It was chilly this morning, so the first thing I did wasn’t garden-y or landscape-related at all. Well, kind of, I guess, since my ancient grey fuzzy shirt is my favourite cold-weather outerwear. Anyway, it has a new zipper now. I wonder if this one will last for 15 years?

We didn’t get frost, or if we did, it didn’t do much damage, but I’m still glad I brought flowers inside. I can look at this and other photos in the dead of winter, and remember that spring will come.

No pictures because there’s nothing to see, but I put whatever (most of them) bulbs that didn’t already go in the front oval bed or in Sarah-Flah’s garden into the bed beside the patio. I dug up my lone purple hyacinth, and it had a couple of small babies, so I separated them. They didn’t look big enough to bloom, but hopefully they’ll all live, including the big one.

We also went to RP Lumber, and I’m goddamned near $300 poorer, but I got six sheets of lattice, six 8″x8′ rough cedar boards, six 1/4″ dowels, three pounds of outdoor screws, a 1/4″ drill bit, and two 2x2s for the “enclosure” I need to make for the Spicebush Doot-doots and my Lovely Luna-to-be, so they stay in diapause, and know when spring comes, but don’t get eaten. P got some new hole saws, too, so I can make small bird-sized holes in the roost houses.

When we got home, we ate and took a nap, and then when I got up, I finished planting the last few hyacinth bulbs, checked the mail and discovered the 40 ‘Vanguard’ crocus I’d bought arrived early. I haven’t decided for sure where they’re going, plus the ground is like rock, so they didn’t get planted.

I found a cold bumblebee on the door, so I put him on my hand and took him over into the sun. He did a few leg lifts, vibrated his wings, climbed up on my sweatshirt cuff, and then flew away.

One, lonely little Sweet William, but considering they’re primarily spring flowers, and it hasn’t rained in ages, I’ll take it.

I skimmed and scooped leaves out of the pond earlier today, and also fired up my leaf blower and blew leaves off the patio over to the east end of the pond after i got up from my nap. It was getting fairly late, but I decided what the hell and got out my chipper. I remembered the green-ash this time, and also shredded a crap ton of the Mexican sunflower that I took out when I planted the hollyhocks. I spread the shredded stuff on the ground around the pond. There are probably a thousand seeds in there, but the area doesn’t get sun, and the soil is too poor for even weeds to grow, so I don’t think I’ll have volunteers.

It’s still not light enough for me to tell whether we got frost last night or not, but there was a frost warning. Sucks, because I still have stuff in bloom, but I guess it had to happen eventually.

I actually took this on Thursday after work. They didn’t quite get the chance to bloom because they were planted so late, but if these gaillardia survive the winter, I should have some happy flutter-guys next year!

C found this beautiful lady in her bedroom, in the middle of the night…but didn’t kill her! Instead, she trapped her under a shoebox lid, got her into a plastic bag, and brought her to me to find out whether she was dangerous. I think she’s Tigrosa aspersa, and unless you’re a prey insect, she’s not, so I released her over by the pond. Lots of wonderful spider-y shelter amongst the rocks, dead wood, and pine bark mulch over there! I named her Rose-Marie, and she’s huge! Not quite as big as Dolomidaes, but plenty big, and although she shows some browns in the sun, in indoor light, she looks like black velvet!

Since I wasn’t sure whether we’d get frost or not, I went out and cut some flowers to bring inside. I am definitely going to grow Cherry Queen zinnia again, and somehow, I’ll find a place where Mexican sunflowers will behave themselves. Goldfinger, at least…I think Torch is just destined to be 11′ tall in my garden.

It was such a lovely day that I wanted to leave at lunch, but I pissed around long enough that one customer caught me, and then another, and I ended up leaving at 1330h. I had planned to do nothing, but I’m not very good at that, so I watered the stuff around the pond, skimmed leaves, rescued a worm, topped up the pond, listened to Woody, then got out my pwrincess chain saw and scored myself some dead osage-orange to put around the plants by the pond. I had some there and liked it a lot because it’s a border, but not a formal border like concrete or even stone. After I did that, I fired up my leaf blower and blew the leaves off the patio to the bare spot by the bird pool. I’m going for a “pool in the forest with babbling brook” effect, so I figure if grass won’t grow there, then I’ll make a carpet of chipped wood and dead leaves. The soil is rock-hard and lots of clay, so it’s certainly not going to do it any harm. Anyway, I got out my chipper and chipped a bunch of dead bush honeysuckle into mulch (also poisoned some near the spot where I scored my dead osage-orange). I forgot to chip the green-ash branches I’d cut, but I’ll get them later; it’s not like there’s a lot of setup for my chipper.

First, this is from yesterday; I was out collecting seeds and found a pretty (late) coneflower.

A present from Bulky, who is still trying to teach us to hunt. I don’t have a big problem with mice and moles…

I’m still not 100% satisfied with my dead wood border, but it’s better than it was! Also, the mail carrier said the pond looks very nice. Not that I care deeply about the opinions of human beings, but I did work awfully hard on it.

While I was topping up the pond, I was checking for mosquitoes, and it dawned on me that the “yellowjackets” I’d seen flying around the pond are actually drone flies, and the “mosquitoe larvae” in the pond mostly aren’t; they’re drone fly larvae. I don’t know why I didn’t make the connection earlier; I guess I just didn’t think about it. Anyway, there are probably more than a thousand rat-tailed maggots (gross name for harmless larvae of good-guy flies that pollinate flowers) in the pond. They’re tiny white-grey dots now, but they’ll get to a pretty good size by spring.

The vines have mostly died off, and there are lots of seeds (I’ve collected some because I don’t care if they’re weeds), but I did find one oak-leaf morning glory flower. Small, and probably the last, but in October, I’ll take whatever I can get!

I had to do laundry, but since we’re fast running out of days to dry things in the sun, and yesterday was warm and sunny with a good breeze, I’d made up my mind to pressure wash the mat in front of the door. It hadn’t been actually washed since I got it, and it had a coffee spill on it, too. Nice and clean now, though!

Since I had the pressure washer out anyway, I decided to finish as much of the patio as I could without having to move OK’s hoce or the decorative straw bales that have graced the patio since February because they’re now a cat bed I’m not allowed to move.

Nasty black stuff gone from the blocks I hadn’t finished on the west side.

I washed the outdoor chairs and tables, and even the gross folding chairs from the gradge.

Got the clay off my Hello Kitty boots that I’d worn digging the pond, and also washed my weeding stool.

I ran the soaker hose and found a pretty boy in the Golden Globe (Glow…ha!) butterfly bush.

Cloudless Sulphur, face-first in the flowering tobacco that was nearly dead, but revived nicely after I repotted it.

I also vacuumed, washed the kitchen floor, and did the MLB feeders, though I think the birds are gone and put only three feeders back out. Busy Sunday!

P.S. I thought Woody had left, but heard him this morning. Yaaayyy!

HK refused to start after work on Friday, so C drove me home. Actually, she drove me and Juliette home; she’d found the mantis in the fender well of her truck, and drove to the bank with her, and back!

I started out by digging what I thought should be an appropriately sized hole to move Grey Stick. Between the giant osage-orange roots and the rock hard ground, plus the fact that the poor Grey Stick’s roots were horribly stunted by crowding (it had mostly small roots, close to the surface, and only a few larger roots), the root ball we ended up getting out was not so much a ball as it was a handful.

I dunno about its survival, but it probably wouldn’t have survived another season over there anyway, so it’s worth a shot. This is the Grey Stick that was permanently curved because it spent its first few years in what was basically a wind tunnel (AKA 544’s back yard). I hope it lives.

My bulbs arrived, but I only got a few of them planted. I’ve got until…basically as long as the ground isn’t frozen.

Friday after C brought me home, I asked her to come and look at the pond, and in the end, we decided to dig up the horribly overcrowded surprise lilies. I kept some because White-lined Sphinx moths like them, but gave most of them to C because she has a good spot for them, and I really don’t. Anyway, I put some of them in Sarah-Flah’s garden, and then put a few hyacinth bulbs in front of them.

I dug up the stinging nettle, and put some of the surprise lilies in the Bee Happy bed, too.

In spite of the best efforts by the venerable United Parcel Service…

And in spite of the poor, unpadded, unsealed grocery bag packaging…

My ginger arrived today. She’d never given me a tracking number, and she’d listed shipping as USPS, but whatever–it got here. A bit dry, but it’s been cool enough that being stuck at UPS all weekend didn’t kill apparently healthy plants. Since I already had their bed ready, I planted them immediately.

Mulched them.

And finally, watered them.

I watered pot plants and purloined roadside weeds, topped up the water garden, flooded the wild hibiscus, topped up the pond, fed the birds, and put out new finch socks. As I was carrying the finch socks down to hang them, I stopped because Woody (wood frog) was talking to himself in the pond. Normally, he’ll shut right up when I approach, phone in hand, but this time, he didnt, and I finally got him!

River oats, inland sea oats…whatever you want to call it, the seeds are in (really more like “on”) the ground.

Since I accomplished little yesterday, and nothing at all Friday after work, only two pictures…

This is the second of the lobelia that bloomed in Sarah-Flah’s garden. Photos just don’t capture the true, clear red, but I keep trying!

I found this poor Red-Spotted Purple out in the open on some dill yesterday. He was cold, so I got him warmed up, then put him in a butterfly bush where he wouldn’t so obviously be potential bird food.

Today, I did the laundry, but also collected some dead, weathered osage-orange to make a kind of border for the bed where my river oats will grow (hopefully…hungry winter mice aside) next spring. I had 300 seeds and was going to hold back 100, just in case, but decided to go big or stay home and planted them all. I hauled a few carts of dirt up from the creek “dump zone”, then mixed in some MG garden soil and sprinkled them on. The wild ginger will go next to it…whenever it arrives. It shows shipped last Thursday, but no tracking, so I have no idea. Anyway, there’s a spot for it, and the river oats will hopefully grow next spring.

I mulched the river oats, but obviously can’t do the ginger until it actually arrives.

I changed the MLB feeders, too; we still have four birds left. I’ll miss those little bastards when they go, but their return makes spring exciting, and I’ll have even more for them in 2016. Hopefully, we won’t have another cold, wet spring/soaking wet early summer like we did this year.

It’s damp, windy and chilly today, and I didn’t feel like dealing with the Mexican sunflower and zinnia I uprooted on Thursday, so I decided to finally break down and install 64-bit Win7 on my desktop, so I can use Premiere; I might actually finish my DCI video if I do it here, where I won’t have constant interruptions. I forget why I’d initially put 32-bit on there; I think it was some piece of hardware I needed that had no 64-bit driver. Anyway, I got 64-bit on there now, GRUB is fixed, and Premiere is installing. I still feel like I wasted my morning, but it had to be done. I have an awesome headache now; I’m pretty sure that’s a side effect of using Windows stupid, slow, kludgy interface. Every fucking thing I need to do takes at least twice as long as it should, and involves 4000 mouse clicks instead of just typing a line.

Supposed to be doing laundry, but received my single bloom hollyhocks, for which I paid  $12 flat-rate shipping, but only $1.04 for the plants. I had to pull out zinnia and Mexican sunflowers, which sort of sucked because we got some rain and they probably would’ve bloomed until frost, but I had to plant the hollyhocks. I didn’t take pictures because I was in a hurry; still had to eat and finish the laundry. Hell, I didn’t even feed the birds. Hollyhock is all in the ground, though, and healthy looking, plus she sent seeds. Sucked to have to pull the Mexican sunflower, though; my MLBs love them.

My poor little birds don’t have to fight over feeder space anymore. UPS took its sweet time getting here with the new tray, but made it in time for me to get it drilled, put the base on, reset the post and fill the feeder just before 16 cardinals were ready for supper. This one doesn’t feel quite as sturdy, but I think it’s a bit bigger, and with winter coming and the number of birds I’ve got, feeder space is important!

Random morning glories because they’re beautiful and soon, they’ll be gone until next summer!