Little Flower - Little Birds

Oh what a beautiful day to be alive and enjoying it !!  A bit chilly this morning but it has warmed up to about 70 and the sun is shining in a cloudless sky.  Who could ask for more?  No one... so don't!  The project for today was putting in a white clematis, again, to take the place of the wonderful passion flower vine that didn't make it for us for some reason.  That thing was soooooooo beautiful.  Anyway, a few days ago I put in the clematis and in the next few days I decided I didn't like the pot or the dirt I had put into it so went out and got a new pot, different soil, and got that little sucker planted again.  It's going to grow and grow and fill the whole trellis up.  I had a purple one in Brookfield that came back every year bigger than the last.  I actually took a cutting from it to CT when I moved there, put it in the ground under/around the mailbox ironwork and it grew just fine as well.  I'm sure this new one will be happy.

Here it is in the new pot just waiting to start growing.

And here's where it's headed for.  Now don't be a naysayer... you'll see.

While I was putzing around in the front of the house a robin flew out from a bush so I figured there might be some baby robins in a nest she had made for herself.  Momma bird stayed away while I peeked and then got the camera in where I could take a picture.  I've never seen open-mouthed baby birds like this, only in pictures.  Granted, you can only see the pictures as well but you can take my word that it was very exciting to see.  Go ahead... click on the photo to make it larger and you can see the open mouths and the still-covered eyes.  I saw 4 in there... might be more but that's what I saw.  Enjoy :)

This is the holly bush right in front of the house where the little suckers have their nest.  The nest is close to the trunk so it was a bit of work to get the camera in there since I sure didn't want to knock it out of the tree.  As I was shooting, I kept an eye out in case Momma bird came back.  She was sitting in a tree about 50 feet away or so watching over things.  Happily, she kept her distance and I didn't take long.

See those little things?  The bright yellow is their wide-open mouths.

One more having gotten the camera in just a bit closer.  How cool is this?!?!?!



Roses in the ground

OK... the 3 knockout roses I was waiting to be delivered came to the house at about 7:30 last night, too late to get them into the ground at that time.  So, in the cool of this morning I was out to get them situated.  I had a good laugh at myself because the first thing I had to do was fill in the holes I had dug as they were far, far too big.  The plants were no more than 6" tall :)  I used my nifty new sifter and got the holes filled up, threw in some planting soil and mixed in some cow poo along with some granular fertilizer and got them nestled in.  Now, nature just has to take over and get the suckers growing.

The sun was still trying to get above the trees and it was nice to work in the shade.  This area is in full sun from about 9:00 AM right up to sundown.

Just another angle on it.  I raked the area clean and got out the grass/weed killer to spray whatever the hell the little green stuff growing was.  Come fall through winter, this area is covered with pine needles which is kind of nice but the snakes like it too.

Here's one of the just-delivered ones.  Kind of cute, huh?  I know it isn't much at the moment but just you wait and see!  This is going to be a most beautiful area of the back yard.  Knockout Rose Forest, here we come :)

Spring Color - Deck Fix Up

I've been quite behind in getting news and photos posted, I know, but I will endeavor to do better.  Today's post is about spring coming to Douglasville for 2012.  Spring down here is just incredibly beautiful with so much color about it's really pretty impossible to describe without seeing it for yourself.  With the warmer weather coming sooner, things started popping earlier and faster.  This is my 3rd spring here now and this one seemed to come in overnight. 

Now, in order for all the color to come out and the buds to appear and all of that nature stuff, pollen has to be present.  Boy... did we have a pollen season come in with a blast and it's not over yet.  I never really looked to see what a pollen count number meant until I heard we were setting records.  For the record, 900+ is heavy, 1400+ is extreme.  Well, we were running in the 9300+ count !!!  I had to use the blower to blow it off the deck and such and of course just walking on the grass, or even the driveway, stirred it up.  Cars going down the street stirred it up.  It was really something.  And then, finally, we got some rain to knock it down a bit and with the rain comes new pollen experiences.  The pictures below give just a little indication to how much there was.

This is after a bit of rain.  Doesn't this look like some giant was walking down the street and deposited a giant-sized loogie in the gutter?  I'm talking gross.

 

 

Love when that tree blossoms!   Kinda nice, for sure.

And now, about another 2 weeks have gone by and a new color scheme.  The white blossoms on the tree have given way to green leaves, the rose bushes are starting to blossom and the grass is actually showing more green having been tan for the last 3 months.  That thing that looks like a stick coming out of the ground is one of my heavily pruned crepe myrtles.  We'll see how it goes this year.

With the warmer weather I did get outside to tend to some other ugliness, the top rails on the deck.  I just did these suckers a couple of years ago but due to 'things' they had really taken a beating from the sun and weather.  Last summer my friends Bill and Jane were visiting and it took Bill all of 2 seconds to look at it and point out that I had put at least a couple of the boards on upside down... growth rings bowing up, not down... which certainly played a part in them getting beat up.  Since he told me that, I've run across the same warning elsewhere.  Perhaps an even bigger factor was my coating them in polyurethane which I've also learned is NOT for outdoor use unless you use 'spar' urethane.  Well, I got to sanding them down to bare wood, staining them, and then giving them 3 coats of spar urethane.  At the moment, we think they're beautiful, and they are.  Now to see if it lasts :)

This one was bad.

This one was really torn up.

There it is for now.  I'm thinking I just might do all the support posts.  We'll see :)