posted June 02, 2013 09:26 AM            

BBQ`s with friends, hikes in the woods, skeeters biting and poison ivy to keep one awake all night. Yay for June and her promises of more to come!!

Life is wonderful

posted June 02, 2013 10:18 AM            

It is my positive affirmation as here it is 45 degrees, rain pounding and wind howling. My Iris are tattered by large hail stones and the hummingbirds are clinging tightly to the fence to stay in place.
The wood stove is going so it`s hot stew on the stove today.

I grumble but it much worse in OK and I send prayers for their safety and recovery.

posted June 02, 2013 12:46 PM            

Life is wonderful

posted June 03, 2013 01:17 PM            

I do all of the bird feeding, garden tending, and pest abating now, and I'm enjoying it. I'm so excited about my three pumpkin vines. I've recently tried to plant watermelon and sunflowers again. We've got some corn coming up.

Tropicanna (put in the ground one day; bloomed the next; it was awesome):

A self-portrait from the underside of the Canna:

The pumpkin vine with the most obvious agenda (growing like crazy away from where it was planted): (Just bloomed yesterday for the first time)

The pumpkin under the bird bath was the first to bloom:

The least active pumpkin. I trimmed away its shade this morning. I want to go find some ladybugs to release near this one to help it with the tiny bugs that seem to like it.

We planted lots of ice plant. Primarily orange flower, but we added this multi-colored one recently:

Our Silver Dollar Eucalyptus (it has heart-shaped new leaves):

posted June 03, 2013 01:40 PM            

Oh my...I just accidentally x'ed out my LL tab, instead of just stopping my post from processing (it was taking awhile).

Since moving this year I have had to quit my job, so one of the new things I do is tend to the gardening and feed the birds. I never knew how much I could enjoy this. I'm most excited about the pumpkin vines. We've got three!

This is our least-active pumpkin. I just cut away some of the shade another plant was giving it. I need to look for a place to buy some ladybugs for this guy, too. I don't know if aphids are white, but it's got some kind of tiny insect on its leaves.

This was the first pumpkin to bloom. It resides under the bird bath, and seems to be growing nicely.

This is our most ambitious pumpkin. It's growing like crazy to get away from where it was planted. It won't let that corn steal it's thunder. It bloomed a brilliant yellow star flower yesterday morning for the first time. My picture doesn't do it justice, because it's really too bright to take a good picture.

The flower all the other flowers are jealous of, Tropicanna. I put it in the ground one day, and the next day it bloomed. It was awesome!

We brought this Silver Dollar Eucalyptus with us. It lost most of its leaves on the trip, but it survived and the new leaves are heart-shaped (at the start, before becoming more circular):

This is the oddball amongst our ice plants. The rest have a different type of flower, which is more uniform in color (orange).

Have I reached eight pictures yet?

The Delicious Monsters (Monstera deliciosa) we brought are loving it here. It fun to watch them grow their epic leaves.

posted June 04, 2013 02:51 PM            

My sunflowers are sprouting! This one jumped out of the ground still wearing its shell:

There are a bunch of Mammoth Sunflower sprouts. Juni, you'll have to tell me about thinning them out to proper spacing. Do I just have to accept the loss of the other viable plants, or can I transplant them so that they're more appropriately spaced?

Mexican Sunflower or multi-colored regular sunflower? I think it's a Mexican. They have beautiful, giant orange flowers.

posted June 04, 2013 04:18 PM            

Finally, all the veggie and flower gardens are in here. I lost lettus ,kale and beans to frost but easy to replant. I planted so many for others this year, mine is behind tho . Business first ....

Tropicanna is lovely! Pumpkins healthy and ice plants are fun! Did you plant with Osmocote or a like product?

My pride and joys are my various elephant ears. I bring them in (potted) in the fall to a cool (50degree) room and bare mimn. of water. My newest, last season, is a Persian Palm ear and I love it so much I ordered another. I will put it in the center of a raised round bed.

I love sun flowers and plant rows and rows. They transplant well after thinning so you now have extras !. I like mine quite tight together but mammoths need 2 ft apart.

Red mulch. Hmmm, not my favorite. I go for natural cypress so the flowers are the eye catcher and focus.

posted June 04, 2013 06:36 PM            

We had freezing weather after they arrived and my 4 yr old Godson was worried they would freeze their tiny "piggies" off. So I explained to him their ability to go into a torpor state.

It was sweet watching his little mind wrap around the concept. Then he asked "who taught them that" . I told him God and he squealed with delight and hollered

"Praise the Lord"

posted June 04, 2013 06:40 PM            

I don't know what Osmocote is, so I'm guessing we didn't use it. I just looked it up. Do you recommend I use it?

When we put in the lavender and ice plant I actually watered everything far too often. I was out there watering every morning, because I didn't know better. I'm down to once a week now, which I'm guessing may still be too much for the ice plant. None of our original ice plants have bloomed (blossomed?) since shedding the flowers they had initially. I want those flowers to come back! They all look healthy, though. The only one showing a flower is the newest one with the blooms of various colors.

That's cool that you like elephant ears. There are some huge, well-established ones near my wife's work. I think that was the inspiration. We planted it in a perpetually wet area in the backyard, and it seems to like it. We were so pleased to learn we'd taken home a frog with that plant. My wife had been loving hearing the wild frogs. It was fairly quiet, though. It made it's frog noises very infrequently. I even tried playing frogs sounds through my phone to the frog from the kitchen, but it didn't seem to inspire him or her. Then, one day, we found it dead out in the open in a corner of the soil where it meets the concrete patio and house wall. We buried it, and put a frog statue on it there.
Sorry, more pics:


My wife tried to give him a nice habitat. There's a broken tiki mug partly buried for him to hide in, an overturned pot for him to hide in, and the blue and white plate was placed to collect water from that sprinkler that's covered by an old chicken food container.

Our frog monument:

posted June 04, 2013 07:18 PM            

Spacing for sunflowers is dependant on your humidity levels and downy mildew, fungus or rust disease. They need a good air circulation between plants to stay healthy.

If you have mostly low humidity levels, clean soil, food for each individual plant (Osmocote) and a good watering plan you can plant closer together. Maintenance is they key to any garden and a watchful eye for pests and disease.

I do plant mine at least 6 in closer than called for but I tend them daily and prevent any type of problem.

Except for the darn chickadees & finchs . The buggers love them!

posted June 04, 2013 07:27 PM            

They self sow so more next year!

I`m not sure about the "evening sun mix". Are they standard sun flowers? If so they should work together. Try the Mammoth in back row and the shorter mexicans in front.
I`m certain they all can co exist.

posted June 05, 2013 08:01 AM            

© Sarthi

O flower! Attired in pure natural innocence,
Thou are ignorant of thy enchanting aroma,
Unaware of thy Charm,
Dances freely with flirtious breeze,
Hardly cares about world’s joy and sorrow,
Thou are neither selfish nor altruistic
Full of Self yet so Selfless!

I am fascinated by your tranquil disposition,
At dawn thou bath in sun’s rays,
Flirt with colorful butterfly,
Fall a deep sleep in afternoon warmth.
Enjoy melodious sound of chirping birds

Thou lover, up there - the sky,
Gazes you with intense admiration,
He kisses you tenderly through his winds,
Thou spread thy fragrances in his arms,
He grows enamored of thy presence,
What a beautiful bond!

Thy fall comes – autumn arrives,
Still thou remain full of life as ever before,
Not worried; not shaken a bit
Simply falls, without uttering a
Single word to your lover to save you
from getting withered.

Thou unconditional acceptance is captivating,
O soft hearted beauty, thy passive life is
Exquisite treasure of green emotions.

Source: O Flower!, Flower Poem http://www.familyfriendpoems.com/poem/o-flower#ixzz1r1Ouf1i8 www.FamilyFriendPoems.com

------------------

This week is still chilly, in the 50`s and a cold rain on and off... we seriously need some sunshine to dry us out before the garden seeds rot.

Last spring, T bought a braided hibiscus and a yr later, I`m curious how it`s doing.

posted June 05, 2013 11:54 AM            

I noticed a sliver of green coming from one of my side yard pumpkin holes. I don't know whether it's safe for the seed to come to the surface or not, so I covered some of the seed shell leaving the green open to the sun. That pumpkin seed package claimed fruit as big as 300 pounds (if you restrict it to one fruit). I don't know that I want them that big, but I like the idea of pumpkins growing in our various yards. Jen's favorite holiday is Halloween, so it seems appropriate.

posted June 06, 2013 09:15 AM            

Brambles, in years to come, can take over an area and move into the neighbors without an invite. I hope you have corraled them now to keep their thuggery in place.

Berries on Cheerios, yum

posted June 06, 2013 09:20 AM            

I <3 my tenacious brambles.
Alllll about low maintainance food production here

If we cut them back, they just get angry and grow more berries

posted June 06, 2013 11:32 AM            

New pumpkin plant:

And another:

posted June 06, 2013 05:51 PM            

Sun flowers are hardy souls. If left alone, they will become like a horse with 2 broken legs. Useless & sad but alive. They would struggle and be stunted but rarely die. A sad eye sore. PLUS, waste a viable plant.....

The vacant lot plant looks like a species of sun flower. Maybe a (hungry) Maximillian? But definately a sunflower species.
http://www.gurneys.com/product.asp?pn=11016
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
For Jen.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ntv4ZMvUSWI http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=478196390299
(reposted from an old post so youtube may not work)
This is a video of Cleve Baxter, a polygraph scientist who did the controversial experiment with plants and animal cells. In the 60s, he
decided on impulse to attach his polygraph electrodes to the now-famous dracaena in his office, then water the plant and see if the leaves responded (p. 4). Finding that the plant indeed reacted to this event, he decided to see what would happen if he threatened it, and formed in his mind the idea of lighting a match to the leaf where the electrodes were attached.

And that was when something happened that forever changed Baxter's life and ours. For the plant didn't wait for him to light the match. It reacted to his thoughts!

Through further research, Baxter found that it was his intent, and not merely the thought itself, that brought about this reaction.

He also discovered that plants were aware of each other, mourned the death of anything (even the bacteria killed when boiling water is poured down the drain), strongly disliked people who killed plants carelessly or even during scientific research, and fondly remembered and extended their energy out to the people who had grown and tended them, even when their "friends" were far away in both time and space.

In fact, he found, plants can react "in the moment" to events taking place thousands of miles away. And not only are they psychic, they also are prophetic, anticipating negative and positive events, including weather.

One of the most important things that Baxter discovered was that, instead of going ballistic, plants that find themselves in the presence of overwhelming danger simply become catatonic (p. 7)! This phenomenon, the book tells us, has posed endless problems for those researchers who, unlike Baxter, do not respect the sentience of their subjects. Under such circumstances, the plants they are studying evince no reaction whatsoever. They simply "check out."
Distance healing through broadcasting of wave-form energy — called radionics — depends upon the concept that all parts of reality communicate with all the other parts "outside of time," and that a small piece of something can stand in for the whole, no matter how far away in "space" that whole thing may be — exactly as a voodoo doll stands in for the person being helped or harmed.

As The Secret Life of Plants describes in detail through several chapters, radionics practitioners totally proved as far back as 1952 that they could "treat" plant crops without actually spraying them, simply by broadcasting the waveform of the pesticide to a photograph(!) of the field itself. The results of doing this were actually better than when insecticide was applied to the physical field. And the potential, not only for nurturing our environment but for cutting the cost of food production, was dramatic.

But Monsanto and friends, with the help of our government, made sure that such a revolution in growing practices did not happen. The practitioners were ridiculed, and their published results discredited. As had been happening since the time of Nicola Tesla, yet another sustainable energy practice was wiped almost out of existence.