Always Learning New Things

Today I was alternately grossed out and charmed by nature and learned a few new things along the way too.

First the gross stuff. Well part of it is interesting. We have this humongous garden spider that has made a web near the side entrance door. Anna has named it Allie. We have been watching it get bigger and bigger.  We have watched her capture and eat a June bug or two, and yesterday Anna fed her a great big Tomato Horn Worm.

This is Allie. She is an Argiope aurantia and is about 4 inches long right now.

The Bugs Bite Back, Weeds held in Check

This year has been a real battle against bugs. 

Last year I had a battle with cucumber beetles. They devastated squash and cucumber seedlings and spread disease in the garden. I made some changes to a few things and so far this year I have seen very few cucumber beetles.

First of all I covered all of my seedlings with fine row covers. This protected all my crops form cucumber beetles as well as from all kinds of caterpillars, and it really reduced aphid problems. Covers can be left on indefinitely for plants that don't need to be pollinated. The only thing I don't like about them is that it is more trouble to check your plants to see how they are doing. I like to check things everyday. To get around that I want to make some kind of hoop system that can be lifted up easily for checking plants.

My squash grew like gang busters under the row covers and did fine for a while after I uncovered them for pollination. Unfortunately last week I discovered hundreds of stink bus on my squash plants! These bugs can quickly kill a plant as tender as squash. I wasted lots of time trying to find some organic way to kill them (being a little squeamish about touching the stinky things) but nothing worked. Finally we resorted to hand picking and squashing the bugs (with gloves on.) The bugs have managed to kill two thirds of my squash plants and so far we have had no harvest. 
: (

This plot shows all that is left of once tall healthy, lush squash plants.

May Update

I see that I am very behind with my posts. This post will show what we were up to in May. The early spring flowers are gone, but now my day lilies are blooming.

Orange Day Lilies

Yellow Day Lilies

Plum Day lily

Gulf Coast Penstemon amongst the Louisiana Iris. This lovely little plant will rebloom for a long time if you cut the dead flowers.

Purple Coneflowers starting up.

Pomegranate Blossoms

Blackberry bush. I am buying three more of these in the Fall.

Figs are finally producing and the peach tree is also doing well so far this year.

The vegetable garden has not done so well so far do to the wet cold Spring weather, but we did get onions and garlic out in May along with greens and a little broccoli, cabbage and brussel sprouts.

A wheelbarrow full of onions.

Onion Braids in Pantry. I braid these with a string in one of the leaf bundles for strength. then I use the string to tie off the top and hang up the braid. This many onions wont last long around here.

Garlic harvest. This is my first year to grow garlic. It was super easy and fun to see a few bulbs multiply into many.

Some things harvested from the herbal tea garden. In the bowl chamomile, lavender, and borage blossoms. In front of the bowl chocolate mint and pineapple mint, beside the bowl is stevia, and on the end is some dill which a child accidentally "weeded". The dill made a delicious tarter sauce and the herbs made a lovely tea.

A funny thing about the tarter sauce, Claire wouldn't eat it because she said she did not want her fish to taste like pickles!

How to Train a Spider

I have always had the utmost respect for spiders. My Dad taught me that it was unlucky to kill spiders and as a kid I really believed it. I once had a dream that a legion of spiders were crawling up onto my bed while I slept, to get their revenge for a poor brother of theirs that I had killed - although I hadn't! Honestly!

I don't believe in lucky any more but I have kept my respect of spiders, and we never kill them at our house. So what do you do with a spider that makes a huge web right over your front door every night for instance? What I do is train the spider to make its web somewhere else.

Spring Pictures

Grape Hyacinths and Daffodils

Peach Blossoms

Look at the shape of this snow on the pots!

Bumblebee on Red Bud Blossom

A Room With a View

This is currently the view from the window right by my computer desk. My desk looks out over a short walk that goes from the side door to the back yard gate. It is a small area but I have planted things here that give me three seasons of bloom and a nice view whenever I am at my desk. Even in winter the Irises, walk, fence and gate look nice.

One landscaping principle that I am trying to follow is to make your garden as pretty when viewed from inside the house as it is when viewed from the street. Make something interesting and pleasing to look at from every window you spend a good length of time looking out of. Site your bird feeder where you can see it out the window from your place at the dining room table, and you wont miss seeing your bird friends visit. 

I have a pretty view of the front garden from my favorite reading chair in the living room. Our bird feeder can be seen from one dining room window and also from the window over the kitchen sink. The humming bird feeder is right outside the other dining room window, close enough for plenty of opportunities to see the hummingbirds that visit.

Nothing lifts my spirits like seeing the beauty of a flower. So my final advice is to put a pot of pretty flowers right outside the door you go in and out of the most. In the summer try a big pot of petunias and in the winter you can have a pot of pansies. That way whenever you go out about your business your flowers will give you something to smile about.

Buzzzzz

I recently had some fun watching the interactions of some Bumblebees and Honey bees in my two Red Bud trees. In the smaller tree the Honey bees appeared to be trying to chase off, unsuccessfully, the larger Bumblebees. In the larger tree the bees just ignored each other.

Since I took these pictures with a small point and shoot digital camera I had to get within inches of the bees to get the pictures. I knew they would just ignore me, but it made me jumpy anyway.