Slilenced Peacock and more!

Hey everyone it was my birthday this week, I'm 29 once again! Meg bought me this very cool peacock yard art with a gold stainless steel gazing ball on it. It as you can see also has blue balls, run with that phrase if you like :-). Best part is that it makes no noise unlike our neighbors noisy peacocks that keep us up at night.

Here is a wild morning glory that took over a tomato cage in the garden. Our larger tomatoes are doing bad with having some signs of Early Blight and the cucumbers have now got Downy Mildew see this link. Worst yet last night the deer finally found the garden, they ate the carrot tops (ok as the carrots are done) and they topped off one row of beans. We need to let out our Jack Russel Terrier a bit earlier in the morning I guess. We have been seeing deer along the road for more than a week at day break.

Greening up a bit by finally adding an official clothes line. I built and installed it over the weekend from scrap lumber I had laying around from my handyman business. I heard that 10-15% of home energy use is from drying clothes in a dryer. I told our neighbor up the street about our line and she noted she does not even own a dryer that the clothes line is what she has used for the past 15 years good for her!

Rose Pink, Sabatia angularis these native wild flowers are growing all along our road maybe 50 or so in bloom right now! Certainly one of my favorite native flowers is these parts.

Here is a yellow composite that I found blooming along our road. I don't know yellow composites very well, they are a challenging group.

Lastly here is a photo I took today at the pond up the street. It is a mated pair of Banded Pennants, Celithemis fasciata. I can't recall getting mated photos of this species before.

Tilling dirt and chopping up roots

Here are some wild morning glories that sprouted in our new garden bed. The soil was tilled up and placed in the garden back in early February. I figured chopping up the roots would just add organic matter. But I was wrong the chopping just helped the morning glories spread to every part of the garden. Usually when tilling I try to remove as much root material as possible, especially wild onions and mints. This time you can see the results below.

Above are 6 pieces of morning glory root I pulled up by hand. You can clearly see how new plants just took off from the small pieces of root.

I recall a long time ago at our river camp on the Ohio River it had wild morning glory roots 1 - 1 1/2 inches wide that came to surface every time the river washed away the soil. You could break off the roots like sweet potatoes, I had read that Indians ate the roots like potatoes in fact.

On a brighter note here is a Bleeding Heart from our garden today. A mild freeze is expected tonight, but there is nothing in our garden to worry about yet.