Bottle Flowers from Kure Beach

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.

Giant Bottle Flowers!

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.

Birds in the garden

Hope all of you with snow and ice are safe! We got lucky Monday night as we only got maybe an inch of snow. It misted all day yesterday you could not see any rain but you could feel it when walking around outside. The mist and my camera did not seem like a great idea, so I set up a chair under the porch and waited for the birds to come back to the feeders.

We had our second visit from a single Bluejay, I do not have any photos of this beautiful bird. The Bluejay was out there before I went out to photograph and never returned. Bluejays like neighborhoods not forest like where we live, in fact I lived here 3 years before I ever saw one here.

 Song Sparrow on top of the hoop house cold frame covered in snow. We have mainly 3 different sparrows in the winter here, White-throated Sparrow(the most common), Chipping Sparrow and Song Sparrow as seen here they are our only year round resident sparrow. A fourth sparrow the Fox Sparrow has been seen in years past but has not made an appearance in years here.

 Pondering Song Sparrow.

 Female Northern Cardinal ready to fly.

 

Here is an image I adjusted in Photoshop by using poster edges, a very simple trick, pretty neat?

 Telephoto shot of the top of the new bottle tree. I added a clear bottle to the top. The second bottle down is an 8 ounce caster oil bottle I found. You also can see 1.5 liter, .75 liter and 6 ounce Riesling bottles.

One special bird returned yesterday while I had the camera out, a Brown Creeper made its 6th appearance this winter on the white oak by our deck. I took photos but they were too poor to post here.

So one might ask what is blooming in out garden. Here is our Helleborus niger covered ice ice and snow. This was the 5th time these blooms have been buried in snow or ice, tough plant don't you think?

One of the front garden pansies covered up in snow and ice. The pansies and violas under the over hang of our porch not covered in snow look pretty bad because they do not have the protection the snow gives them during temps down in the 20s.

Be sure to check out the dog treat or dog cookie  recipe on my last posting.

The Bottle Tree

Yes we installed the bottle tree on January 01. Harvested a dead cedar on our property and planted it behind the garden. The first location we wanted to place it, was a bust. I turned out when we regraded for the remodel the old back sidewalk concrete chunks were buried under the new grading and prevented me from digging any deeper than a foot. So we moved over 5-6 foot and I dug a 30 inch deep hole to set the tree into.

Here are two views of the new bottle tree which is around 11 foot tall. The tree is a little one-sided but I believe it gives it character. We still have to install a few more bottles to make it complete. I have more bottles they just need to be cleaned of the labeling. Meg wanted to let the weather remove the labels, she is still mad at me for taking down the bottles and cleaning them. I have one bottle that the remaining glue is burned onto the bottle and will not come off.

As many of you already know I have been recycling dumpster checking for blue bottles, this time of year seems great as lately I've found 1 or 2 bottles a visit.

The bottles are from Riesling, Vodka and Sherry bottles. I was given a gift of two bottles of Sake that I need to drink before using those bottles too. The light blue bottles are Vodka bottles.

 Here is our Helleborus niger that finally cleared of snow. This plant has looked pretty much like this during most of December. December in 2010 we had 27 days of colder than normal temps and 3 days that it dropped to 16 degrees. I think it was the third coldest December on record here!

New Years Day!

The new year is here, how quickly 2010 passed by! I walked in the muddy yard/garden this morning and found a Crocus speciosus had bloomed. I think I planted 24 of these and 4-5 of them bloomed in fall, see my last crocus post. We still have a little snow on the ground from last weekend, it is going to be a high of 60 degrees today! Who knows if the sun would come out we might see a butterfly.

The camera was fogging up when I shot this, but it made a nice effect. Notice my new copyright for 2011.

Been wanting to share these photos taken in August of 2006, they were featured on my old blog that nobody was able to find. I had a small pile of left over lumber that grew into the weeds along a project I was working on. This happens doesn't it a mess that grows into the landscape? Anyway I decided to clean it up and lifted up this scrap of 2 x 6 about a foot long and found a Five-lined Skink, Eumeces fasciatus nest with eggs. I placed it back to let her nest in peace. Everyday afternoon I would check quietly to see if the eggs hatched, after 2 weeks here is what I found!

Two skink babies, notice the mothers tail for a size comparison.

Newborn skink struggling to exit the egg.

The mother skink protecting her newborn babies, some are still hatching.

What is new for this year? Well I have found a dead Eastern Red Cedar tree on our property and we are cutting it down and making it a bottle tree! I have gathered somewhere around 40 blue bottles and think that 20 or so blue bottles would be better displayed entirely on a bottle tree than inside the bottle wall we are going to build. My hope is to have no two bottles alike on the tree.

We bought a wood stove, something that was on the renovation plans when we remodeled but omitted it due to budget restraints. Meg will be very happy when and if the power goes out we will have heat and it does have a cook top also. This house is pretty green anyway.

Planting still!

This morning it went above freezing by about 9 am, showers or snow expected tonight and tomorrow. Who is to believe the weatherman, last Saturday he said the snow would not even cover the ground. Below is a photo from this morning a week later, no snow on the ground, I believe he got that wrong last week.

So with freezing temps down to 16 or 17 degrees at least two day last week, I still need to plant daffodils and crocuses. Here is the camellia called Kanjiro after these days down to the teens. This was taken yesterday, today the blooms appear to be browner.

With all the cold weather my work has been slow, been staining windows in a customers basement. So I have to let them dry between coats and one afternoon I went to one of  the Orange County recycling Centers. I picked up 2 blue vodka bottles, the one on the left I got several weeks ago!

Getting ready to build the bottle wall pretty soon, my pile of bottles is getting pretty big.

 Here is a paper wasp nest that was attached to our eaves over the ramp we walk up to the house. The wasps left prematurely months ago. Willing to bet at night this nest is full of Carolina Wrens seeking warm and protection inside the wasp nest. The big opening has only been there about a week or so.

I told Meg I was going to plant daffodils and crocuses today, was not very inspired with snow on the ground and all. It is supposed to be back in the teens Monday and Tuesday. Anyway while in Hillsborough today  this crew of volunteers was planting a pollinator garden (from scratch) at the Alexander Dixon House also known as the Orange County Visitors Center. Turns out these volunteers are members of the Orange County Beekeeper's Association. So I figured if they can be planting perennials I better get home and do my planting. I managed to get myself and the shovel pretty dirty, still I got all but maybe 12 planted as it started to sleet. Those crocuses nearly all had sprouts.

Local yard art

I read the other day at Defining Your Home garden that the Fearrington Folk Art Show was going on last weekend. I had some free time and made the one hour trip out to see it. Not as much yard art as I'd liked to have seen, but still it was fun.

This large weather vane is one of several permanent fixtures at Fearington. If you did not know Fearington is a artsy retirement home for people with a lot of money, the have a high class restaurant, coffee shop, garden center and other amenities. It is also known for the Belted Galloway cows like the one seen on the weather vane in the bottom photo.

The tire planters, very cool made locally and around $100 each. Breadfoot makes these with a sharp knife then hand paints them with house paint. He says the trick to cutting these out is getting tires with 2 ply sidewalls. I want to try this one day and I have plenty of pink house paint. Breadfoot is a musician here you can watch him play Valentine.

I did buy a 24 inch yellow/orange sun to hang on the wall, it was made from a recycled welding tank by Foster's Custom Steel in Mebane, NC.

The awesome bottle tree was sold, my guess it was over a $1000. The biggest one I have ever seen.

Still trying to get the alignment of my postings right, one day I'll figure it out.

The pond is frozen and it is 19 degrees outside, hope those greens do ok.