It is poppy time!

The poppies are back; big, bold, delicate.

Begonias and honey

Bought some wonderful begonia plants from my favourite farm stand, just in Moriches, on the left of the road as you are heading out from Mastic. Their baby plants are really good quality--I bought some lemon balm and oregano last week, and they are already thriving. Three for 12$.

And they also sell real, yes really-real, honey from a local beekeeper. And that makes me very happy.

Doesn't she look good?

Bella that is. Has put on some weight, and her tail is curly!

Plantings

The weather has been rather YUCK this week, as far as I am concerned, but the plants are loving it. The rows of radish and mixed mesclun that I sowed on Monday have already sprouted! Just added more seeds: carrots, lettuce and arugula. So from right-to-left in the vegetable patch, we have radishes, mesclun (scratchy and spicy lettucy stuff), carrots (small Petite 'n Sweet in the back half of the bed, larger Sweet Treat hybrid at the back), lettuce (Black-Seeded Simpson at the front, Four Seasons reddish and small in the middle, and Vivian, large Romaine-type at the back) then arugula. It is not a very big patch but it will do for salads!

I would be quite happy working an allotment all day.

Oh and there are some cucumber plants in a half-barrel at the bottom of the deck stairs. The small-for-pickling cucumbers will be closest to house.

The person at Home Depot who sold me the seeds was surprised that carrots would grow here. Is there something I don't know? Or should that person perhaps be working in another department?

Helpful pets

Muffin oversaw the gardening operations from below a shady plant, or under the stairs to the deck.

Bella lay in the sun...

... after checking that everything was going OK, and panting a lot...

... and keeping her eye on the world.

This weekend's project

It doesn't look like much, but it took a long, long time and isn't finished yet! It's going to be my small vegetable garden--more likely, small salad garden, and it's a sort-of raised bed in the already-raised back yard. First I had to dig out what was already there, and replant the daylilies elsewhere. Then I had to throw out the lavender bushes, after spending ages trimming them down to the only twigs that were still green... and realising that there was no way they were going to recover, lavender being lavender. (So far they have only been "thrown" under a tree, and will probably end up being replanted somewhere where they can recover, or not, as they choose.)

Then I had to dig out as much of the weed root system as possible. Mostly grass, but some suckering almost-tree-almost-vine stuff (don't know what it is) which has orangish roots that go deep into the sandy earth. Sandy soil is so much easier to weed than clay!

After that, building the framework. More of the old deck going to good use--even the bits of decking that I was annoyed had been cut too small to do anything with. Stood upright, they are just right for edging the bed!

And the sun was shining and it did feel really, really hot, but that was probably the spade work.

Then to fill the raised bed.

The pile of topsoil is in the driveway. The new raised bed is behind the house, up the stairs, and across to the back of the raised lawn. No way to get a wheelbarrow up there.

Tried putting some of the topsoil into a wheelie bin and dragging it up the steps. Nearly had a heart attack and/or fatal fall down steps head-first into wheelie bin part filled with soil. Managed to do this once and once only. After that it was two buckets full of soil at a time... and only enough energy to fill the far right of the bed. But enough to put in a row of radish seeds and a row of mixed lettuce!

So the plan is to bring up soil by the bucketful before adding a new row of seeds. Might take a few days but should get there... eventually!

Behind the new raised bed, next to the happily-flowering chives, I dug out the canna lilies that I forgot to "lift" in autumn. They were now blackened shadows, crispy bags of emptiness, no flowers hiding inside. My bad... but I really don't have time for plants that required so much bother. There are plenty other plants that will survive the winter!

Planted green peas, mange-toutes (sugar peas), and sunflowers (Vanilla Ice, Sunshine, and Mammoth) and hollyhocks.

The tomatoes are in pots on the little deck, including two of the "heritage" tiny yellow plum tomatoes, together with red pepper, green pepper (aren't they the same just different degrees of ripeness?) and a jalapeno pepper plant. And they are all watered and now I need a nap.

Wild wisteria

It is on an empty plot, but protected by poison ivy. I may just admire it from afar.

Virginia creeper, climbing creepily

It will take over the world. That and the poison ivy (already staking a claim on the neighbourhood), the smilax? mile-a-minute weed (now I am confused about which it really is... let's stick to "that nasty green fast-growing barbed wire").

Spring garden

"Scottish" Broom in a gorgeous colour.

Giant allium, like pompoms on tall stalks.

Dog yoga: downward dog dog

Dog yoga: the letter S

Dog yoga: the diver

Green green green

I love this colour. Really spring now.

Fence is fixed, and we now have a gate too!

Thank you Steve-the-Handyman! :-)

"Deer cake"!

The hostas around the house are, so far, only slightly nibbled. I have sprayed them with a new mix of eggs and capsicum, bought not made. Didn't smell bad when I sprayed it on, but am wondering what it will be like after a warm day. (Would like to find out. Bring on a warm day, please.)

There is also a bar of nasty-smelling deodorant soap hiding under nearly every clump. The sort that gives me panic attacks. Maybe will have the same effect on the deer.

But like my friend at the garden center in Moriches said, hostas are "deer cake". When I get up in the morning and find them chewed to the ground, I will be (re)moving them to somewhere safe, and planting daffodils, allium and bee balm instead.

Early-morning walk

Canada geese with goslings. Canada geese without goslings. All talking to each other, feathered foghorns in the mist. A pair of young swans; they are not nesting and sleep in a different place each night, but they are a couple, the male making a heart of his wings. A cloud of tiny plovers scooping low over the still water. And two young deer, cropping reeds and grass. We stood quiet and watched them all, then retreated from the beach and left them to their morning.

Mastic Beach Bayview Park planning meeting!

As part of the Mastic Beach revitalization, a new park is planned, close to Pattersquash Creek. There will be a meeting on Monday evening at 6 p.m. at the firehouse where you'll be able to see the plans and ask questions.

I'm looking forward to this park!

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Nice morning--shame it's a work day!

Even the egret is working hard.

Window boxes!

My window boxes are made and installed! Thank you Charlie!

The boxes are deep -- I wanted them to balance the front of the house and make a statement. I think they work.

Now to plant them. It's the north side of the house so will have to choose appropriate plants.


... and the baby redbud is flowering nicely!

Raccoon reminder

Found this raccoon scull a few weeks ago, after the snow melted. Left it in some bleach-and-water for a few days, then put it in the sun-and-rain.

Funny how they have such round faces in life, but underneath are all pointy.

Truly beautiful morning

What a beautiful place we live in!

Friday fishing

Today I am tempted to learn how to fish.

Sunny-foggy

Beautiful sunshine through the early-morning fog. Warm, humid (it has rained every day in May so far). A lot of water around. But everything is really green this morning.

Rainy Thursday... is this why they call it the wetlands?

Another grey day

Another misty morning; more puddles in the street. Damp but mild; nice for walking, but not much else apart from helping the weeds to grow. (And the pretty plants too, but they are not as fast as the weeds.)

I remember reading about a form of torture where someone is tied down over a bamboo bed, and the bamboo grows so sharp and fast, it grows through you. Our phragmites are torturing the street pavement, coming straight through the tarmac, spearing towards the sky. I think they grow a foot a day.

Watching Monty

I'm very happy to say that I have found a way to watch Monty Don's "Round the World in 80 Gardens". We don't have BBC America here--the cable company doesn't carry it--and even if we did, it probably wouldn't show really good BBC TV but rather what they think the USA audience might like. Benny Hill (why do the French like Benny Hill so much?... side note) and stuff about footballers' wives etc.

And there isn't a region 1 version of the DVD.

So... I bought the region 2 version from the Beeb (http://www.bbc.com) and connected my home PC up to the TV with and HDMI cable, then use the PC as my region 2 DVD player! Works fine!

Now for more BBC DVDs...

Baltimore Oriole

Today we saw a Baltimore Oriole, a flash of orange and black; a family of Canada geese with their goslings, hopping off into the creek; and a big fat water or muskrat sliding into one of the water-filled ditches.

Came home and looked up the oriole on whatbird.com: http://identify.whatbird.com/obj/567/_/Baltimore_Oriole.aspx

Played the birdsong... and Bella helped me to find the noisy bird inside the computer. She went from almost-comatose-asleep to fully-alert-with-nose-on-keyboard within the first "tweet".

Broken fence

I was going to write about the robins, mocking birds, egrets, finches, sparrows, osprey-with-fish-head-forwards, bullfish-on-the-beach-all-huge-and-gasping, and everything else we saw on our long walk this morning, but we came back home and I took Bella into the back yard as it's still the only place she will "go potty"... and as we were on our way back out, her leash caught in the gate latch, she panicked, wouldn't let me release her... and pulled a whole section of fence out. Then went running round the lawn trying to get free. Poor thing. Was horrible. Eventually the leash came free, Bella calmed down, and we stood there in the middle of a lawn full of rotten-fence debris.

Now I have to find a fence guy. The rotten post had been embedded in concrete and just snapped off when she pulled... and the rest of the section came with it.

Bella is quite calm and is demanding belly rubs to make up for the experience.

Babies

The geese babies are arriving. I saw two families, one with three, and one with two, paddling their way upstream. The babies like little dots in a line between the parents. Amazing they can swim while still so tiny.

Everything has exploded into spring. Magnolias already losing their petals; daffodils, early ones over, later ones just opening. I have some pale yellow double daffs that are only just opening up, while the white ones have shed their pretty petals already.

Blossom on the wetlands trees: and the wetlands themselves are suddenly showing some green.