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A Successful Bluebird Hatch!
Two years ago, we hung a couple bluebird boxes that year as part of a New Year’s Resolution to create a more hospitable yard. One was hung in the front yard on an Elm tree, and one was hung in the back yard on the blackberry trellis. I documented the efforts of a bluebird pair which ultimately ended in the death of all the babies. After the failed attempt by the bluebirds, a family of House Wrens succeeded in the box on the trellis. The next year (2018), there was a succession of nesting attempts. Bluebirds inspected it for a few days before being chased off by chickadees who took…
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Volunteers and Transplants
I love the term plant “volunteers”. It refers to plants that were not intentionally grown in place by a gardener but grew by chance, from seeds in bird droppings or carried by the wind. The word choice makes it sound as if brave young seedlings are saying, “pick me to go an colonize that space!” The reality is, given the right conditions, plants reproduce. Living in Raleigh, also known to locals as the City of Oaks, our yard is never lacking in germinating acorns. We also get magnolia, redbud, pine, mulberry, dogwood, and sweetgum seedlings sprouting up in our yard. A couple years ago I transplanted redbud volunteers from a…
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Garden Pics
Here’s a quick walk-through of the garden, pictures of veggies and flowers growing strong. We still aren’t seeing many monarch butterflies around here. I’m hoping having several varieties of milkweed will attract them. There are usually a lot of swallowtails, but I haven’t seen those yet either. There are plenty of bees!
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The Giving Tree
As I pondered which book has been the most influential in my life, I browsed the shelves in my home and thought back to the classics I read in highschool and college. There are many authors that have challenged and shaped me such as Katherine Patterson, Annie Dillard, Ernest Hemingway, Milan Kundera, Anne Lamott, and Thornton Wilder, but as I reached back further into childhood, one book that stands out and I’ve always considered as my favorite is Shel Silverstien’s The Giving Tree. Let me say upfront, it’s not a warm, inspiring book. I know it is read as a love story, but it’s more of a tragic romance. A quick…
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The Gas Station Jerk
This morning I’d like to explore getting my feelings hurt over silly things. The first little story is about my cat, and it may seem unrelated to the story of the gas-station-jerk, but my emotional fall out from each is tethered to the same starting point. Nala is our fifteen year old cat that we adopted from the SPCA about a week or two after we returned from our honeymoon. After doing a few puzzles in our tiny one bedroom apartment in the evenings, we were both a little bored. As I was in graduate school and tended to work in the field and out of home rather than in…
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Conversations with Nature
This fire pit garden has absolutely blown up with green growth. I was listening to Urban Farm Podcast the other night, and an ex-reality TV personality turned geeked-out gardener (his words, not mine) kept referring to his garden as preppy. I took out fresh eyes to gaze on this space decided this mess is definitely not preppy. It nearly took my breath away, not because of its beauty or anything like that but simply the boldness of its existence. In the winter, there was hardly any evidence of all this life hidden under the ground. Its just a mess of wood chips and rocks and a few crunchy stalks. All fall…
