From our indefatigable and gifted Ozark Hillbilly:
Call this the Pollinator Series. Every flower has a pollinator, some are harder to find than others.
OK OK, that last one isn’t exactly classified as a pollinator, but you should see the pollen fly when he runs thru the wildflowers after the frisbee.
***********
What’s going on in your garden(s), this week?
NeenerNeener
What’s going on in my garden? Weeds. Lots and lots of weeds.
MattF
Ugh. Just looking at that makes my nose itch.
OzarkHillbilly
I guess I was the only one to answer Anne’s request for more garden pics last week.
WereBear
I lost my begonia hanging basket in a hard freeze (when will I learn?) but the wave petunias soldiered on. Rescued a basket of something nearly dead and so I’ll have a surprise!
Geminid
Some customers’ dog died, and they decided to memorialize her by purchasing ~90 rose’s, lillies, coneflowers, etc., and I spent much of last month cutting turf, digging beds, planting and mulching. It was good work, but it would have been even better had it not been in the 90°s every day. But I think sweating is good for me so long as I stay hydrated. A simple rehydration mix: cool water, lime juice, and sea salt.
p.a.
I placed a commercially made bee house, 2 cells filled so far: leafcutter bee. Those metallic green (sweat?) bees pictured are beautiful.
Anyone else w issues loading today’s covid post?
Jeffery
My garden is turning into toast with the lack of rain. I am only watering pots and the vegetable garden. The rest is on its own.
lahke
@p.a.: Yes, COVID19 post took several minutes, mostly to bring on all the Twitter links. Must be because the news is so universally bad–the garden pics loaded right up.
Edited to remove exclamation point–my life not that desperate for excitement.
Lapassionara
@OzarkHillbilly: We always like your garden pix. Would you tell us the names of the flowers? Please?
satby
I think the last one is canis woofmeister.
JeanneT
My satisfying garden news is that my daylilies have started blooming; I bought some new name stakes so that as the different varieties bloom, I can label them for future reference. My show off flower this morning is ‘Mr. Butters’, a fragrant yellow, with slender petals curving backward from the center. Very pretty!
There is weeding to be done in the veggie beds. My tomatoes and cucumbers and most other plants are growing with vigor in the heat wave we’re in (west Michigan), but for unknown reasons my pepper plants are just setting there, hardly growing at all.
Otherwise, I’m drawing up plans for renewing some of my unkempt perennial beds – hopefully I can start reshaping them in the fall (assuming I don’t lose my lists/drawings). The existing plants have been informed that they need to grow well this season if they want to be part of the new layout.
satby
@Geminid: You’re a better person than me, because I cannot abide working in that kind of heat. We’re going to have two more solid weeks of +90 degree weather with no rain in sight. I’ve got to go water my struggling plants before the sun gets too high, but I need to finish my coffee first. My poor tomatoes just started setting some fruit, but that’s going to stop with nights only going down into the mid-70s. Ugh.
rikyrah
Good Morning, Everyone ???
OzarkHillbilly
Garden news: Rain rain and more rain. Remember soft, warm, summer rains? I do. I remember running and playing in them with my brothers and sisters. Not this year, frog chokers, every one of them.
I have yet to eat a single tomato and already the squirrels are stealing them. Fortunately they can’t eat them all. And no squirrels, that is not a challenge.
There is something in my garden that just loves to eat a certain type of bean plant leaf (I forget which I planted in that row) As soon as a leaf appears, nicknick it’s gone. None of the other bean plants, just this one. I wish I knew which it was. I wouldn’t bother with it again if I did.
In good garden news, I got the first 3 eggplants of the year and they go on the grill today. Mmmm mmmm.
I have been working on introducing my new layers to the flock for a couple weeks now. Hasn’t been going well. Bunch a f’n chickens, who’da guessed they’d be such complete cowards? In my efforts to introduce some bravery into their pea brains I started feeding them by hand (something I’ve never done before) just to say, “See? We aren’t all bad.” Now when I go to fill their trough, which is on the floor in front of the waist high brooder that they hide atop of, they start pecking me on the top of my head, insisting on first class, hand delivered, feed service all the time.
At any rate, I was finally forced to segregate the rooster from the rest yesterday. He survived the 1st night. I figured it’s gonna take at least 3 more days of him being separated. I’m not sure that won’t become permanent. We’ll see if the local weasel decides to vote on the matter.
Speaking of chickens, I opened the door to the nest boxes last night and what do I see? A 3 foot black snake trying to swallow an egg. The joke was on him tho, he had his mouth wrapped around a seed egg*. I rescued him from what assuredly would have been a fatal case of indigestion, AND what was certain death by pecking if the chickens had found him.
*what I call seed eggs are ceramic eggs put in nest boxes to induce the chickens to lay their eggs there, and not someplace I’ll never find ’em.
WereBear
@Geminid: I must try that mix!
WereBear
@satby: LOL! Recovering from your market gauntlet?
debbie
@satby:
Same here, though there was a freak rainstorm last night. In defiance of the heat and dry weather, the hydrangeas are going nuts. There are more blooms than before, and the blooms are larger. Last year, one yard had blooms the size of volleyballs!
OzarkHillbilly
@Lapassionara: #1 Purple Cone Flower (Echinacea purpurea)
#2 Blazing star (Liatris spicata)
#3 Tickseed Coreopsis (many types, this one likely to be Coreopsis lanceolata)
#4 Monarda, also known as bee balm, horsemint, and bergamot, one of the domesticated types, probably Monarda citriodora)
The cone flowers have spread rather nicely by seed, taking root where ever favorable, in both full sun and full shade. The blazing star started out as a couple dozen bulbs planted in various locations one fall, I should probably divide them this fall. The coreopsis I started from seed in a few locations, are very well behaved and share nicely. The monarda…. They are true bullies in the garden. I love them and so do the flutterbys but they are invasive as hell, I actually have to work at containing them. So be careful where you plant them.
That last one… canis woofmeister sounds about right.
OzarkHillbilly
I gotta share this:
satby
@WereBear: Even with doors open and fans going it gets so damn hot in there that I’m wiped out and dehydrated when I get home. And sales yesterday were shit (as predicted) because who wants to wander around a farmers market on a holiday in 90 degree heat? So I chug water, take the dogs out, and go to bed. Living la vida loca, that’s me!
satby
@OzarkHillbilly: I saw that last night, poor guy.
satby
Ok, time to get out and water before the sun makes the hose water too hot to use. BBL.
debbie
@OzarkHillbilly:
Coreopsis is tough stuff. There’s an area downtown that is all old German homes with brick sidewalks everywhere. Despite the heat beating down on them all day long, Coreopsis continue to thrive.
MomSense
OH I love your garden and your flowers and the woofmeister. The bee balm flowers look like fireworks. So bright and bold.
We’ve had a week of rain here and so far everything seems to be ok. I was able to bring a bag full of lettuces, spinach, radishes, cukes, and green onions to the kids.
The peonies and irises have passed and the next wave of flowers is starting.
debbie
@OzarkHillbilly:
Glad he didn’t try grabbing any of them by the scruff of their onesies.
Baud
@rikyrah: Good morning.
O. Felix Culpa
@satby:
LOL. Our woofmeister is firmly planted in Ms. O’s lap, so also a garden genus of sorts.
oldgold
Last night, near midnight, in the pale light of the penumbral lunar eclipse, shrouded in the mist of post fireworks vapors, I spaded my spuds in.
My neighbors (Dee Dee Plorable and Noah Tall) and the Motherlode seem to think this late night annual Fourth of July potato planting is a paean to professional procrastination. Not really.
It occurs for the same reason I always fish without hooks.
satby
@oldgold: ?
satby
Watered everything the hose can reach, approx 1/2 to one gallon per plant depending on size. You can calculate that with your hose and a gallon bucket, a deep spot watering is preferable to a shallow sprinkle. Will have to drag the buckets out to the more remote plants later, fortunately only three of those. I should go to the store, but I think I’m already toast for the day and there’s enough dog food to last maybe two more days.
FelonyGovt
I fertilized my dwarf Meyer lemon tree which is in a container. It gave me a great crop of lemons recently but has been looking sad and tired since. The guy and the garden center sold me a citrus fertilizer. We’ll see.
OzarkHillbilly
@FelonyGovt:You’d be a little sad and tired too if some guy had come along and stolen all your just birthed progeny.
satby
@FelonyGovt: All but one of my container citrus trees died, and I don’t know what the survivor is. My banana tree, on the other hand, got so big I’m afraid to bring it outside because I’ll never fit it back through the door if it gets any bigger.
WaterGirl
@OzarkHillbilly: Nope! I did, too, and Anne Laurie clearly chose the best one. :-)
WaterGirl
@lahke: @p.a.:
Can you guys tell me what devices/browsers you are using?
Someone sent me email about trouble loading one of the posts. Didn’t say which one, but I am thinking maybe it was the COVID one that you were having trouble with.
WaterGirl
@JeanneT:
I laughed. i do that, too. If a plant isn’t happy where it is, I try moving it. If it’s not happy there, I will try again. At some point I tell the plant “this is your last chance, please try to be happy here.”
WaterGirl
Count me in with the “no rain in a week, 90s all last week AND for at least the coming 10 days.
Apparently my weather app doesn’t think I can handle knowing that our awful heat and no rain will go on even longer than that
I woke up at 8:30 and it’s already too hot to go out and water anything but the pots. I apologized to everything else and begged everything else to hold on until it cools off a bit in the evening.
I planted a pulmonaria this spring and I have been having to cover it with a sheet because of the blazing sun, day after day, with no rain.
mrmoshpotato
Flowers, flowers, flowers, flowers, DOG! is the new Duck, duck, GOOSE!
Great pics OH (including the pooch). Thank you.
frosty
@OzarkHillbilly: I took some pics of my “work in progress” last week. How did you submit them? Just send them to AL in an email?
mrmoshpotato
@WereBear: Begonias begoneias!
WaterGirl
@OzarkHillbilly: I tried to send you an email message and it was rejected. If you’re willing, can you send me an email message – there’s something I wanted to ask you.
my nym at balloon-juice.com
opiejeanne
@OzarkHillbilly: Nice photos and thanks for doing so in our stead. The doggie made me laugh.
I’ve been taking pictures for her, but I need to send some in. Some are even good.
WaterGirl
@frosty: In case Ozark is off taking a nap :-)…
Yes, you send the pictures and text to Anne Laurie in an email message. Speaking from my experience, it’s nice if you can make it easy for her to match up the photos and the text.
oldgold
It is so dry here the Baptists are baptizing with Wet Wipes.
Miss Bianca
@OzarkHillbilly: You…*rescued*… a 3-foot black snake that was trying to kill itself choking on a ceramic egg? HOW??
What do you do – grab it behind the head and try to pry its jaws open? Whack it on the back? What? How, how do you perform a CPR maneuver on a snake??
opiejeanne
@OzarkHillbilly: Thanks for naming everything. The monarda had me stumped. Also, the only woofmeisters I get here are visitors, a Husky named Sherman, and a puppy of indiscriminate genetic material named Bean. Bean looks like she might have a little Jack Russell ancestry, from the shape of her head and the whiskers.
NotMax
Because why not? 40 Weird Flowers.
O. Felix Culpa
@Miss Bianca:
Excellent questions. Inquiring minds want to know. ;)
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Composting question: I’ve accumulated some old bottles of beer that I won’t drink from variety packs and guests and such. Any reason not to dump alcohol in a compost tumbler?
Geminid
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: my guess is that old beer in the compost tumbler would be a good thing. Maybe not all at once.
Lapassionara
@OzarkHillbilly: Thank you!
jeffreyw
This is my all time favorite pollinator pic.
NotMax
@Geminid
Maybe with the caveat that stale beer aroma resists eradication like nobody’s business. Don’t care to drink it? Use it in cooking. Tons of recipes incorporating beers.
raven
@OzarkHillbilly: We were shooting the shit with some friends out front yesterday and this big ass rat snake crossed the street, moseyed up the lawn and came back across the street totally unaffected by 5 people standing right there.
NotMax
@jeffreyw
Stay on target. Stay on target.
;)
satby
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I read on some garden blog eons ago that beer in a hose end sprayer is a good way to reduce thatch in the lawn. Think I did it once when living in Chicago and my grass was quite lush that year, in the non-drunk meaning of that word.
JPL
Ozark! Beautiful pictures, but I hope you put your slippers away.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Geminid: @NotMax: thanks
reminds me that just a couple of months ago, in an early quarantine chore list, I found a big bottle of Belgian ale that had to be at least three years old at the back of a cupboard. I dumped it down the sink and almost passed out from the smell. The neighbors might not appreciate it if I poured three rye IPAs into the barrel….
satby
@satby: and found a recipe for dethatching with beer. Pretty sure I didn’t use the ammonia and probably not the dish soap, just beer in the hose end sprayer.
NotMax
@raven
“Ugly bags of mostly water.”
:)
Elizabelle
@jeffreyw: It bee beautiful. Got to give those hardworking little insects some love.
debbie
@jeffreyw:
Wow!
Reboot
@FelonyGovt: Have you checked to see if roots are coming out of the bottom of the pot? If your lemon tree is looking tired, it may be root-bound and need repotting.
Geminid
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I was just guessing, because I never let beer get but so old.
grandmaBear
Strawberries are finished, black raspberries almost, red raspberries doing well and blackberries beginning to color. Lettuce, chard, and spinach have been doing well but will probably bolt soon. The ducks got out and ate most of the chard and spinach , but they seem to be rebounding a bit. Green beans, peas, carrots and tomatoes are all small but will be ready soon in this hot weather we’re having I think. Paw paw trees survived the winter, 3 that were doing okay last year and a fourth I thought was gone. This year I got a honey crisp apple for the outside and a Meyer lemon for a container to bring in over the winter. I’d like to do more weeding but this weather is too much for me. At least I got quite a bit done last week when it was cooler. Made lemon and black raspberry muffins, sourdough bread and sourdough banana bread last week, so finding plenty of things other than the news to keep me occupied.
zhena gogolia
@raven:
I have been seeing bunnies who just sit there munching their grass as I walk by quite close, rather than scurrying off. And a very strange creature went running by the back deck the other day. I couldn’t tell if it was a baby coyote or a mangy fox.
opiejeanne
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: There was some beer left after the social-distancing bbq/picnic yesterday, so I poured them onto some plants. Couldn’t smell it half an hour later, but our neighbors are unlikely to smell anything like that from our yard. Now, the barbecue, they’d smell that and probably the aroma of bacon or onions when the exhaust fan vents it outside
Geminid
@raven: I like black snakes. Sometimes when I approach them they will stick their tails in dry leaves and rustle them, like a rattler. A friend who did HVAC work had some work in the attic of a big old two story house up near Warrenton Va. The caretaker warned him about the black snakes in the attic, and he said to himself, oh sure. But when he got up in the attic, it was like a snake metropolis. There must have been a lot of mice in that house.
opiejeanne
@zhena gogolia: It’s the chupacabra!
j/k
Geminid
@raven: it is thought that black snakes keep the copperheads down. They will go after eggs and hatchlings in bird nests and birdhouses though.They are just cold blooded.
Achrachno
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Stale beer makes a fine slug destroyer. Just pour into shallow pans and leave under shrubs or near vegetables. I guess the odor attracts them, but when they get into the pan they drown, perhaps while drunk and happy.
raven
@Geminid: Some folks here recall the story of the big one that came up through the toilet. Thankfully my bride was out of town and that’s one of those things she never needs to know. This one was under the house 4 or 5 years ago and she still doesn’t go under there unless she REALLY has to!
raven
@Geminid: Yep
opiejeanne
@zhena gogolia: We are seeing a baby bunny doing the same, just sitting in the oxeye daisies, munching the grass and not terribly worried by our presence. It will scuttle away if we get closer than 5 feet, but it looks almost like it’s in a trance, just sitting there.
There’s a baby bird that seems very curious about us but its mama ain’t having it. Most of its tail feathers are in now so it has better control of its flight. When it perches too close to us, the mom will come and swoop past it and it follows her.
We have a hummingbird that is visiting our garden and it’s come to investigate me a couple of times. Hovering at eye-height, a bit too close to my face, I was glad to be wearing my glasses and I slowly edged away from it. When I was on my knees planting some lobelia, not wearing my glasses, I just froze until it left. Its brain is smaller than a bean but it is deciding whether I’m a threat. Amazing birds.
opiejeanne
@jeffreyw: That is a brilliant shot! Gorgeous.
My favorite sunflower picture (that I took) is this one and it’s not as good as yours by a long shot: https://flic.kr/p/hPhWb
Say hello to Binky.
FelonyGovt
@Reboot: No, haven’t thought of that, thanks. Will check.
jeffreyw
@opiejeanne:
Hello, Binky!
Miss Bianca
@raven: I’ve been trying to forget that little saga of yours, the snake in the toilet, THANKS A LOT, raven!
I like snakes perfectly well, it’s just that if they are not in a terrarium, I prefer to see them *outdoors*, please!