The garden mid August

I've been cutting Bronze Fennel for Meg the past few mornings for her class room caterpillars. We decided they had enough fennel this morning. I did a quick count of the cats in our garden, 31 was what I came up with, Meg has 22 in her class room. So 31 cats here eating up the fennel like crazy, I think we have enough. In past years we have had 4-5 dozen cats on our fennel. Those of you growing dill or parsley for Black Swallowtails, you never have enough, Bronze Fennel grows to 6 foot lots of food get some.

These Black Swallowtail cats were not posed in the garden, lots and lots.

Donkey, he's some very cool yard art Meg bought me for my birthday last month.

Stray cantaloupe from our compost. It is huge. Please tell me how does one know when these are ripe? Alice?

The stray Butternut Squash, we have 4 huge ones like the one shown above, note it is 3 inches wide at the base to give you a sense of scale. We have 4 more coming o n like the one shown below, it is 6 foot up in a willow tree. This is a monster plant.

A few local notes about local things going on.

 First Paperhand Puppets are having weekend shows in Chapel Hill, we plan on going Saturday. This year it is "City of Frogs" can't wait to go, we'll do a post on it for sure. They'll be preforming every Friday Saturday and Sunday until September 9th at the Forest Theater. And the following weekend(Sept 14,15and 16) at the Museum of Art in Raleigh. Please don't miss it.

This coming Sunday is the Durham Butterfly Count, I'll be leading a group looking for butterflies. We'll have 6-7 parties of people out looking for butterflies. Contact me if you want to go.

Oh, the last thing public schools teachers just sign new contracts for less money, longer hours and smaller class budgets. Way to go Republicans, tax the rich and make sure teachers, policemen and firemen get paid what they deserve!

Hellebores Starting & Yard Art

Looks like our hellebores are opening up! Several plants have one or two flowers open right now. Below iare some photos of ones that would photograph, I did not post the white or pink ones as the blooms are not quite ready.

 This is an hellebore we moved from Meg's yard, last year it had about 50 blooms! This one was staring at me when I walked up.

My newest hellebore HGC 'Pink Frost" Love this photo! I was at Southern States today, the three end caps of these HGC hellebores were GONE! Jane has my number when the next 200 come in, yes 200! She has ordered Swirly Skirts, I told her I want one. Guess what I have a two year old plant tagged Swirly Skirts in the garden which has never bloomed, duh!

HGC 'Silver Moon'

One of the big plants we were given in the fall of 2009.

Here are some hellebore babies, got them coming up everywhere!

The rock irises are at peak right now!

 Our 'Crimson Candles' Camellia is just starting to light the candles! I added compost around all the camellias and hellebores yesterday afternoon.

Last Saturday we went to a yard art show and I bought this 3 foot spider for the garden! Meg wants to put a spider plant in it.

Got carried away at Southern States and picked up this copper colored gazing ball, it looks red here. Makes the setting sun look pretty cool huh?

News from the bird feeders. Yesterday we had a new visitor to the suet feeders, a Yellow-rumped Warbler. And we had two Brown Creepers on the oak tree near the suet feeders, previously we'd only seen one.

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.