Doggy Ramp

Everyone, Both our dogs are getting very old. Dot is 16 Daisy is 17. Daisy only wants to go out the front door, someone needs to let here out. Guess what she does not ask to be let out either, so she puddles or otherwise. Yes we have a pet door but Daisy does not like walking down 6-7 steps to get to the back yard. So the again she leaves messes by the front door and does not use the pet door. She is a very shy dog.

So I gathered up some scraps today and Meg and I built a doggy ramp today. So now both dogs are scared to death of it. I added some strips of wood to make it less slippy for them. Blocking to steps confuses them. Oh did I mention Dot is mostly blind!! Dot is the leader of the dogs, so until she goes freely Daisy won't.

 Surely we'll get them to use it. Any suggestions to get them to use it; We tried blocking the stairway and that confused them.

Our cat Valentine the mouser is in huge trouble. First Meg found a big mouse in the living room by the house plants. This mouse is very brave running around in day light. She likely brought it in the house to start with. So she's outside we bring her inside, nothing. I might add she is the best mouser we have ever had, her pancreas does not work well leaving her hungry all the time, good for mousing, bad for us the pills cost a buck a day.

So later today Meg brings me an large male Eastern Fence Lizard she found Valentine had in the house. Released him outside no harm done.... This evening I'm showered an ready for movie time, I have to chase down mouse traps, Handy Andy up the road did not have any. I hope Valentine wakes us to tell us she has caught a mouse tonight.

Are the flowers blooming early here? Yes the Dwarf Crested Iris bloomed last year on April 20th, here they are today.

Last year was our best year for these natives in our garden estimated 600-700 blooms. This year looks like maybe 200, if they get too shaded they will not bloom at all. A full three weeks earlier than last year. When they bloomed last year we still had lots of daffodils blooming, one type of daffodil is still blooming right now, the rest are done.

 These woodland phlox are in the side garden between the house and the pond. They look better than ever this year. These are I think two years old. The ones in the shadier hellebore garden barely bloom every year, for the past 4 years. Location, location and location..

Our summer phlox we weeded it today, the tallest summer phlox in enormous, 2 foot around and it reaches 5-6 foot tall. Watching the butterflies on them can be breath taking at times.

 Here is the fattest carrot we have ever taken out of our garden. We have been picking enough carrots fresh for salad about every day. Nothing like fresh carrots from the garden. Tonight we had salad with fresh lettuce, spinach, bok choy, carrots and radishes all from the garden. And we had cooked collard greens from the garden as well.

The garden is abundant with butterflies right now, lots of Eastern Tiger Swallowtails, Pipevine Swallowtail, the first Spicebush Swallowtail today, a Cloudless Sulphur was visiting the columbines today. A Northern Water Snake was seen hunting along the ponds edges, second one ever seen here ever.

The bees, oh my. The nuk hopefully has a queen by this weekend, today was day 15, it takes 16 days to raise a queen . Bees choose eggs that could be as old as 3 days, so she could have emerged already. We wait another week and a half and hopefully she will have mated and is laying eggs. The past two days the bees in the nuk have been bringing in pollen. Bees usually bring in pollen to feed larva, by now all the larva should be capped. So the bees are at least hopeful of new brood. The mother hive I feed them yesterday, I lifted it and it seemed very light. Lifting a hive tells you how much honey stores there is, too light and the bees could starve.

We are still weeks away from the Tulip Poplar, out number one nectar source of the year. I think most of the maples are done, so the bees should be getting dandelion right now and what is left of the Eastern Red Bud. Blackberry blooms are very close maybe a week away, so honey should begin to store up.

Two last bits of bee news.

 First I hopefully have a cut out to do in a barn. This would be a feral hive residing in a barn, I'll take the bees and comb and put them in a hive here.

Second new bees are arriving on April 14th, Meg and I have a very cool new hive we are working on. This hive is a modified Kenya Top Bar Hive. I customized it with a screened board board that one can insert a sticky board for mite testing. It also will have a window so we can see inside, unlike any window you have seen on a hive. Best part Meg has beautifully painted it.

Beautiful first day of the year!

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.

Coldframe harvesting now!

On Wednesday we started eating greens from our cold frames. BTW Meg's second grade class is building their own cold frames at her school this Wednesday.

Thought I'd give you a tour.

Here is my newer design, I combined two cold frames into one. You can see the frame at ground level is made of 10 year old reclaimed 2 x 6s from a deck I removed this past spring. These cold frames are both 6 ft x 10 ft.  I took the left over scraps and made 2 x3s out of them and attached the 2 x 3s to the 2 x 6s with 2 - 3 inch decking screws.

Once the 2 x 3s were attached I attached the 3/4 inch conduit straps on the inside of the cold frame and placed a drywall screw to stop the 1/2 inch PVC pipe from falling down. By attaching these straps up higher like this we get more head room inside the cold frame to climb in and harvest. The 1/2 inch PVC are 10 foot lengths and span 6 foot across as you see. 

 

 Inside of the most recently(three weeks ago) planted cold frame. On the left that is Arugula, behind it spinach, more lettuce mix and at the left back more Rainbow Carrots. On the right side we have Lacinato Kale, Mesclun Lettuce mix, more carrots and Swiss Chard. This is the first time we have had two patches of Swiss Chard which we both enjoy greatly.

 Here is what we have started eating. This is the Gourmet Lettuce Mix planted in the first cold frame, behind it is kale. Bad news about this frame Meg planted Larkspur in this spot earlier this year, it is all those weeds you see.

 Here is our Rainbow Carrots they are doing pretty good, each cold frame has carrots in it. Freshly harvested carrots are one of my favorite things in the garden.

Salad mix with lots of Mizuna in it, we are eating this. I love mizuna. This is Meg's planting in the second cold frame. Note she casts seeds everywhere and we harvest like crazy, forget those stupid rows in your cold frame, this is how to do it believe me.

Other news about the garden. 

Yesterday I set out the bird seed and 3 suet cakes for the birds. No bird visitors seen yet. 

The bees I fed them 4 pounds of sugar yesterday, guess there are still a lot of them. As the sugar syrup was gone in less than 24 hours. Some bees got in, my mistake, downed maybe 10 bees rescued perhaps 20. Today it reached into the 70s for a brief period, I did see bees carrying pollen, just a handful.

Potato blossoms

Well today was the 16th day this year of temps over 90 degrees, only 94 today. Luckily a storm system is here wetting everything down currently. Last night we got a scrap of rain, others nearby got up to 3 inches!

I have located two people on Craigslist with 275 gal containers for rain barrels, the best one is food grade, but 2+ hours away. The other maybe 1 1/2 hours away, these contained soap. Yet for $50 or $80 these are a steal. Believe we have a new rule here, when the handyman trailer goes to the dump, it brings back a yard of compost ($28), so the trailer is full of compost as I took a ton of building waste to the dump yesterday. The trailer would have to be unloaded before we go and get the 275 gallon containers.

Potato blooms from our garden today. The labyrinth of potatoes is so full of foliage the labyrinth is not noticeable any more.

Our first ever eggplant, well for me anyway.

Salvia guaranitica ‘Black & Blue’ it does not grow well where we plant it, so it moves to where it likes to grow?

Here is one of the Cosmic Purple carrots we planted on February 20th this year.
 The purple is a thin outer layer inside they are orange like any other carrot.

Oh and I also posted on my other blog The Liberal Handyman Blog today with photos of my most recent porch project. I've neglected the blog for over a year and a half.

Bees Report June 02

This morning I checked the bees to see if the queen is producing brood. Yes, she is as you can see below. These were package bees I have had them now 16 days, it won't be long before the first brood hatches.

Here on the upper right you can see some of the food stores, I think it is the syrup I have been feeding them.

I'd liked to have seen less open cells here. Not sure if these brood have just been laid and the holes will fill in or not.

On the upper right you can see where I did not push the frames close together on my last inspection and the bees have filled in some of that space. On the frames bottom corners they have eaten away some of the wax, guessing that is normal.

More open cells, not good, we'll have to see if this queen can cut the mustard.

Here are some of the round carrots (Tonda di Parigi Carrots) we planted early this spring. They grew quicker than any carrots we have tried and they are very tasty too.

Sometimes the weeds don't get pulled in out garden beds. The birds must have planted this in the front flower bed, it is Yellow Moth Mullein, Verbascum blattaria. When I get home it has no flowers, in the morning it opens up, perhaps at night too.

Other items, we had a Eastern Painted Turtle about to lay eggs in the garden. I broke the rule of nature photography and moved in with the camera and took photos. She left the site without laying her eggs. A reminder we must observe and record, never interfere.

Last thing you get a kick out of this. Meg's sister lives in Chapel Hill, right on the bus route in town. Tonight she had a deer giving birth in her tiny backyard!

Never would have dreamed!

We could grow carrots this big! These carrots are on a 2 x 6 railing to give you perspective on the size. The taste, well a lot better than store bought. You know those pre washed baby carrots that everyone buys these days, no taste at all when compared to freshly grown organic carrots. If you can't grown them, try buying some at your local farmers market, worth every penny trust me.

Our trick on these? We, OK Meg planted them in late fall and they were in the cold frame. We mixed lots of compost in the soil every year for the the past several years.  We also have spring planted carrots that are tiny right now, but growing every week. Just ate one of these so hard to resist.

 Here is the labyrinth bed of potatoes planted a few weeks ago. It starts on the lower left with a basil plant then potatoes go almost to the center. The after the potatoes pea greens in the center.

 Our larger garlic bed. You can see our onions on the left of the garlic, they are huge. The lettuce in the front is almost past prime at this point. The pepper plants on the lower left were grown from seed.

Meg you need to pick these Sugar Snap Peas! This is half on one of our three trellises of peas.

 Our latest blooming clematis, forgot the name of this one. Last year we had more blooms...

 Meg finally got some Comfrey. As you can see it is doing great in our garden. More on comfrey.

 Black Cohosh, Actaea racemosa Meg brought this home from an Women's Herbal Conference last year. Doing very well.

Self sown larkspur in the cold frame.

 In the past few years I have been taken in by spiderworts. I think this is the one I got from SweetBay. Just love it!

 Oh so beautiful.

 This one is the largest flowering one I have. It has been here for 10 years or so, my one plant in now 4 plants, not a fast spreader by any means.

This spiderwort is pale blue, the camera lost the blue in the petals. Saw an alba "white" spiderwort yesterday on a blog...

More on the 13 year cicadas, I found one casing on the deck earlier in the week and a confirmed one dead in a pan of water here in the yard this morning. We must be slightly out of the main brood. . I read a report of hundreds of thousands of them being seen and heard at Jordan Lake an hour from here.

Garden Goodies & More Daffodils

Meg pulled our first Carrot last week, here it is with one of the French Breakfast Radishes from the garden.

More of the French Breakfast Radishes. I think these are the best radishes we have grown, very tasty and not as hot as some radishes. I like eating 2-3 as a snack. Our garden is over run with them. The rain so far has made them extra big.

 As many of you might have recalled, I waited for Brent and Becky's end of season sale to get 50% off on daffodils and crocuses last year. For most of March I was thinking this was a mistake, as everything was so slow to come up having been planted so late. Now I have changed my mind.

Above is 'Falconet', I planted it on both sides of the back steps. It is very fragrant and has lots of flowers per stem, this is two stems. I'd rate this one very high on my list of favorites.

Above is 'Sound', it looks a bit like a slightly smaller Ice Follies to me, but is fragrant. The cup is supposed to be a sunset orange cup, to me it seems slightly orange. Wondering if the cone will turn orange as it ages?

 Not 100% sure but I think this is 'Ice Follies' it came in one of those mixed packages of daffodils. The cone should turn white with age.

Here is 'Misty Glen" I bought it locally and planted it in the fall on the dam to the pond. It is supposed to have a greenish cup, looks white to me.

Thought I'd revisit 'Pink Charms' I posted this 7 days ago and said I did not see any pink.  The flower in the front is about 7 days old and has turned slightly pink. The flower on the right is a fresh one and very yellow. These are planted along the driveway.

Above is 'Silver Chimes' it is fragrant and planted next to the gardenia bush in the back yard. I was able to take in the daffodil aromas standing in the backyard 15 foot from the daffodil plantings, misson accomplished! Another new favorite, just love the tazettas like 'Silver Charms' and 'Falconet'.

Here is 'Sir Winston Churchill' planted by the bamboo garden edging.

odorus flore pleno (plenus) Not looking very good, most bulbs did not bloom. Supposed to be a good naturalizer and is very fragrant. Still very unusual.


 Camellia Japonica 'April Dawn' we purchased at Camellia Forest two years ago in a gallon pot. This is the first and only bloom. We both really like this bloom!

 Japanese Roof Irises that I have had for a very long time. Meg brought over some blue ones they are almost ready to bloom.

Crested iris opened yesterday. We have maybe 25 blooms right now and expect 200-300. They are wild in the woods by our septic field.

Dr Ruppel our first clematis of the season. Clematis Armandii  'Snowdrift' did not survive the winter.

Last item. The new hydrangea I bought Meg at Costco. Looks like 4 plants in that pot and only $20.