From commentor Opie Jeanne:
We live just East of Seattle, in Woodinville.
__
We woke up at too-damned-early o’clock because a flicker was pounding on the roof just after dawn. This would be amusing if it weren’t for the real damage he may be doing to our fragile roof, which we can’t afford to replace right now. I threw on some clothes and my husband put on a bathrobe so as not to spook the neighbors and we staggered outside and peered up at the second story. We could still hear him and decided he’d moved to the rear of the house, so we followed suit. Then we heard him on the North side of the house (hip roof) and as we moved that direction he panicked and flew away. In the meantime we had startled a very young rabbit on the front lawn and a fledgling robin in the back. I wanted a shot of the bunny but I didn’t have my camera with me.
__
I took these photos after all the drama, hope you like them.
We bought this place at the end of August last year and it’s 15 years old, but had been empty for about a year and the garden was neglected. We spent all of our time last fall and winter working on the inside of the house because the seller was a heavy smoker, and didn’t get to the garden until after March.
__
We are just now starting to unearth things like a raised bed edged with broken concrete and buried under a huge mound of yard clippings, branches, weeds and trash, and a large clematis against the shed and in need of a trellis. We were afraid to clear some of the garden beds, other than pulling a few weeds, because we didn’t know what was planted in them. I planted a couple of coreposis and some speedwell last fall, and every place I started to dig I hit bulbs. There were masses of tulips and daffodils in some of the beds this Spring, and nothing but weeds in others.
SiubhanDuinne
Opie Jeanne: Those are wonderful photos!
And you brought back memories with your description of the flicker hammering on the roof. There’s no sound quite like it, is there? And it’s always orders of magnitude louder than you would think a smallish creature would be able to generate.
That last thread was EPIC. What a relief to come next door to calm garden-y goodness.
Rihilism
Off gardening topic. Watched the first three episodes of season 2 Louie last night (gotta see where I can find season 1 somewhere. Anybody know?). What a remarkably bizarre and delightfully hysterical show. Haven’t laughed that hard in ages. If C.K. doesn’t get nominated for an Emmy, there is something wrong with this world…
On gardening topic. Apartment living means I’ve had to garden vicariously at a friend’s home. The hollyhocks I started from seed are progressing well, but it looks like I’ll have to wait till next year for the lovely burgundy blooms. Friend also had some exquisite gladiolas..
Raven (formerly stuckinred)
Very nice! Are those hula hoops in the raised beds in #3?
OzarkHillbilly
Tomatoes, tomatoes, tomatoes, I got tomatoes coming out my ears. The wife has been in Spain for 2 weeks (Mallorca, where she is from) and has another week of legal gobbledygoop to go. So it has been up to me to eat them all and twice a day just is not enuf. Last wkend I put up tomatoes and jalapenos. Today it will be Italian tomatoes w/ basil, oregano, and Rosemary from the herb garden.
Wondering if I should add some garlic? Anybody got a recipe?
LoudounLib
@Raven (formerly stuckinred): Morning! Found a couple of old friends here a couple of threads ago, and now I’ve found another :-)
JPL
The photos are wonderful. It’s so nice to be able to see what other B.J’s are doing. Raised garden beds are becoming standard. What are the advantages?
Jeffro
Great op-ed piece by Drew Westen over at the NYT today:
The ‘at least a generation’ is ridiculous, of course, but I like the thought of discussing ‘failure to understand bully dynamics’ around the office, b/c it reinforces that the Rs are just playground bullies…helps people understand 2012 is a choice election, not a referendum on Obama/the economy.
I hope!
LoudounLib
@JPL:
I’m not sure, condo dweller that I am. My sister, who is a master gardener, has four of them for her vegetables and herbs. Much success and yumminess from her garden.
RossInDetroit
Flickers pound on roofs? I thought they were ground feeders. We get a few here but they seem to go after insects in the lawn.
My dad had to expensively re-side his house after a woodpecker bored hundreds of holes in the wood siding on the west side. Only one wall of the house, and the holes were in a ruler-straight line from one end to the other.
Here’s a gardening question. We get milk weeds in the odd corners of the yard and I leave most of them in place because the butterflies and bees seem to like the flowers. At some point I’d like to clean them out because they’re done blooming. Are they a food source for caterpillars in their present form or can I safely remove them without starving any good bugs?
TIA.
JPL
@RossInDetroit: Woodpeckers are devastating. When I lived in Springfield, IL, I’d keep pebbles in my pocket to toss at them. It was only when I borrowed a neighbor’s pellet gun, that they decided to leave.
Mark B
Wait, you got woken up by an online photo gallery? What’s a flicker?
Mustang Bobby
Opie Jeanne, my brother lives in Woodinville. I love the lushness of the woods and gardens out there, and you have done a great job.
Oh, and being awakened by a flicker takes me back remembering a very persistent one who was trying to drill his way into our TV antenna post.
katmaus
@RossInDetroit: My mother has found the cocoons of Monarch butterflies on her milkweed plants. They are small and green. She insists on giving me milkweed seeds so I can try growing the plants in my garden. If you have to take them out, check for cocoons first. Monarchs are a real treat to see.
RossInDetroit
@JPL:
We get a few woodpeckers here. They’ve increased in the last decade as the Emerald Ash Borer bug has infested all of the ash trees in the area. The ashes will all be cut down but in the meantime the extra food source has been a boon to the woodpeckers.
Around our house are a dozen or so mature yucca plants. Every summer each one produces a heavy stalk 6′ – 8′ high with flowers. I found that stalks left in place to die become infested with insects and the woodpeckers will completely riddle the stalks with holes getting the bugs. The birds’ hammering on the stalks make the dry seeds in the yucca pods rattle like a rain stick.
BruinKid
So Tea Party Nation founder Judson Phillips is saying the “left” has killed one billion people in the last century.
Let’s remember that Phillips is the same guy who said only property owners should be allowed to vote in this country, because they have more of a “vested stake”.
RossInDetroit
@katmaus:
Thanks, that’s the info I needed. We get a few Monarchs and similar butterflies in the yard and they seem to favor the milkweeds. I’ll check for cocoons before I take any plants out. I wasn’t sure if the butterflies used the plants that way.
My sister plants many ornamentals specifically for butterflies. She says they prefer patches of milkweed at least a meter square rather than isolated plants. Perhaps I’ll pick a likely corner and seed it for them to develop a good sized patch.
Southern Beale
OMG these neat gardens put me to shame!
Ash Can
@RossInDetroit: Monarch butterfly caterpillars subsist exclusively on milkweed plants, and monarch numbers are declining because of development that wipes out milkweed habitat. The more milkweed you can grow, the better for the monarchs.
ETA: Or, what your sister said. :)
jeffreyw
@OzarkHillbilly:
Glad you asked!
Phylllis
Love the blue pansies, they are gorgeous. We’ve had two evenings of soaking rain and everything is perking back up. I was never much of a flower person, but I’m itching for cooler temps because I want to put in a riot of pansies myself.
JPL
@Southern Beale: Me too. I’m pretty good with molding and a paintbrush but put me outside and the plants die. I’m hoping that someday when Raven is in the Atlanta area with his wife, they will stop by and give me some ideas.
Mark B
@BruinKid: I’m beginning to understand why the right labels abortion as murder. They don’t really believe it, since their kids get abortions as often as leftie’s kids do, but they use their opponents’ support of abortion rights as something to use so they can morally condemn them. Most of them know lefties that are nice people and good members of the community, so if they have a fake issue they can use to label them all as ‘murderers’, it’s so much easier to hate. I seriously doubt they really would give a crap about abortion if they had not been indoctrinated to hate.
gnomedad
@Jeffro:
As I’ve said many times, Obama is really smart, so I’m skeptical of arguments that begin “Obama fails to understand X”, but I must say I like the idea of injecting the Rs are bullies” meme wrapped in a criticism of Obama. You may be on to something here.
WoodyNYC
I don’t mow where I see that milkweed is growing but they seem to always pop up in patches that are less than a meter. I still do see caterpillars on those single plants though.
Right now it’s the squash bugs that have me preoccupied though, darn them.
Violet
@JPL:
Raised beds give you improved drainage. If you live in an area with poor soil, you can also amend that soil more specifically for your vegetable plot. But mostly it’s the drainage.
Lovely photos. Those peas look yummy. What wood did you use to side your beds?
I just watered my garden. It’s so horribly hot and miserable I almost don’t even want to do it even at 7:00 in the morning. At 7:00 it was 78 degrees, which is an improvement from recent days where the night time temps weren’t below 80. Summer. Ugh.
JPL
Has anyone heard from John?
RossInDetroit
This weekend we’re getting a break in the weather. Only mid-’80s but very humid and intermittently rainy. I’ll take it. July was insufferable, with temps near 100 on a number of days and air like a saturated blanket.
RossInDetroit
@JPL:
Based on his condition at 4:00 am Saturday I predicted a 2:45 pm Sat. return to blogging. Looks like I was waaayy off.
Hope everything’s OK.
MikeJ
@RossInDetroit:
NASA had trouble with the yellow shafted variety pounding the insulation on the shuttle fuel tanks.
There’s a half dozen red shafted that come here for the bird feeder. They love suet, but I see them on the trees in the yard all the time. Haven’t had trouble with them on the roof here, but the last place I lived it was an issue.
Violet
@RossInDetroit:
Welcome to my summer, all summer, every summer. Actually this summer we got a break in May/June. The temps were unusually high, hitting 100 many days, but since we were in a drought it wasn’t as humid. Then the high moved off us and went to make other people’s lives miserable, the temps dropped by three or four degrees, and the humidity moved in. Now if you walk outside at 6:30 a.m., it’s nearly 80 degrees and you’re dripping with sweat within a minute.
Summer sucks.
Ash Can
For that matter, has anyone heard from Tunch or Rosie?
RossInDetroit
We had a very wet May, totaling over 9 inches of rain. June and July set heat records and July was bone dry. You’d dump a 5 gallon bucket of water on a parched plant and it would disappear into the ground like you poured it into a hole.
Lately it’s been getting down into the ’70s at night, which gives some relief. It’s so humid that every door in the house sticks from having swelled up.
Constance
@RossInDetroit:
I have a friend who protects her milkweed because they are one of the few plants that provide habitat for the Monarch butterfly to lay its eggs. She runs a pre-school for six lucky children at her home and the cycle is part of the curriculum. Other than second-hand I don’t know a damned thing about it.
OzarkHillbilly
@jeffreyw: Muchas gracias, senor.
We are finally getting a break from the heat this week. 96 today, 89 tomorrow, 82-83 the rest of the week. The weather maps a NOAA shows cold front after cold front coming down out of Canada. Thank FSM.
RossInDetroit
@Constance:
Milkweeds smell awesome in the evening! They feed the bees as well as butterflies. They’re not pretty but I’ll cede them some space to support the bugs.
Southern Beale
My take on the media’s desperate attempt to foist Rick Perry on us. I predict massive FAIL.
moonbat
Opie Jeanne, your garden in the morning fills me with longing. It is quite beautiful. As apartment dwellers with primarily a northern exposure, there’s not a lot we can do but we put out the window boxes and hanging baskets anyway. Though I have to say I am proud of the stand of herbs we have on our fire escape this summer. BTW anyone have any tips for growing cilantro? Its the only one I’ve had zero luck with.
RossInDetroit
@Southern Beale:
Good article. Thanks for putting religion in perspective. Though church attendance and baptisms seem to be in decline, I think the ‘core’ of Christian religion is getting tougher as the less committed fringes wander off. Reduced head counts may not translate directly to diminished influence.
In the long term, however, survival is about recruitment. If kids don’t latch on to their parents’ faith the result will be slow decline.
JPL
@moonbat: In GA you have to grow cilantro in cooler months. It does okay in the fall but it’s not a hardy herb like thyme or rosemary.
Napoleon
Been away a week on vacation. Just curious, has ABL posted a mea culpa admitting that Obama is a complete fuck-up as a negotiator or is she still posting links to Larry O’Donnell fluffing Obama?
jnfr
My vegetables are finally starting to go great guns. If we avoid hail in August, I should have a bumper crop of tomatoes, eggplants, and peppers this years. The yellow squash is still putting out male flowers only, but I have acorn squash fruits forming now too. I am highly pleased.
I concur with the recommendation of Drew Western’s NYT essay today. He hits on a lot of what still bothers me about Obama, and I’m generally a supporter.
Southern Beale
@RossInDetroit:
Yes I agree with your assessment. However, as a political tool, I think religion is waning. The “independent” voters are turned off by this stuff, as is anyone who isn’t white, Southern and over 40.
Raven (formerly stuckinred)
@LoudounLib: Hi there!
SiubhanDuinne
@BruinKid: Some of those Politico letters made me gasp out loud. I should be beyond being astonished by my fellow Americans, but their inexhaustible reserves of ignorance and hatred shock me again and again.
(Ignorance and hatred: such a lovely combination)
Kristine
Lovely photos, Opie Jeanne. I covet your backyard with all sorts of covety covetessness. ::eyes backyard hedge in first photo::
It’s raining lightly here in Zone5/5.5, and will continue to do so for the next few hours, which means I don’t have to go out in the early evening humidity and water. Something like the 22nd day in a row with predicted highs above 80F. We may get a break this week with highs only reaching the 70s. We’ll see.
Meanwhile, I harvested a few more cherry tomatoes yesterday, and had them in a salad along with some of my greens. I don’t know if it’s the variety or the wet weather, but the mesclun keep producing despite the heat. Waiting for the big tomatoes to ripen. The basil look decent–5-6 inches tall–but I made the mistake of not thinning the seedlings soon enough, and while those that remain look healthy, they’re also not bushy in the least. Hoping I can collect enough for at least one batch of pesto, although if I need to fill out the greens I can always add mesclun. Does basil do well indoors? I put all the herbs in pots this year, and if I can bring them inside during the winter and have fresh herbs year round, I would be a happy girl.
moonbat
@JPL: Thanks! And that explains it. Our fire escape is practically tropical as it sits one floor above the AC units.
Mustang Bobby
Okay, in today’s Sunday Reading over at Bark Bark Woof Woof we have Drew Westen’s NYTimes article on Obama’s passionfail, followed by Leonard Pitts Jr. from the Miami Herald with an explanation as to why Mr. Obama never had much of a chance of winning over some people. That’s followed by a story from the Toledo Blade on a one-ring traveling circus that is keeping the tradition alive.
And the internets were geflaggen at my parents’ house for a while (thanks, Buckeye Cablevision) and the magazine was left out of our copy of the New York Times that we had to pick up at the grocery store because the paperdude missed us in the first place.
Oh well… at least there’s a Tigers game on TV this afternoon.
CatHairEverywhere
What a gorgeous, green garden! I am feeling very envious!
It’s so hot and dusty here in zone 8/9 these days, I am lacking any motivation to go outside and enjoy my yard. My elberta peaches are ripening, so I have been busy freezing and canning them, and we are enjoying a steady supply of tomatoes and lemon cucumbers picked during quick forays into the heat.
opie jeanne
@Raven (formerly stuckinred): Those are long pieces of pvc with the ends threaded onto some re-bar stakes that we pounded into the ground. We had heavy, translucent plastic clipped to the ribs and the whole thing looked like a covered wagon without wheels. We did it so the sseds we planted in that box could have a little warmth right after we planted them, sort of a mini-greenhouse. We saw someone else had done it in Seattle, in the parkway by their house, and their garden was just jumping out of the ground while ours was lagging because it was too cold.
opie jeanne
@JPL: The raised beds warm up a little sooner than the ground does, and it’s easier for older people to reach into to pull weeds and pick carrots, because we don’t have to bend over as far.
opie jeanne
@JPL: My husband threw a couple of stones at them yesterday, and one stone hit a window. He has decided that a blast of water would be a better choice next time.
The drumming seems to be mating behavior, but why they’re doing it this late in the summer is a mystery to me.
opie jeanne
@Violet: Violet, the wood is just pine, and we know it won’t last very long. We were in a hurry when we started building the boxes and all the cedar the right size was either hideously expensive or out of stock. We will replace them with cedar in a few years when the pine is shot.
John - A Motley Moose
Praying mantises also seem to like milkweed plants. I’ve found several of them on such plants. In this area, southeast Michigan, that’s usually in August.
opie jeanne
@Kristine: That backyard hedge in the far distance is really part of the front yard, across the front lawn of the house, on the other side of the driveway. The lot is about an acre, a rectangle set on a corner, and the house sits on the half of the lot away from the corner. The garden is on the other half, but is limited in size by the enormous septic system mound. I don’t understand why they did it this way because I can’t plant an orchard or big shrubs on it, so I’ll use it for pumpkins and corn next year.
opie jeanne
@John – A Motley Moose: I miss praying mantises. We had them in Anaheim and always had one big one in the garden right by the front door. I’d always look for it when I was leaving the house.
Catsy
@Violet:
Oh good, someone besides me who finds summer the most miserable time of year and prefers temperatures in the low 70’s or below. There’s a reason I live in the PNW, with its nearly-nonexistent summer season.
opie jeanne
@Catsy: We like the greenness, as well as the mild climate, but just a tiny bit more heat would be nice, a degree or two would suffice, so that the tomatoes ripen.
John Weiss
@JPL: Raised beds are easier to manage and if you live in a cool climate, as I do (Southwest Oregon), the soil warms more quickly and stays warmer. It allows me to grow warm-weather crops such as okra and tomatoes. For whatever the reason, raised beds seem to discourage snails and slugs (we’ve plenty of the latter!). One can fill raised beds with the ‘good stuff’ and don’t require forking or tilling.
There, how’s that?
John Weiss
@moonbat: Cilantro, coriander, is pretty easy but it needs at least half a day of sun and warmth. I plant it every couple of weeks as here, in SW Oregon, it tends to bolt.
David Brooks (not that one)
I live close to you, on Redmond Ridge (and my wife’s actual given name is Jeannie, btw): last year we had a flicker hammering on the metal chimney cap. I don’t know how many insects he was expecting to drill down to, but the thundering it sent down the chimney was awesome!
He then went to the neighbor’s chimney, so I grabbed the bird book and binoculars and indulged in a grandson teaching moment.
Other than that, all we have to worry about are a family of bears and the odd bobcat. The coyotes don’t bother us much.
opie jeanne
@David Brooks (not that one): The coyotes may have gotten our big ex-tom cat, but he weighed 15 pounds and there was no sign of a fight, no fur anywhere, so I’m not certain he didn’t just go walk-about. He’s been missing since May.
We haven’t seen bears, we do have bobcats in the canyon below us, by the Hollywood schoolhouse, and on our property we’ve seen raccoons, rabbits, a squirrel of a rare variety, and quail. We’ve also seen bobcat tracks in the snow on our lawn last winter.
Today we flushed two young rabbits out of the daisy bed when we were watering, one of them was really tiny, still had the white spot on his forehead. Mr opiejeanne tried to pick him up to put him back into the bushes but he squirmed out of his grasp and ran away across the lawn. So tiny, like a really young kitten.
keestadoll
Anyone in here following what’s going on with the Rawesome Foods raid in L.A.? Curious!
Betsy
@moonbat — Cilantro likes cool weather; good for planting now into fall, I’d say.
They are short-lived and go to seed quickly, no matter what you do or when you plant them, though. You really have to keep sowing a few seeds every week or two if you want fresh cilantro on hand over a long period.
Side note on cold-hardiness of cilantro: Astonishingly I had several plants that grew through the winter and I could pick fresh leaves of them under light snow. The rest had died as soon as the first frost touched them.
I have lots of experience pushing and experimenting with tender vs. hardy vegetables, and this was really odd (plants of the same variety being wildly different in their response to frost)