Spring has Sprung!

Ooops!  How time flies!  I can't believe I didn't post anything at all in February!  Although, truth be told, all I would have had to show you would have been weeds!

Since I was out of commission so much last year, with my surgeries and recuperations, the weeds really got the upper hand in the island beds (and the back lawn, come to think of it).

I've been making a concerted effort to get them back under control again, at least in the island beds, before we go ahead and add some more soil amendments and mulch.  One thing I love about my new job -- I'm home by 5:15, so even now I can get outside and spend a little time weeding when I get home from work.  Unlike my old job where I didn't get home until 7 pm because of the awful commute.

So now I'm beginning to see some signs of spring, I thought I'd show you some photos, but before I get to those, here are some photos of our winged visitors.

I love this photo of a pair of Mourning Doves.  At least, I assume they are a pair.  They hung out by the feeders and bird bath for a couple of hours together, whereas usually, there's a flock of them.

Here's another spring visitor -- a female Red-Winged Blackbird, if I'm not mistaken.  Amazingly, there weren't any males around the afternoon I took this.

I haven't seen any bluebirds taking interest in the new nesting box I bought especially for them after I had one pecking at the bedroom window a few weeks ago. 

But could something be showing an interest in nesting in this shelf?

Hard to tell whether the leaves just got blown in there by the wind, or whether someone is making a nest.  I'll have to check it out tomorrow and see if there's any progress on it.

And finally - the signs of spring I mentioned!  The Turk's Cap, that I had given a drastic hair cut, is sprouting like crazy.  I need to get after the ant hill in the bed, and also the millet or whatever it is that is sprouting all through that area (I put bird seed out on the wall right above it)

I even have some color in the garden, courtesy of several dianthus that weren't fazed by our December freezes.

I believe these seedlings are Cleome.  They're coming up in the general area of where I had Cleome growing last year, so I hope that's what they are.

And in this area of the island bed I've got some Cosmos that self-seeded from last year and elsewhere are some Achillea that self-seeded from underneath the Vitex tree.

In addition, I'm seeing signs of life in most of the Lantana, but alas, not the Milkweed.  I may have to make a trip to Plants for All Seasons and see if they have any on Saturday.

This last photo is of another little winged visitor I spotted on the dianthus.  I have no idea what variety of butterfly this is and haven't been able to ID it.  If anyone knows, please let me know.


So, for now my main tasks are of the clean up variety.  I've still got a lot of weeding to do in one of the island beds and the veggie bed.  Then we can add some soil amendments and mulch.  (It's amazing how the level of the soil has dropped since we first built the beds.)  But I'm determined to get ahead of the weeds this year, so keeping up with them isn't such a chore in the heat of summer.

Words and photographs by Jayne Wilson, Green and Serene, Jayne's Country Garden.

The Birds of Winter

One of my favorite pastimes is sitting, either in the dining room or on the patio, and watching the birds go about their business in our garden (that's English for back yard).

While we have lots of the usual visitors - Mockingbirds, Blue Jays, House Sparrows, Northern Cardinals and Mourning Doves, I've also spotted some seasonal visitors.

 
 At first I mistook these goldfinches in winter plumage for sparrows.  It wasn't until I zoomed in with my camera I realized what they were.

This one seems to be pointing out the fact that there's no birdseed on the wall.

 This isn't a great photo, but I think this is a House Finch. I've only ever seen one a couple of times before, so I may be mistaken.

We had four male Northern Cardinals in the back yard at one time yesterday, but I didn't have my camera handy.  I was able to snap a photo of this female on the wall though.  They are year round residents in the hedgerow behind us.  Unfortunately, that land has been rezoned, so I fear the days are numbered for the hedgerow.  Perhaps the birds will come and take up residence in our back yard.

Another year round resident in the area is "Woody", the Red-bellied Woodpecker.  He likes to perch on the electric poles behind the house and has been heard hammering on the neighbors' Hardi-Plank siding (that must have given him a headache!)

Two birds I saw but just couldn't get a photo of were the Carolina Chickadee and the Tufted Titmouse.  The Chickadees are year round residents but I've only seen the Tufted Titmouse once or twice, usually in winter, so I'm presuming it's just a winter visitor.  I just wish I could have got a photo of him.

I just realized I also don't have any photos of the Blue Jays.  Oh well, I'll just have to get out and take some and do another post in the New Year.

Speaking of which, I wish everyone a safe and happy New Year celebration and a wonderful 2016.


Words and photographs by Jayne Wilson, Green and Serene, Jayne's Country Garden.

The Birds and the Bees

 What a fun morning in the garden today!  As I was sitting on the patio enjoying my morning coffee I had a chance to get some photos of the young birds who have been visiting the feeders this week.

This young mockingbird was hopping around in the grape vine, cheeping plaintively.

He was quite insistent, and wasn't shy about letting his wants known.

And finally his patience was rewarded when mom (or is it dad?) arrives with something tasty.  I was lucky to snap these photos.  About five seconds after the last one was taken, both birds disappeared into the hedgerow opposite, and I haven't seen them since!

Once the mockingbirds had moved on, I was happy to see the Cardinal Kids show up. They both look a little moth-eaten at the moment, the male below especially, as they get their adult plumage.

Their beaks are starting to turn color as well - they were much darker a few days ago.

And finally, the Profusion zinnia is proving irresistible to several bumble bees (as well as butterflies, but I will keep that for another post).

I'm not positive which species of bumble bee these are, as there are 46 species.  It may be Bombus auricomus, but I'm really not sure.  If anyone knows, please let me know!

I'm going to add today's post to Camera Critters.  You can visit by clicking on my link, or on the Camera Critters button in the right hand bar of my blog to see critter photos posted by other bloggers around the world.



Words and photographs by Jayne Wilson, Green and Serene, Jayne's Country Garden.

Butterflies and the Bird Buffet

I've been trying all week to catch a photo of one of the Monarchs that have been floating and flitting around the garden all week. I was finally able to snap a photo when one of them alit on the tropical milkweed in the island bed and was still for a moment.

One appeared to be laying eggs last weekend, but I can't see any eggs and haven't spotted any caterpillars, so my assumption may have been wrong.  I suppose time will tell.

It was marginally cooler today (only 88 degrees), so I put on a headband and went out to pull weeds.  Then, on a trip to the store to pick up bird seed, I was lured into the garden center and came out with a small flat of purple Angelonias, to help offset all the orange I have going on in the back yard.
But after sweating up a storm for half an hour or so, I retreated to the shade of the patio to sip ice tea and read a gardening magazine.  

That's when the show really started.  

First, along came this red-winged blackbird.  This is the first one I have seen this year.  He didn't stick around long, probably because I hadn't put any birdseed along the wall like I usually do.

Then I got quite excited when I saw this guy.  It's a young red-bellied woodpecker, too young to have a red cap on his head like his dad, although one of the photos below you can see it's getting a little rosy.

I had seen him during the week actually being fed by the male that visits our garden.  I watched closely to see if there would be a repeat performance.

Sure enough, after a few minutes, "dad" showed up. 

 Finally, I couldn't believe it when I realized the whole family was there on the wall - mum, dad and youngster!  I was thrilled to be able to capture this photo for the family album.  A first for me :-)

Then I realized I was being a bad hostess and that I really should put some seed out along the wall and fill the feeders.

Once I had done that, the white-winged doves that had been eyeing the scene from the power lines across the road came swooping down.

This mockingbird was quite happy enough to share as well.  He even tried some acrobatics to get to the suet, but the male woodpecker was the most skilled at that, happily hanging almost upside down to get to the suet/peanut mixture.

All in all, a lovely day in the garden.  I wish they could all be like this :-)


Words and photographs by Jayne Wilson, Green and Serene, Jayne's Country Garden.

The Return of the Birds - and Name That Bird

In a recent blog post, one of my local blogging friends, Dorothy, wondered where all the birds had gone this winter. 

In the six years I have lived here, it has seemed the we are surrounded by birds.  We hear them all the time, we see them in the garden, at the feeders and flying overhead.

But this winter it has seemed like they all just disappeared.  Even our year round birds, like the Cardinals, have been absent. The garden is silent.

I was really getting quite depressed about it, thinking it was because we now have houses on either side, where we used to have brush and trees.  

My little country garden that I loved so much when we moved here is rapidly becoming surrounded by suburbia. But I consoled myself that at least we still have the hedgerow (at least for now) across the road behind us.  It was always full of birds.

Where they went this winter is a complete mystery.

But at long last, I've started seeing some birds again.  Okay - so they are mostly European House Sparrows, not the most desirable of avian visitors.  But after the complete lack of birds over the winter, I'll take what I can get!

I also caught sight of this Carolina wren last weekend in the rain.  Perhaps they will nest on the patio again this year.  I hope so!  I heard and saw a Chickadee too, but couldn't get a photo of him.

The Southern Wax Myrtle seemed to provide a cozy dry shelter to these Mourning Doves, who stayed huddled under it for most of that rainy morning.  I began to worry that they might be injured but once it stopped raining, they flew off.

After weeks of cold wet, dreary weather, I was happy to see the sun shining in the garden this morning.  I was even more thrilled to see "Mr. Cardinal" on the wall, helping himself to the birdseed I had just put out.  Mrs. Cardinal was there too, but I didn't get a good shot of her.

As I was standing at the back door, taking photos of the sparrows and the cardinal, I realized that there was another bird with them.  At first I had assumed it was a sparrow but quickly realized it wasn't.  

As I wanted to identify it and add it to my "Life List", I took several photos.  Unfortunately, they haven't helped me identify it, either using my Birds of North America book, or the online tool at WhatBird.com

This is where you come in.  I'm hoping someone can tell me what this is. And then I can feel like an idiot for not being able to identify it myself!  :-)

With those markings he should be easy to identify, but once I had entering in "brown back", "streaked front," "yellow markings," "chestnut crown" etc.  I ended up with nothing.

These three are the best of the photos I got of him.

Any idea what he is?  Please leave a comment :-)
 


Words and photographs by Jayne Wilson, Green and Serene, Jayne's Country Garden.

Icepocalypse 2014, and Birds in the Winter Garden

You might have heard that we had a little weather here in Houston recently. 

Credit: Twitter @CraigHlavaty

The Houston Chronicle ran a great photo gallery of some of the internet memes going around making fun of us, which I got a chuckle out of.

In truth, the only reason I ended up staying home on Tuesday was because Metro had decided not to run any Park and Ride buses.  My thought was, since the weather was supposed to get worse during the day, I didn't want to drive into downtown and then get stuck there, or get stuck in traffic on icy roads coming home.

As it happened, it wasn't too bad at all and I had a fun day at home, watching the rest of the country poking fun at us on Facebook.  (My heart goes out to the poor souls in Atlanta who did get stuck in the ice and snow)

That's not to say it didn't get cold here.  As I went out to feed the birds in the morning, I could feel tiny little ice pellets landing in my hair.  They accumulated in plant containers and on the roof of the house.

Our back garden was certainly popular that day.  I stood inside the back door and took quite a few photos of the birds, availing themselves of the seed I had put out for them.

Not all the birds were welcomed. I was not happy to see this brown-headed cowbird out on the feeder. Their habit of laying their eggs in other birds' nests, often pushing the host bird's own eggs out of the nest, does not endear them to me. He was just a passing visitor though, and he appeared to be on his own.

Our most numerous visitors in the past couple of weeks have been American Goldfinches, although of course, we mostly see them in their "olive drab" winter plumage. Trying to get an accurate count of these, and of the house sparrows, for Project Feeder Watch, is a bit of a guessing game.

At first I assumed these birds were some sort of sparrow but couldn't find them when trying to ID them at What Bird?  I posted a photo in the forum there and discovered that these are, in fact, female red-winged blackbirds.  I would never have figured that out on my own!

Of course, we enjoyed visits from our regulars like this red cardinal all fluffed up against the cold in the Southern Wax Myrtle and our old friend "Woody", the red bellied woodpecker.

So that was "Icepocalypse 2014" and since then our weather has been like a roller coaster ride.

Yesterday I was pottering in the garden in a t-shirt and my husband and I sat on the patio with a bottle of wine in the evening. 

This morning we got woken up by rain pounding on the bedroom window and it was cold, wet and wintry when I went grocery shopping earlier.

The forecast is for highs of 40's and 50's with lows in the 30's, so I think I'll be putting the T-shirt away for a couple of weeks.

And of course, when summer does get here, we'll all be complaining about the heat and humidity.

But this is Texas, after all :-)


Words and photographs by Jayne Wilson, Green and Serene, Jayne's Country Garden.

"Junior"

 As I reported here in this blog, back in August of last year, we sadly had to say goodbye to the mature pine tree that we fell in love with when we bought our house.  The arborist that had removed the tree came back in the fall to plant a replacement.

I will admit, we had a bit of a scare after "Junior" had been planted.   We started seeing lots of yellow needles and dropped needles.  For a while, we feared that we'd have to cash-in on the one-year guarantee that the arborist offered and get yet another tree.  We worried was it not getting enough water, was it getting too much?  

As my husband was watering it one day, from the faucet at the back of the house, something suddenly came to me.   We have a water treatment system installed and it was connected specifically behind the water connection for the sprinkler system and the faucet at the front of the house, so it didn't affect those water outlets.  But all the other faucets around the house were supplied via the treatment system.  Great if we wanted to drink clean water right out of the faucet, or have lots of suds when washing the car, not so good for watering plants because the natural mineral content of our water had been altered.

I mentioned this to my husband and from that point on, we started watering "Junior" either from the rain barrel, or from the faucet at the front of the house.

  
 I'm happy to report that "Junior" is doing very well.  The needles stopped turning yellow almost immediately after the change and this spring, it's vigorously putting out candles of new growth.

Of course, "Junior" has a long way to grow--it's currently about 20 feet tall, nowhere near the 80 ft + of the original tree. We just have to be a little patient. According to historic aerial photos of our area on Google Earth, there weren't any trees here about 35 years ago - it was farmland.

So yes, we just have to be patient, although the local bird population is eyeing it up already :-)

 


Words and photographs by Jayne Wilson, Green and Serene, Jayne's Country Garden.

New Year's Garden

 The weather for the past few days has been cold, grey and miserable - definitely not the sort of weather to encourage one to head out in the garden.  Today, however, the winter sun is bright and although it's still chilly, my mind is wandering out of doors!

There's a LOT of tidying up to be done - freeze damage to cut back, weeds to pull, beds to mulch. Being out in the garden on a nice, brisk day is invigorating.  And sitting on my scoot, pulling weeds, I can watch and listen to the birds in the garden.

I was happy to hear and then see a Carolina Chickadee - the first I have seen since the houses either side of us were built last year.  I had feared, with the loss of habitat, I'd also lost the little birds, so it was great to see they are still around.

The red-bellied woodpecker visited the suet feeder this morning too. And we have not one pair of Northern Cardinals but two, jockeying for position along the wall where I sprinkle bird seed each morning. And my beloved Chipping Sparrows are back en masse.

While much of the garden is brown, soggy mush, some things came through the Christmas freezes remarkably well.

The Homestead verbena, located up against the wall and underneath the Vitex, is a carpet of healthy green foliage.  I hope to see lots of purple blooms on that again in the spring.

The Silver Mound Artemisia is the only non-brown thing in the island bed. The Cat's Whiskers, which was next to it, is brown sticks at the moment.  I planted them too close together, so I'll need to do some rearranging and I'll probably move the Cat's Whiskers and hope it survives!

Under the crepe myrtle, the Spearmint is still going strong (I don't think it's possible to kill spearmint, is it?)  Luckily, it's confined in that area and I like how it looks, so I'm not worried about it being invasive.  I am very glad we didn't put it in the veggie garden, like we planned to!

Speaking of the veggie garden, my husband went out and did some clean up there last week. We're looking forward to planning and planting this year's garden.

While I specifically did NOT make any New Year's resolutions this year, I did go ahead and prepare my garden journal so that the pages are ready for me to add to them as the year progresses.  I had done really well keeping the journal, noting what I was planting and where, throughout 2010 and 2011, but it seemed like each time I was in the mood to write last year, I didn't have any paper, or ink in my printer.  So I've printed out a page for each week of 2013 and all I have to do is jot down my notes.

Finally, here's something else that's growing well in the garden - I'd like some help identifying it.

It's side yard, by the downspout.  Not only is it green now but it's blooming and has berries.  It almost looks like a wild, miniature strawberry.

Any idea what it is?

No more photos from me this week. My camera decided to quit working while we were in San Antonio before Christmas.  My husband ordered me a new Nikon Coolpix P510, which should be arriving Monday.  I can't wait to try it out!  

I'll show you the results next week! 


Words and photographs by Jayne Wilson, Green and Serene, Jayne's Country Garden.