bulbs I bought at Kmart last year were rotted in the bag and had to be returned:

Bleeding hearts resurrected. One of the small set of reliable shade-loving perennials that can add color without much light and tolerate New England winters:

It's Azalea-time!

I planted these azaleas right below the roof-line, which is perhaps not ideal. The snow sliding off the roof tends to flatten the plants, and they are still quite small. Yet they have bloomed a bit this year. I'll perhaps have to engineer some contraptions to keep the snow away from them for a while:

A Beautiful and Fragrant Invasion

Some Lily of the Valley plants seem to have migrated from all the way across the street. Pretty and poisonous!

This is a purple-and-white orchid columbine from Home Depot:

A pink-and-white version planted in the same area decided it has had enough of the vacillating spring already. Perhaps it will come back stronger next year?

Of Bleeding Hearts and Azaleas

The bleeding hearts are back with a bang after it looked like they had not survived the fall season, let alone the winter. What a lesson in resilience! It likes the shade too, which is a huge blessing in my yard:

Our two fledgling azaleas are beginning to come into their own. They get snow dumped on them from the roof above, yet somehow find the extra will to bloom in the spring:

Cost-effective lawn maintenance

You too can have a great-looking lawn without spending tonnes of money on seeding, fertilizers and water bills. The key is to give it a good mow, find the right spot to stand in, and wait for the optimal lighting conditions. If it rains once in a while, even better.

My scraggly lawn is pictured below, photographed after a fresh morning mowing followed by light rains. The evening cloud cover provides just the right luminous intensity to hide the numerous barren patches strewn about :-)

The diminutive primrose

I picked up a few perennial primrose plants last year and planted them in a partly shady corner near our car-port. It produced some nice flowers but then it appeared to whither away prematurely. I thought it was due to the pesky chipmunks that have drilled giant mine-shafts all over the place and near their roots. What chance does a frail plant have against such aggression?

The primroses proved me wrong. I did not even notice the buds forming, yet they are suddenly in bloom!

The hyacinths have come and gone

The hardy hyacinths were among the first to bloom, and they somehow were ignored by the deer while they hid in plain sight:

These blooms have now dried up, making way for other plants to step into the limelight. Even the vibrant forsythia are winding down:

Spring is sprung!

A picture is worth a thousand words, so goes the saying. Unless the words were penned by someone like William Wordsworth. As his name suggests, his words are worth... a lot! Here is one of his poems, apt for the new spring season, with some fresh garden flowers to go with them:

Daffodils

by William Wordsworth

I wandered lonely as a cloud
  That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
  A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
  And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
  Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they
  Outdid the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
  In such a jocund company:
I gazed—and gazed—but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
  In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
  Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills, 
And dances with the daffodils.

When math is exotic and seasonal

Check out this Romanesco Broccoli that was in the produce section for just a few days:

It is also known as Roman Cauliflower, and is an example of fractals in nature. I did not have the courage to buy it, but am informed by Wikipedia that it has a "nutty" flavor.

Math in the produce aisle

I like to tell my kids that math is everywhere. Sometimes sitting in plain sight, and sometimes hiding behind a few seemingly innocuous curtains. It came sharply into focus yesterday when I sliced a purple cabbage in half. Check out the double Fibonacci spiral that was revealed!

I have never seen a cabbage in this light before.

Frozen turkey

A group of turkeys is apparently either a flock, or a rafter. Let's go with the latter as the word of the day. At least for me!

It looks like a rafter was up and about last night, as evidenced by their footprints all over the snow that started falling in the evening:

My friendly neighborhood rafter surely does not seem to be deterred by a few inches of snow, though. While they have made a daily appearance for several weeks now, and have spent significant amounts of time rooting around my bird feeder and elsewhere, they showed up like clockwork today after nearly seven inches of powder blanketed the region overnight.

Only this time, they stayed on the road (which had been plowed) and steered clear of the yard:

I learned a few days ago that a rafter usually has only one male. This guy was preening away to distract from the lack of food on the road surface:

Trust this one female turkey to throw caution to the wind and plow into the yard! Must have been one hungry bird:

Later in the day, I saw the entire rafter on the side of the house, where the snow had melted enough to expose some of the ground, and they had a field day raking up the soil in search of... frozen worms?!

A thankful day

There is much to be thankful for in this world of ours. These wild turkeys, for instance, must be thankful to be in a vegetarian's yard on Thanksgiving Day!

A dash of blue

The drab environment is occasionally splashed with brilliant blues and reds. A gang of blue jays descended on our feeder and proceeded to monopolize it and the ground around it for the next half hour or so.

I recently read (thanks to two very funny and informative bird books* by Mike O'Connor) that blue jays often store seeds in their throats and cart them away for future consumption. here is a view of such behavior:

An action shot of a jay at work:

Scouting the ground (for fallen seeds or acorns?) while other "family" members sampled the feeder fare:

Showing off the blues:

"Why are you staring at me?"

*The two books reference above are:

M. O'Connor (1997) "Why Don't Woodpeckers Get Headaches? And Other Bird Questions You Know You Want to Ask."

M. O'Connor (2013) "Why Do Bluebirds Hate Me? More Answers to Common and Not-So-Common Questions about Birds and Birding."

The garden has gone to the birds!

After spending the spring and summer trying to protect the flowering plants from wildlife attacks, it is time now to sit back and enjoy the... wildlife! The bird feeder easily draws in the fauna of the winged variety (and a few non-flying squirrels for variety). The relatively drab background of browns and yellows causes a blending of feathers into the fading foliage.

This downy woodpecker has decided to give our house structure a break, and eat seeds for a while:

A tufted titmouse explores our "seedy" neighborhood:

The titmouse does a great jobs of sharing with a black-capped chickadee (the Massachusetts state bird):

Nature's pest control army is quite a hoot

A few nights ago, I was awakened by a haunting noise from outside my window, and realized they might be owls. Short bursts of three hoots, followed by silence, then the hoots again. I was too sleepy though to get up and investigate.

The birds were in fine form again last night despite the winter cold and a light rain. Here is a short clip of what sounds like two Great Horned Owls. The background noise is that of the rain drumming on my porch and roof:

[Great Horned Owl duet]

Day was about to break, yet it was still too dark to see the birds. But I think I know which direction the sounds came from.

I hope to put a face to the voice some time soon!

The gardening season winds down

But ever so slowly! Mother Nature is fooling her own as the flora grapple with the unseasonably warm weather (the high today is about 73 degrees Fahrenheit, or roughly 23 degrees Celcius).

To bloom or not to bloom, that is the question.

I have a yellow rose in bloom, and some pink rose buds in the works. The dahlias are doing better than ever, with each plant sporting three or four flowers instead of one or two. The deer are staying warm at home, leaving the unattended and unprotected flowers alone.

There is also a profusion of yellow from one bush that I do not remember planting. It looks like a Black-eyed Susan, but the ones I planted are long done for the season:

Here is an unexpected harvest of beans from our deck:

The tomatoes are also yet to disappear, with many green bunches still hanging off the vines as the leaves slowly whither away.

The pesky chipmunks are cleverer, though. They are skittering around the yard in a frenetic rush to store more acorns. They are also using the delayed winter to explore my yard in greater detail, burrowing humongous holes in yet-to-be-staked territory. Like they say in America: "Drill, baby, drill!" 

A "Deer Diary" moment

It appears to have now become a bit too cold for the deer to venture about freely, and they have finally left the hardy hibiscus alone long enough to produce a couple of buds! An entire summer of deer salad existence is thus vindicated just ephemerally in the fall!

I have high hopes for the second bud too, seen below as it just prepares to unfurl:

Dinner(plate) is served!

A bright "dinner-plate" dahlia, about 8 inches (roughly 20 centimeters) in diameter, adorned our dining table last night:

A few slightly smaller flowers, one in pure white and another in a stunning double-color pattern:

You never know what you might get from these bulb grab-bags, but these seem to be worth saving at the end of the season.

Sedum in bloom

As fall sets in and the plants prepare for a winter vacation, this sedum is hogging attention from a nice, shady spot between some taller shrubs:

Vertical garden mania

I am seeing vertical gardens much more frequently these days. Here is one in the lobby of the Westin-BWI hotel in Baltimore, Maryland:

This one is from the international airport at Mumbai, India:

And an impressively tall one from the Museum of Science in Cambridge, Massachusetts: