We spent the weekend in Wilmington and did a little exploring and looking for butterflies and fun gardens. You might recall the bottle flowers I took photos of in Durham back in February. For some reason those crazy Pinterest people have turned my bottle flowers posts into my top post having had 7100 visitors since February 2012. For the life of me I can not comprehend why people would have photos by others as the focus of there personal web sites.
We found another bottle flower around the corner from these in another yard, so maybe someone is selling them.
These seem to be made fairly simple, looks like a 7 or 8 inch PVC sewer pipe with bolts set in it to hold the bottles by their corks. If this is PVC pipe I don't think the bolts or screws will stay firmly mounted a long time. The stem looks to be a section of steel pipe that is bolted to the red ring. If these rings are made from steel and bolts might hold the bottles a very long time.
About a year ago I saw this huge bottle flower in Durham, NC. Did not have the camera with me, but promised myself I'd return with a camera. It was a nice cloudy day and I was close by with some free time and I finally took some photos for your enjoyment. Just might have to get my plumber buddy who enjoys working with scrap steel and a welder make us one of these.
I wondered how the bottles were installed as you do not want water getting inside, the water freezes and breaks the bottles. Now I know the artist welded in lag screws which you screw into corks to hold the bottles in. believe this is the best bottle art I have seen.... We have enough blue bottles saved to make 6 of these I'd guess.
Finally R. L. Wheeler camellia opened up in the garden today! Bad news is tonight it is dropping down to 20 degrees. Think I'll cover it with a sheet to protect the other unopened buds. Got to say this flower has an array of stamens unlike any other camellia in our garden. The bees will love this one for sure. Today it is too windy and cold for the bees to enjoy the nectar in it.
Hope everyone had a great New Years celebration last night. Ours was quiet, Meg was in bed by 10:15pm. It reached 65 degrees here today and was a beautiful day.
Anyway the bees were happy today bringing in lots of pollen, they acted very elated as you can see in my slow motion video below. I found them nectaring on camellias, helleborus niger and Helleborus foetidus as well as violas and pansies.
Here is two bees on Helleborus foetidus,
at times there were at least 6 bees on this one plant.
This bee is on Helleborus foetidus, this plant will have 40-50 flowers on it, it is just starting right now. You can see the pollen collected and the bees take a long time inside the flower usually several minutes.
This bee is on a viola often called Johnny Jump up. The bees get a quick snack and move on quickly. Pansies and violas will do OK during the winter here and be pulled up when it gets hot at the beginning of May.
Rainbow Carrots Meg picked for our salad tonight.
Edible mushrooms I found today at the local nature park on our walk. These are very large Oyster Mushrooms, saw little ones as well. Given these were at the nature park I did not bring any home for dinner.
An update on my blue bottle collection somewhere around 215 blue bottles right now. The red bottle featured here in my first red bottle, I found it on the last day of 2011. Below is what 140 blue bottles look like.
We have started something new with recycling also. I have a restaurant and a bar saving bottle caps for us. I made my first pick up yesterday, got about 200 caps. The pink Nehi and the pink Mother Earth Brewing coolest. We saw some art made out of bottle caps, using the printed tops for design nailed onto wood, very cool. I have a few photos I'll share here one day. We looked online at youtube and it seems a lot of artists use new bottle caps and glue designs inside them and make jewerly, this is not what we want to do.
Back to fungus, I saw three of these today on a single tree 12 foot up. This was about the size of two grapefruits. I'll be looking for the ID, I think it is one that become permanent.
Here is Grumpy enjoying a sunny warm deck on the first day of 2012.
Today I was cleaning up and going to the landfill convenience site to get rid of trash and do the recycling. First I went and picked up a yard of organic compost. After getting to compost I tinkered in the shady garden with the compost and planted some trillium and creeping phlox. then I transplanted some baby hellebores and made a nice rich spot for them. The babies I used were all from our deepest red hellebore. So many babies and so little time.
Anyway so my getting to the convenience site was much later than I had planned. Once done with my chores I lingered by the bottle dumpsters and noticed a fresh new blue wine bottle. I went to get it and the guy that just dumped it said his wife was bringing more blue bottles. They had been collecting the blue bottles for a year and decided they did not want them. So I left with 28 blue wine bottles all the same wine. I have them soaking right now so I can make them glow in the sunlight. Finding 28 blue bottles would perhaps take months of looking for them in the recycling dumpsters!
Here is a new daffodil for our garden 'Actaea'. I learned something planting them on the sunny side of the path was a bad choice as all the daffodils are pointing towards the sun and away from the path, duh!
Another daffodil pointing away from the path. At a loss to which one this is, it is new.
Here is a camellia called 'La Peppermint' from our garden. Most of the blooms were frost damaged, I had high hopes for it. Our Crimson Candles is almost done. Looks like we'll have to wait until next year for the camellias.
At the house Meg used to live in, she now rents it, this camellia is kicking some butt. The bush is maybe 9 ft tall and 4-5 wide covered in blooms. The ground has maybe 40-50 blooms on it.
We bought two new rosemary plants today. The 12 year old one in the garden looked bad after the winter before last, now it is nearly dead.
Tomorrow I hope to post about the bottle wall. Today I wanted to mortar in some bottles but the winds were terribly strong and cement would have been nasty blowing in the wind. I have a lot of bottles ready and might even get Meg's expert help with it.
