Gardens-In-The-Sand

Signs of Spring

I'm starting to see colour...
Hate the winter blahs... Even though the people in Florida get 6 more weeks of Florida, after a palm tree saw it's shadow... I'm not as lucky... When I moved South (back in the '80s), I didn't quite go far enough...

Small clump of daffodils In the foundation bed in fronnt of the house...

Daffys n Kitties in front of the garden wire...

Dead stems are from the lantana...

Candy striped camellia

Red camellias

Variegated camellia...

Last Spring the voles chewed up the roots on this plant... it was laying on it's side when I rescued it... and potted it up... I decanted it... just before it bloomed.

Electricity in the garden...

The winter rains means a chance to do my trenching, and work can be done on 'infrastructure'.

Mockingbird

Plus.. the hellebores are blooming!

Labels: camellia, daffodil, hellebore

Hellebore

I usually stop photographing the hellebores just as soon as there is anything else in bloom.

This doesn't mean that the hellebore have stopped blooming, or are less pretty...

As can be seen by this shot... a lot of flowers on a single plant make a nice show...

The pink & purples aren't quite as showy as the white, en masse... I still prefer the colours in the winter... when nothing else is blooming.

Doubles!

Even the cat is impressed...

And because I can't stop with just hellebore... here's redbud blooms with carolina jessamine.

Vines in the tree isn't uniformly bad...

confederate violet

Labels: hellebore

Gardening Challenges and Successes

It seems like the more work I do to improve the soil, the worse the rodents get... Stupid voles are having a population spike in spite of anything the cats can do... and they do plenty...

Looking for prey?

Actually... Mom caught this one...

They took turns questioning the prisoner... before eventually eating the evidence...

Got some taters up... trying to out-wit the voles by planting this patch next to the house in the foundation planting... Where the cats poop...

Poppies are up...

Magenta spreen (chenopodium giganteum) seedlings... Gotta 'preciate food that self-sows...

Returning verbesina virginica ... Yall remember the frostflowers

Peaking Hellebores
And camellias

Spreading Mountain mint (pycnanthemum spp.)

I'm a real fan of this stuff... it spreads very well, and is a valuable resource to the native pollinators...

as seen on this video

This winter I found that It worked beautifully to clear my lungs when I had that bug that went around... I googled expectorant herbs and then went out and harvested the pitiful offering of leaves... This year... Ima dry some ahead of time...

Labels: cats, hellebore, magenta spreen, mint, poppies, rodents, taters, verbesina

Normal weather

Enjoy it while it lasts...

Some camellias have recovered from those single digit temps...

Daffys!

The hellebores are looking good!

Labels: camellia, daffodil, hellebore

2 inches of snow

A 2 inch snowfall closed down the state... I feel bad for those folk stuck in gridlock traffic in Atlanta for 24 hours or so... I always did hate that Atlanta traffic...

* This pic is from first thing this morning (Jan 29,2014). They've been sitting there all night. Some of the motorists have been out there in their cars for 16 hours.*

The schools didn't bother to open around here... not sure what they were thinking in Atlanta... The Governor is blaming the metrologists... but... He's going to have to take some responsibility... eventually...

Personally, I listened to the weather report... and paid attention to their warnings to stay home...

I posted a similar picture of my house back on January 2011

A bit closer...

A bird in the bush...

elephant's foot covered in snow. (Elephantopus sp.).
The next day... the birds came to gather seed.

A bird eating elephant's foot seed.
I got a lot of pics of birds in the elephant patch... but the birds are difficult to distinguish from the stems...
I posted flowers from the elephant's patch back in August.