You Would Think I Never Work
April 21st, 2009 · 3 Comments
The day began with me wrenching my back to get a shot of this yellow-rumped warbler in bright breeding plumage. We don’t usually see ‘em this fancy down here, so I was fooled at first into thinking it was some other, more exotic warbler.
About 11:30, Skula got into the nestbox to lay her daily egg. Skula is an egg-laying machine, and is trying to break the Black Australorp’s record for consecutive days laying. So far she’s laid every single day for 18 days! Sometimes she even lays less than 24 hours after her previous egg. Skula only started laying on March 3—is this even normal?
We’ve had good rain this spring, and Josh’s square foot garden is coming along well. I’m glad he’s taking on the edible gardening, because it turns out that I’m really more into the flowery stuff. Today he made a smaller square foot garden and filled it with strawberry plants.
See? Flowery stuff! We bought this May Night salvia in fall 2007 for a buck at Lowe’s. It was one of a bunch of perennials that had mostly died back at the store. Savvy (read: cheap) gardeners know that fall is the best time to plant perennials, and you really just need a good rootball. So we loaded the Kia with 20 or so gallon-size perennials, shrubs, even a five-gallon Japanese maple for about $60 that day. To the untrained eye, it looked like we paid good money for dead plants. But this sucker survived a long fall at Lowe’s, being waterlogged in our formerly swamped yard, sitting in a pot while the creek was built, and is thriving after a year in the the same spot, as are most of the other things we bought that day. Did I mention it was only a buck?
Josh gave Lunch a better view of the irises, which started blooming yesterday. I dug these out of our friends’ garden when they were getting ready to sell their house. I abused the rhizomes horribly by leaving them in a bag, sometimes in the sun, for weeks before dividing and planting them. Irises are tough old biddies, though, and they grew and bloomed and multiplied despite me (or to spite me). I need to divide these next fall, and will use them to extend the bed up the hill a bit.
The day ended with the ethereal song of the wood thrush, and thankfully close enough for a bird-in-silhouette shot. Enjoy.
Tags: Chickens · GBirds Pets & People · Garden · Irises · Salvia · Wood Thrush · Yellow-rumped Warblers
3 responses so far ↓
1 christine // Apr 21, 2009 at 7:53 pm
That last photo would be an amazing painting. May I steal? Or at the very least Josh should do a drawing.
Also, where are all these eggs going? I heard a rumor that dog-sitting is usually paid in eggs. Just a rumor, probably.
2 David in Greensboro // Apr 21, 2009 at 8:15 pm
Sounds like you cleaned up at Lowes last fall! I live 2 blocks from the one on Battleground, and for a while there in November I was like a stalker, cruising through the garden center every afternoon. I’m sure the Loss Prevention people were watching me…but why steal when you can get a $10 plant for a dollar? That’s how I ended up with 20 hostas under the cherry tree…
3 Iris // Apr 21, 2009 at 9:22 pm
CDeL: I’d love to see what you can do with that wood thrush. And the rumor is true about the eggs-for-dogsitting deal. Skula won’t quit, so expect a bucket load.
David: It almost feels like stealing, or the best sample sale ever, the deals are so good. We actually went back a couple times, which is how we ended up with a dozen pyracanthas growing along the fence. And just yesterday I got some nice zinnias for 50 cents at Lowe’s up here in Madison. Crazy! A few weeks ago they had an entire cart of pansies for 10 cents each. I watched a guy wheeled them all to his truck, cackling to himself. Wait…was that you?