Oh yeah, I was talking about gardening chickens. That would be the rhodies, the tamest birds in my flock. They discovered if they hang close by when I'm working in a garden, there are goodies to be had. Fat worms and scurrying beetles. Now they are underfoot when I'm in a garden. My gardening buddies. Literally underfoot, I've almost stepped on them several times. Pretty soon the others come to investigate, and everyone goes to work tilling the area. If I sow seeds, I'll have to put up some sort of barrier. So far they haven't tried to dig up any of the perennial transplants, but they do scratch all around them. This could be real helpful if they can keep the weeds down. Dumping rabbit manure in a garden usually entices them to scratch.
Oh and they decided daylily flowers are real tasty! Grrrr. At least they only go after the dwarfs they can reach. Most of those can flower enough to cover it and aren't my special daylilies. They also like impatiens. Another grrrr. I had to put a barrier on the pots they can reach. It's just a simple cage made of cheap garden fence that doesn't detract from the plants too much.
Sadly, I lost the buff cochin ranger. I found him dead near the back of the yard. Don't know what happened but it might have been a hawk. His head was gone (yuck). Backyard Poultry magazine had a good article about predators in the latest issue and listed the MO's of the most common ones. Hawks and weasels are the most likely to take the head. Since a weasel isn't likely to kill during the day (I've never seen one) and the body was far from his night roost, I'm going with hawk.
I've often mentioned that I have a view out the window beside my computer desk. This is it, taken through that window.
I call this the Bird Garden. It was designed around the bird feeders and can be seen from 3 windows at the front of the house. The orange daylily is called "Golden Gate" and has to be seen in person, this picture doesn't do it justice. Orange is my least favorite color and this is one of only 2 orange flowers in my gardens. The other is a daylily, too. What's so special about Golden Gate is that it glows. Really. It stands out in the low light of early morning or late evening like it's lit from within. You'd think a pale yellow or pink would glow more, but this orange beats all of them.
This is "Barbara Mitchell", one of my favorite pinks. That's it in the previous photo to the right of the feeder. It's an old variety and along with Golden Gate is part of my "heritage" collection. I call them heritage plants because they've moved with me for many years.
The weather turned quite cool but I'm loving it! I try to get out to garden work early but never as early as I should. Then the heat runs me in by early afternoon so I'm lucky if I spend a few hours at it. I had some out of control gardens that badly needed attention and the cool day allowed me to get a lot done. There were thorny brambles and wild roses that had invaded a garden and I really needed to be able to go at it in heavy gloves and long thick sleeves. It was cool enough to do that and get it done. Looks like I'll have more of the same for a few days.
I splurged on new software. I have a garden I can't make up my mind what to do next. I got it all cleaned up and now I'm looking at it. I know what I have in other gardens to move there but not how to do it. So I thought about landscape design software. I have a really old and limited landscaping 'ware, but I needed more features. I found a great one online. It's highly advanced, nearly professional grade, and the plans turn out really lifelike. It's also a toy for me. I can play with it and design fantasy gardens. One of the things it can do is design right onto a photo. So I took some of the garden in question.
I call this garden Porch View. It was designed to give me something to look at from my roofed porch where I sit and daydream a lot. After cleaning it out, removing some things for transplanting elsewhere, and expanding the edge, it left me with a lot of design possibilities. I took several shots and kept this one that Abby decided to be in.
Well, off to check on a couple of litters that are due.
I'll be in the garden if you need me.
tnt.
