Category Archives: nature

develops…

06 Saturday Jul 2024

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this morning I spent some time in the veggie garden… formerly known as the shade garden, lol…

there are peas starting to fill out the pods and the bean and cucumber plants are stretching up to the arch…

I’ve been doing some reading on tomato plants and decided to trim back the bottom leaves to give them more air…

I was surprised at how many branches were removed…

I guess we will see what develops…

strawberry…

05 Friday Jul 2024

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so far I haven’t had a single strawberry, although at least two were nearly perfect when they vanished…

tonight we ran out to the store and picked up a folding circular hamper…

I cut away the top and popped the whole thing over the strawberry plant, pot and roller… fit perfectly;-)…

maybe I will get some strawberries now…

sprinkled…

02 Tuesday Jul 2024

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Monday, while supper was cooking on Barbie, the barbecue, my housemate sprinkled grass seed over the non-grassed areas in the garden…

it had been raining off and on all day and was supposed to continue all day today…

after putting down the grass he used the last of the soil to cover everything and then raked it over…

now I have been directed to water every single day unless it rains;-(…

stripped…

01 Monday Jul 2024

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yesterday I moved five monarch caterpillars from one area of milkweed, where all of the leaves had been devoured across the path to the group that were caterpillar-free…

this picture is before every single leaf had been gobbled up…

I used a stick to move them because I didn’t want to get injured, lol…

at least one of the caterpillars was miffed because it opened its mouth wide and felt like it was hissing at me…

I guess they also travelled on their own, because today I discovered eleven on those plants… and I moved another one that seemed to be trying to eat the stem of the stripped milkweed…

hope there are enough leaves to get them to the correct size to move into the chrysalis phase;-)…

decimated…

29 Saturday Jun 2024

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on Tuesday we counted twenty monarch caterpillars on the milkweed in the garden…

they were all over the newest batch that was recently planted and have nearly decimated all the leaves…

they were also on the ones near the waterfall which were planted last summer… we’ve now taken out all the poppies so there is more room to be able to see the caterpillars…

there were none on the ones from last year which were located around the edge of the pond… these were the ones that I planted in a spot where I could see and photograph any butterflies, eggs and caterpillars that came along, lol…

there were some chives next to them so when Hilda the Gardener was here the other day I had her take them out… maybe the butterflies don’t like the smell…

so excited to have so many;-)…

producing…

28 Friday Jun 2024

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spent more time at The Leaf on Tuesday morning before my daughter headed home… it is such a wonderful point of happiness for me, and my daughter…

we discovered, after chatting with Linda, one of the gardeners, that the second cacao tree has now got two cacao pods on it… this is very exciting as only the first tree had been producing pods…

we spotted a little lizard on the third tree… apparently it arrived with one of plants, lol…

Linda was very excited to show us the mango tree that had just been planted…

we also learned there are fifty fish in the pond, and all the smaller ones were babies from the largest ones… the excess fish have been moved to another location to keep the population stable…

replaced…

27 Thursday Jun 2024

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not too long ago (well, it was mid-April) I watched a crew take down one of elms up the street…

in the Fall they had taken another one down close by…

last week Hydro came and marked gas lines and left yellow flags in front of two houses next to me…

this morning I watched as a number of pieces of equipment came by… the first dug two holes on the boulevard and went away… a little while later another few trucks came and planted a tree in each of the holes… then a protective barrier went around the bottom of each of them…

it will be interesting to see if they will come and water them until they get established…

not quite sure what type of tree they are but very happy that the elms have been replaced;-)…

vireos…

24 Monday Jun 2024

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I used Merlin a great deal at the cottage…

I found that when the Sound ID told me which birds were around it made it easier to help spot them as I knew what they should look like…

the vireos and yellow warblers were with us all the time;-)…

we also spotted pelicans, seagulls, eagles, and hummingbirds…

such fun…

hummingbirds…

22 Saturday Jun 2024

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we’ve been watching the hummingbird feeder since we arrived and on Tuesday, when we were at the table eating our supper we spotted the first one… having their meal too;-)…

Wednesday, while we were eating lunch, two of them had a little confrontation over who got to eat first…

Friday, while I was on the lower deck reading in the sun, one came right up to me before flying off… once you’ve heard a hummingbird, you always recognize the sound of their wings fluttering, lol…

what a treat;-)…

chameleon…

21 Friday Jun 2024

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Friday morning, as I was uncovering the couch on the upper deck, I spotted this cute little visitor… I got a few photos as it moved around the various cushions looking for just the right spot to sun itself in…

looks like it is a tree frog and apparently they can change colour, like chameleons… clearly it went from dark gray to light gray…

last night there was a nice lightening and thunderstorm so the cushions were a bit damp, even after being covered…

but they didn’t take too long to dry in the sunshine…

the water was calm and the birds were trilling away…