From commentor Japa21:
Every Spring for the last 3 years Mrs. Japa and I try to plan out our garden set-up. And each year we have also decided it is time to downsize. Combining both thoughts we have minimized our actual investment each year and have pretty much limited ourselves to container gardening and minimal maintenance on everything else, much of which has been seen here in the past. On average, we would do 4 big planters, 4 medium and several smaller. This year we limited ourselves to 2 big pots and some smaller. I am only showing three of them.
You may be asking, if thinking about downsizing started 3 years ago, why are we still here? Actually, that question gets answered every time we sit on our patio for morning coffee or evening wine. Our back yard, particularly, has become a place of refuge. Although we are surrounded by other houses, there is minimal impingement on our consciousness. The back of the yard is full of viburnum and other large bushes as well as a host of hostas, which for the last couple years have been flourishing. We have a nice wall next to the patio with it’s own little garden highlighted by a tiger sumac.
But let’s face it, a garden or yard is more, both literally and figuratively, more than just some plants. It is, if we look at it the right way a form of spiritual lodestone. And depending on what direction the design takes, much, much more. Mrs. Japa and I are avid birders. Scattered around the yard are seven birds feeding stations, including a suet feeder and a hummingbird feeder. The bushes are allowed to do their own thing for the most part to provide shelter for the birds. Over the last couple years we have had almost 40 different species of birds visit our yard. We have seen the mating flight of a hummingbird, two male flickers do a dominance duel, watched birds go from nestling to fledgling to adult, and so much more. That’s why I am including some picture of the fauna as well as the flora, because they are also part of the garden, even the butterfly.
***********
What’s going on in your garden(s), this week?
raven
Sweet! We’re in the annual worry about rain and water phase. I managed to get out and mow early yesterday and the garden girl worked in it until noon. It’s definitely crucial to her well being to be able to work out there or sewing.
mrmoshpotato
Hehe, that one bird in the middle of the 5 pictures is giving the other the what for.
Nice pictures. Thanks for sharing.
NotMax
The horror, the horror. Literally.
“What say we take our tea out to enjoy in the garden?”
“Um, no thanks. I’m fine cowering here and staring at the floor. Really.”
;)
OzarkHillbilly
Nice pics and yes, a garden is a refuge, a place of soothing.
p.a.
That cup is a fun idea for a birdhouse! Didn’t know starlings could perform tonsillectomies! Also too, nice yard! Thanks.
Kristine
What a lovely yard. I envy you the amount of privacy.
Boy, do I understand the desire to downsize. The yard got away from me this year—I had no desire to work outside in the heat. The flowers and shrubs brighten things up—the Rose of Sharon hibiscuses are exploding as are the cardinal flowers and potted begonias. The limelight and Annabelle hydrangeas. But the hosta and bee balm are winding down and the astilbes faded weeks ago. I’m not ready for the -ber months, and they’re right around the corner.
OzarkHillbilly
@raven: We’re in our “Where the fuck is all this rain coming from???” phase. We’ve gotten 7″ in the past week and might well get more today and tonight. Like living in a dawgdamned rain forest. Starting tomorrow it’s supposed to dry up and then we get a stretch of glorious highs in the 70s with lows in the 50s.
@mrmoshpotato: It’s saying, “Where’s my BREAKFAST???!?!?!!!!
NotMax
@Kristine
On the other hand the -ber months signal we can enjoy better oysters again.
;)
rikyrah
Good Morning, Everyone ???
rikyrah
Beautiful pictures ??
JPL
What a lovely, peaceful yard.
mrmoshpotato
@OzarkHillbilly: ?Feed me, Seymour
Feed me all night long
‘Cause if you feed me Seymour
I can grow up big and strong?
Jeffery
Your yard looks manicured next to mine. The big plus with the yard being out of control and wild is the wildlife is thriving.
This year I noticed red lanternflies nymphs and adults for the first time. A neighbor told me he had them last year. When I do the clean up for the season as I discover praying mantis egg casings I collect them to tie them onto the ends of tree branches. I think they are keeping the lanternflies under control.
germy
Baud
@rikyrah: Good morning.
WereBear
This has such resonance for me. When my life collapsed and I waded ashore, I had mere fractions of what had so dominated my life previously: cats and rosebushes.
I still had cats, and I still gardened, but while the rosebushes dwindled from the challenges of gardening from the third floor in a rental, the cat thing took off and expanded.
My own living garden… of cats :)
In the end, we need to know our limits. AND explore them.
NotMax
Riding mower on the fritz since early July. Scheduled an appointment with the repair service – the earliest opening they had at that time was for August 25. Hoping the sky is still visible from the yard by then.
Luckily it’s the dry season, so not as jungly as it could be.
WereBear
@NotMax: On Long Island, we had such a vigorous mutant growth that passed for a lawn when mown that we had to invest in one of those giant string trimmers on wheels.
After killing two riding mowers. One with a cracked engine block.
My plan was to turn the whole thing into a garden.
TS (the original)
Thanks Japa21, love the birds. We have so many more this year – apparently related to the shutdown & fewer people around. The babes scream for food – Dad birds barely able to keep up the supply.
NotMax
@WereBear
Yeah, Long Island crabgrass is like green steel wool.
As parents aged, their Long Island back yard became so infested with bamboo that I seriously suggested they call the Bronx Zoo to offer them free panda food.
WereBear
@NotMax: Bamboo is the worst. You’d need a bulldozer AND weed killer.
satby
Beautiful garden and wildlife pictures Japa21!
I downsized houses but upsized yard when I moved to Michigan, and I loved all the space for a huge veggie garden and flowers and shrubs. But the house was much too small for my then active entertaining and animal rescue lifestyle, which was made abundantly clear the year I hosted my exchange daughters. Now my yard is manageable but the house is twice as big and in a constant disheveled state. So my advice is to really consider what you think you’ll get from downsizing vs. the tradeoffs (like sacrificing the joy you feel in your yard). Because sometimes I realize I could have just downsized in place in Chicago and been just as happy but without some of the last decade’s (personal) chaos. I’m not sorry about any of it, it ended up ok and I would have missed some of the really wonderful moments I’ve had, but some unexpected costs weren’t factored in.
NotMax
@WereBear
Having a flamethrower on standby wouldn’t hurt either.
;)
Barbara
@WereBear: My neighbor introduced us to bamboo “blocking,” where you dig a trench and put in a plastic shield that is low enough to prevent the bamboo rhizomes from expanding in that direction. Important if one of your neighbors is clueless about the stuff.
I have actually managed to grow tomatoes successfully this year but this is the time of year when motivation to garden goes way down — the bathtub days of August.
The backyard in the pictures looks awesome.
Ken
@WereBear: Nonsense. Plant some kudzu and the bamboo will get smothered. Or they’ll hybridize and end humanity’s dominance.
NotMax
@Ken
Some say the world will end in fire, some say in ice.
Turns out it was kudboo.
;)
WereBear
@Ken: Next, vegans explain how bamboo covers all of a human’s nutrititional needs.
Ken
@WereBear: I wouldn’t be surprised if it technically does. The catch is that you have to eat three hundred pounds of it a day.
Suburban Mom
Beautiful garden! One surprise quarantine benefit here has been the improvement in our yard. With the elimination of work-related travel and a daily commute it’s easier to manage the ongoing weeding, pruning, and deadheading. Which has created the notion that I might have time to assemble and maintain a small container water garden. Do any gardening Juicers have experience with one of these? I’m especially curious about solar fountains or pumps.
Mary G
What a beautiful refuge. I love coleus and yours are gorgeous. The bird photos are wonderful.
MomSense
@WereBear:
You can make fabric and yarn out of it. ?
Japa, wonderful photos this morning.
satby
@Suburban Mom: I hate to say it but my solar fountain experiences have all been bad. Every couple of years I try but they’ve never lasted longer than maybe a month for me. And they’re not cheap. Well some are, but they don’t last even that long.
debbie
I love container gardening. It almost forces one to think more about composition and balance. Also, hold on to your refuge as long as possible. They aren’t easy to find.
My houseplants are my garden. I made cuttings from an echeveria which I had overwatered (like I knew I would), and a baby popped out of the ground a couple of days ago! Hopefully, I’ll do better with this secocnd chance.
germy
@WereBear:
MoCA Ace
Thanks. I love the naturalized yard. I’m not much of a landscape person so I just have my little homestead plopped down in the wild. Just got back from a 5-day camping trip and the vegetable garden overfloweth. I practically begged my chicken sitters to pick any and everything they wanted, and while they did take a little I am going to be very busy today trying to catch up.
Downside of being wild-adjacent… I had 13 hens this spring, 7 when I left, and zero when I returned. It has been a very bad year for hens. The girls are free range and locked up at night. I typically loose two or three a year but this year a large predator (probably a bobcat) has been ravaging the flock. These birds were very skittish and used to taking care of themselves. Still, they were being taken in broad daylight, sometimes 30 or 40 feet from any cover. Anyhow, electric fencing has worked for the meat birds but the hens were so used to freedom that they just flew out as soon as they were let out of the coop in the morning. My choices were locking them in the coop permanently or hoping for the best. 2020 strikes again :(
satby
So, last night it started to rain, and it’s continued off and on into this morning. Supposed to keep up for another two hours. First time in weeks we’ve gotten a decent amount of rain and it’s delightfully cool too. Just what my garden needed in a big way!
japa21
@satby: Unfortunately, it didn’t hit the NW Chicago suburbs. We could use it.
Thank you for the comments. The fledgling starling being given a tonsillectomy was screeching at its parent to be feed. Fascinating to watch.
dnfree
@Suburban Mom: we had a solar birdbath once. It was cool and the birds enjoyed the fountain but it didn’t last. At our last house we had a bubbling rock. Even that was a bit of a project because its innards had to be dismantled before winter and then reassembled in spring, which involved digging around while kneeling on the rocks that disguised the underground pump and reservoir.
Edited because I typed the correct its and it got autocorrected.
WaterGirl
@satby: It rained on and off all day yesterday, and clearly overnight, too. After so many scorching 90+ degree days, we surely needed it, and everything looks so happy this morning.
I had used some flash fertilizer on some plants that were clearly not happy, so the timing of all that rain couldn’t have been more perfect.
Barbara
@Suburban Mom: Agreed. My husband took the opportunity of being stranded at home to do things he has wanted to do forever, such as level the yard, get a truckload of topsoil and enhance the soil condition of the yard, in the process taking out some “nuisance” trees, and creating a vegetable garden. It’s a work in progress, but our yard has never looked better. I finally planted the pollinator garden I had always wanted, and so on.
Ditto re others’ experience with solar fountains. They have not stood up to the elements well at all. Perhaps they would work in climates like Arizona where there is a lot of sun and not much moisture at all. Fountains in general have not stood up the way we would like, and again, I attribute that to the fact that when you have “true winter” you get a lot of freezing and thawing, which tends to be hard on cast concrete or ceramic fountains.
WaterGirl
@japa21: That is such an awesome picture!
I can’t make out how the cup is secured, but it’s a lovely addition. Will you share your secret?
One of my favorite pots broke in 3 a few years ago, so I put the 3 pieces in different places in the garden. They look kind of charming, I think. Such a great thing to do with broken pottery.
OzarkHillbilly
@germy:
From the same twitter acct: Say cheese.
debbie
@OzarkHillbilly:
How does that dog not bite his tongue chomping like that?
OzarkHillbilly
@MoCA Ace: I’ve had problems with raccoons, (including one who figured out how to get in thru the auto door but couldn’t figure out how to get out)(I “helped” him with that) and minks, but more have been taken by Cooper’s Hawks than anything else (oncluding one I caught inside the coop with all my cowering birds). During the winter I let them roam where ever they want (the gardens are asleep then)but S/S/F I have them “free ranged” in 2 fenced areas (1 is 50′ x 75′ and the other is about 60′ x 40′) I use 2×4 welded wire for the bottom 4′ of the fence and then 4′ of plastic fencing above that. The chickens stay in and it seems to deter the hawks, if not the coons and minks. I don’t lose too many birds that way, maybe one or 2 a year.
ETA: I generally keep about a dozen layers and raise 50 meat birds per year for us and family.
WereBear
@germy: Adorable, thanks! Bud and Lou do that. :)
OzarkHillbilly
I was worried about that in the Zen garden pond, so this past winter I drained the raised catch basins let them get good and dry over a few days and then covered them with heavy duty trash bags for the winter. They came thru the winter just fine.
OzarkHillbilly
@debbie: I don’t know but I know why his human feeds him the cheese that way.
oldgold
As part of attracting flying-fluttering caterpillars to the newest wing of West of Eden, I have been attempting to develop a mudhole.
Establishing a mudhole in a drought is challenging.
How dry is it?
It’s so dry, the the dogs are marking their territory with chalk lines.
It’s so dry, they’re encouraging people to pee in the pool.
It’s so dry, full immersion Baptists are using handiwipes.
Worse, In terms of attracting aerial fluttering flowers, the milkweed plants are only producing evaporated sap.
Perhaps, like Dr. John, in trying to establish my oleofly garden, I was in the right place, but it must have been the wrong time.
Geminid
Last Sunday evening I finally planted the peppers that have sat in 2″ pots for over a month. Habaneros, jalapenos, Anaheims and bell’s. They were root bound, but I’ve planted as bad off the nursery shelf. By procrastinating I saved some in ground watering as we were in drought June and the first 3 weeks of July. Now it’s one or more thunderstorms a day in central Va. I had big plans for a spring-summer vegetable garden, but I ended up without even a radish. Now I have medium plans for a fall garden, chard peas and radishes. I guess my limitation is that if I don’t dig my garden by March I’m probably not going to grow much.
Eunicecycle
@OzarkHillbilly: we had a cat that loved cheese, to the point where we had to spell C-H-E-E-S-E when we talked about it, or she would come running and meowing. My husband said she was bypassing the middleman! She was a good mouser too, though.
WereBear
@Eunicecycle: Tristan has become very fussy. His cheddar must be crumbly-sharp and preferably pastured.
Suburban Mom
@satby: Thanks! I have read similar stories from others. But I dislike the idea of running electrical wiring down to my patio, and I keep hoping that someone will have a good sustainable solution.
Suburban Mom
@dnfree: Thank you for sharing that. I’m in NJ and would definitely need to deal with freezing temps.
Suburban Mom
@Barbara: Thank you. I’m visualizing a not huge container that I can empty and lift myself for winter storage, but managing around the possibly stagnant water issue concerns me.
satby
@OzarkHillbilly: I always put my bird bath fountains into the garage after draining them for the winter. I have two heated bird baths that go out then, one on a stand and another in the ground for small critters to get water.
Eunicecycle
@WereBear: our cat would eat any cheese, even “non-cheese” American slices, but did prefer finely shredded cheddar.
Geminid
@OzarkHillbilly: I got to spend a couple days on a farm in Cortland County NY this week. The couple kept ducks. Ground predators are not so much a problem, maybe cause the ducks spent the night in a barn with 10 goats and two horses. But the local eagles love fresh duck and manage to grab one from time to time. I watched the ducks waddling around- a pair and a group of four. They seemed to be looking up a lot. Courtland County is some of the most beautiful country I’ve seen. My friends said it is also quite pretty in the winters, which are cold, snowy and long.
JPL
Today I finally put gas in my car. The last time that I filled up was in March.
BruceFromOhio
Beautiful pictures, and lovely grounds, Japa21! Thank you for sharing, and I aspire to your philosophy. With the quarantine we’ve also had much more time for gardens, and have hit the physical limits on multiple occasions. The absence of the deer, new fence around the back 40, the long hot spells and strategic watering are combining nicely for the best year since moving here 20 years ago. The terrace garden I built for MrsFromOhio has become a thriving centerpiece, and it’s quite the distinction compared to the unkempt space it was before.
The daily doses of fresh basil remind me why I love summer.
OzarkHillbilly
In my own soggy garden news, I can report that the squirrels and chipmunks are well fed. At least they leave a few tomatoes for me and my wife.
I also want to note that I saw a flying squirrel the other day, only the 2nd one I have knowingly seen in my life. They are nocturnal so it isn’t very often one sees them and then it is just as a silent shadow gliding among the trees.
japa21
@WaterGirl: Sorry for the delay. We were just sitting out on the patio enjoying some coffee and watching the birds do their morning feeding frenzy.
The bird house “cup” is from Williamsburg. It is more like a jug mounted to the house sideways. We have had it up for several years. This is the first year we have actually had residents. In fact, there were two broods. Two different types of sparrows.
OzarkHillbilly
@Geminid: My birds keep a pretty sharp eye on the sky. Went down to the coop the other day because I couldn’t see any of them in the yard. Before I got to the coop I saw a Cooper’s take off out of the utility cut. The chickens were all huddling in the coop. The next day I moved them into the shaded yard where there are lots of trees to block any eyes in the sky. Once they learn where there is a nice buffet, they’ll keep coming back.
BruceFromOhio
@Suburban Mom: we wanted power out to out new shed, and I was stymied until the electrician friend bid me to get a proper length of narrow pvc tubing and a 50ft extension cord. Thread the cord in the tubing and bury the whole thing in a narrow trench I opened in the ground using a flat-nose shovel. Power was available shortly after. I unplug it when not in use or at the turn of the cold season. Simple, inexpensive, and relatively safe.
japa21
@OzarkHillbilly: Yes. They view our yard as a buffet. Another reason for all the protective bushes. Had the “joy” of watching a Cooper’s hawk devour a mourning dove at the back edge of our yard earlier this ear.
japa21
@japa21: MRS. japa21 here, He meant “year” and not “ear”. We so enjoy this yard & coffee (or wine/beer) out there too !!
frosty
@Suburban Mom: Sorry, no sustainable solution here. We have a small goldfish pond with a waterfall that runs on a pump — powered by an extension cord from the outdoor electrical outlet. This also powers the heater in the winter.
dnfree
@OzarkHillbilly: one of my mom’s stories that I remember involved a flying squirrel. She was from West Virginia. She took a trip to visit relatives, and when she opened her suitcase, out came a flying squirrel. She didn’t know how it got in the suitcase, but everyone was startled, including the squirrel. I have never seen one myself.
StringOnAStick
I’m April I had found a tiny piece of coleus in my shopping cart at Costco, exactly like the one in the 3rd photo. It was barely 2″ long but after a month in water it grew enough roots and is now a lovely plant in the shady front porch. I nurtured that little bit of cast off plant as a refuge in a time of fear and uncertainty, a d I hope it is a harbinger of better times in the near future.
Eunicecycle
@StringOnAStick: my mother was able to do that: take a cutting from anything (it seemed to me) and get it to grow. She would give me beautiful houseplants that I managed to kill, usually from overwatering. I do better with outside plants.
Suburban Mom
@BruceFromOhio: This sounds like a great solution. We have small, friendly kids in the neighborhood so I don’t feel comfortable with an exposed cord.
Gvg
My aunt had a family of flying squirrels years ago. Big live oaks in her yard. She was startled by multiple eyes looking out at her from her plastic lantern shaped bird feeder one dusky evening. The squirrels had flown to the bird feeder and eaten a hole into the bird feeder. There was a whole family parents and babies gorging on her seed. They came most of the summer and ate a ton. She took videos of them flying into the feeder each evening. They can change direction while flying but they eat as much as regular squirrels so Aunt had to buy a bunch that year.
A different aunt and uncle used to raise rescued orphaned squirrels. There were local classes on how and an organization that called. One time it was a flying squirrel. That baby lived in their yard and came when they called a certain way, flew to their shoulder for treats. He kept turning up for a few years after.
Geminid
When I was up in Cortland County I got to drive in to Ithaca and get a look at some of Cornell’s agricultural stations from my car. I knew Cornell was strong in horticulture (local garden guru Andre Viette has a really good radio garden show Saturday mornings, and he’s a Cornell grad) but I hadn’t realized it had a strong agricultural program. The friends I visited told me that the ag school provided good technical support for small local farmers. The area seems to be a hotbed for sustainable agriculture, and with smart, hard work, people are making it pay. Some. I’m told Ithaca and the Finger Lakes region have a milder micro-climate than upland areas like Cortland County. I guess that means the winters are only 4 1/2 months long.
MoCA Ace
@OzarkHillbilly:
@Geminid:
I don’t begrudge the wild things a few chickens here and there but this started with one every three days and quickly escalated to a bird a day. One was taken while I was in the garden a few hundred yards away but I didn’t see the perpetrator… just the kill site in the driveway and a trail of feathers leading into the woods.
I had my troubles with coons earlier in the year. They were primarily stealing eggs and scaring the hens but then graduated to pulling four of my meat birds through the wire of the chicken tractor. That problem has been solved.
My hens are very wary and I don’t think its possible a coon could run one down in the open. Whatever killed them was stalking or darting out and taking them 20 or 30 yards from cover. I have multiple trail camera pics of a bobcat mom with kits and have seen her/them multiple times in the past five or six years.
Some of this was my fault. I had moved the coop away from the house last winter to keep the hens away from the garden this year. You just can’t haul it back up to the yard overnight or the hens will not follow. I know this after repeatedly netting a dozen hens in the dark and relocating them… eventually they won and I hauled the coop back! Damn birds get confused if you move it 20 feet all at once!
Time to rethink things and start over. I like my hens to be free range and having a bare-ground chicken run isn’t free range. I’ll probably get more electric poultry netting and set it up around the coop… that way I can move the coop and rotate the pen around.
J R in WV
@OzarkHillbilly:
They are so cool ~!!~ Many years ago I was walking up the main hollow west towards a neighbor’s place, and was aghast to see a squirrel apparently commit suicide up ahead of me.
It leaped off the tippy-top of a tall oak tree and plummeted towards the ground, but suddenly whipped out its glider “wings” and sped along away from me, into the trees way along ahead of me up the road.
I knew of flying squirrels in theory, but was certain they weren’t even present in our SW WVa countryside… but wrong again, thankfully. Amazing to see, totally~!!~ Of course, no way to take a photo of such a sudden event…
SWMBO
@germy:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6NzN11IgRo