Pond/Waterfall

When we designed the pond, we made a deliberate decision that we didn't want a rambunctious roaring waterfall. We wanted a relaxing background noise that could be enjoyed from the adjacent patio. The groundcover plants are still filling in, especially on the near side, so some of the black plastic still shows, but the landscape in this area is gradually maturing. I wish videos from my phone did a better job of capturing what can actually be heard in my yard, but you get the idea. In reality, the birds are not as prominent, but in videos, they seem nearly ear piercing to me. And in this particular video, if you notice a mechanical droning sound in the background, it's actually a tractor plowing about 1/2 mile away.

Nothing interesting happens after the first few seconds (watch for the crazy fish), it's just noise. :)

Veggies

Raised veggie beds + greenhouse. Don't ask me why there's a snow shovel out there, I have no idea. Pulled it out of one of the beds as I was weeding.

Pinto beans and peas. The board is for a hand/foot support while I'm working in the middle of the bed, to keep from falling in or having to step on my nicely aerated and tilled soil. The whisky barrels contain "invasive" plants, currently spearmint and lemon balm. I don't want them to take over an entire bed!

Veggie beds + greenhouse. Salvaged tiles in paths. Still not sure what I'll do for *around* the tiles - not sure the Corsican Mint is going to take.

More salvaged tiles in garden paths. This is the far left side of the garden, what was the most neglected for the past year or two, and what obviously still needs some work. The left hand bed is what I used to use for my compost pile, so it's still pretty out of control with weeds and some extra boards from bed construction.

Pea trellis in the foreground, compost piles in the background.

Future watermelon patch. Newly planted peach and pear trees in the background, but you can't really see them in the photo - if you look closely enough, you can see the mulch from two of them.

The veggie garden is almost completely weeded. Peas are up, their trellis is in, 6/8 raised beds have soaker hoses and mulch in. I pulled the soakers out of two of the beds so they could be roto-tilled, since they got a fair amount of foot traffic as the greenhouse roof was going on this spring. The blackberries and raspberries are booming, and I've been giving them a few hours of soaker hose moisture each day. I transplanted pinto beans into the same bed with the peas this afternoon and gave them a good soaking. He tilled up the patch that will be watermelons this year yesterday - I prefer raised beds, but he likes to grow a giant pumpkin each summer, and they're such sprawlers, they really can't be contained in a raised bed. So in order to maintain a 3 year crop rotation, we need three beds of that size. I'm not sure what we'll put in the 3rd one yet, since this is our first year with multiple beds of that size. Last summer he was living in Florida, so no giant pumpkin, and the year before, he lost his pumpkin when it was "only" 75 lbs to some sort of pest. I got the paths all raked (all the weeds pulled from the beds, and cut from the paths) and salvaged tiles upside down as stepping stones in most of them. Not bad for such a hot day.

You'll Never Guess

...where I need to go this week. Sigh. This is one of the front tires of my garden cart.

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Wire Grass + Granddaddy

I know, you're probably getting tired of frog pictures, but I find them fascinating.

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Scenery

Pergola, half a patio, outdoor furniture. Pond on far side.

Pond from far side, still lots of weeds (especially wire grass) to be pulled out.

Pond from near side, wiregrass and weeds in foreground, unfinished greenhouse in background.

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Brave, But Not THAT Brave

OK, I admit it, I knew he was gonna go, but I still almost fell over backward when he did it. This is the brave little frog from the top pond, who will apparently let me scoop him up with the net, but not with my bare hand.

Rust

This is what parts of my outdoor furniture look like. I bought some Naval Jelly to try on it.
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Meh. In May??

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Bamboo Windchimes

The paddle fell off of this one, but it still sings - it just takes a little more wind to do it.

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Scooped

Tadpoles galore, but it doesn't look like any little fishies made it into this scoop. Trying to clean out the ponds without committing genocide.

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Elusive Granddaddy Shows Himself

It's a little blurry, because it was getting dark and I'd been raking weeds and hauling 200' of hose around the yard, but there he is!

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Predator

The delicate color didn't come out so well, maybe because I was starting to lose the light by this time, but that's half a robin's egg. In a normal year, we get about 10 or 12 robin nests on our property, so I guess one half an egg isn't a terrible loss rate.

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Soaker

This is how 90% of my irrigation is delivered.

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Granddaddy Frogs

People always ask me where I bought my frogs, but the answer is, I didn't buy them. When we first put the pond in, we did look around for frogs. The pet stores were unhelpful - they had frogs, but they didn't know what they were or where they were from in the case of anything that looked like it might possibly be a native species. Obviously the tropicals were out, but we did want to get a native species, not something that might cause a problem in the ecosystem, since we were just plopping it into our backyard and hoping for the best. One of my favorite greenhouses has a large water garden display full of frogs, so we asked the proprietor there if the frogs were for sale. He glared at us like we were the amphibious equivalent of the DEA and said they weren't. For all I know, it's illegal to sell native frogs. 

So we figured we'd just be frog-less. We finished the pond, stocked it with some fish, and next thing you know, we heard frogs singing out there. If you build it, they will come!

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This Is How Bad It Was

The very worst of the neglect from last year. The bed on the left is what I used to use for my compost pile and it still hasn't been cleared out and leveled off since then. The bed on the right was left to its own devices last year.

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Baby Praying Mantises + Bronze Fennel

I almost didn't notice them, because Himself did a bunch of weed whacking out there yesterday and there was debris clinging to the fennel from that, but when one of the pieces of "debris" moved, I took a closer look and counted almost a dozen baby praying mantises, each about an inch long, on my bronze fennel. And I smelled like black licorice by the time I finished looking through there. Cool!

Tadpoles & Fishies

This is what the surface of our pond looked like before Himself got the pump going. Now it's less green, but equally populated.

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Fungus Among Us

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Grapes

Grapes and grape vines, and something weird happening to one of my grapevines.
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Brush Pile

I like to keep a nice brush pile, it's a great habitat for wildlife, plus I'm always pruning on something and producing more brush. This is what my husband likes to do to brush piles. And it's not worth fighting over. ;)

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Tulips

Old tulips, past their prime.
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Scenery

Patio, plum tree, apple tree.

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Busy, Busy

I've spent most of the past three days out in the yard, and the Mr has spent part of yesterday and most of today out there with me. We've been busy!

• Planted 3 pear trees (two Bartlett, one Keiffer)
• Planted a peach tree
• Planted two corkscrew willows
• I picked up 30 bags of cedar mulch this morning from Ace Hardware in Harrington, who had it for $1.18/bag cheaper than Lowe's in Camden. Phooey on Lowe's. Ace had a reward card too - it's only $5 for every $250, but we spend a lot of money on home/yard improvements, and every bit counts.
• Planted Bee Balm, Lemon Balm, several varieties of irises, and rosemary in various parts of the yard
• Burnt another pile of brush
• Pulled an awful lot of wire grass
• Picked up another 60 salvaged tiles for my garden path renovations
• Weed whacked everything that needed it, including the overgrown garden paths
• Got about 1/3 of the vegetable garden weeded
• Mulched the right side of the property - juniper, cypress, virginia pine, black pine, two corkscrew willows, weeping willow, three crape myrtles, gingko, ash, sunburst locust, three pears, and peach
• Built a temporary pea trellis out of what was leftover from the grape vine supports

Stung Update

Himself was out doing some touchup mowing, and a wasp came after him. Sure enough, there's a nest INSIDE the mower.
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Husband's Favorite

He keeps kidnapping all my best perennials and putting them way out by the road where we only see them pulling in and out of the driveway.

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To Be Moved

Not getting enough light here.
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My Mulch Is High Falutin'

My cypress will be very smart once it rains a few times.

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Spider

Not the clearest photo, but I think it's clear enough for you to see that I'm expecting spider babies.

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Sunburst Locust

This might be my favorite tree. I know, I say that about almost all my trees.

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Veggie Garden Path

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Gardener

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Lilies

The irises are beginning to fade, but here come the lilies!

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