As the Garden Grows

What's blooming today?


You are here: Home / Archives for Home and Lifestyle / The neighborhood

Crazy Squirrel

by

Earlier today I was upstairs and I happened to look out the window at my garden. Much to my surprise and amusement I saw a grey squirrel running around doing some strange stuff.

You see, yesterday evening I was cleaning out our freezer and I found some disgusting frost bitten hamburger buns. Instead of just throwing them in the garbage I decided to crumble up the bread and threw it on the lawn in the backyard for the birds or whatever else was out there to discover.

I had actually expected the bread pieces to be gone this morning since there are raccoons in the area – but it seems they haven’t been coming into our yard as much as they used to, so most of the bread was still scattered across the lawn this morning.

So, anyway, I was upstairs watching this grey squirrel. He’d run into the backyard and carefully select the piece of bread he wanted. Why he chose one over the other I’m not sure, but he was being selective.

He’d take a piece of bread, run through the back garden flower bed and climb the short fence. From there he’d jump onto the curved wooden trellis we have had clematis vines growing on. In front of that trellis we have this huge ugly silver wire that supports the tall wooden electric pole in our neighbors backyard. I grow a honeysuckle vine on this eye sore of a wire and it disguises it somewhat.

Well, the squirrel climbed up and stuffed his piece of bread between this wire and the the entwined honeysuckle vine. He then climbed down to select another piece of bread and repeated the procedure.

I guess he was storing his bread for later. Like a bird or another squirrel wouldn’t find his stock pile?

Later in the day I saw the same squirrel in the garden. There was still some bread left and he was back to selecting his favorite pieces but this time I think he was storing them in the Rose of Sharon tree or the fence behind it. I couldn’t see clearly, but the branches were sure moving around a lot. I suspected he was stuffing them in the crock of a branch.

What a crazy squirrel. Have you ever seen a squirrel do anything like this? I’m certainly used to them digging little holes in my garden beds to store bread, nuts, peach pits and so on, but I’ve never seen one stuff bread between vines or branches!






I love my windchimes

by

Grab the Photo Hunt code.
Photo Theme. Visit participants.

This weeks theme is Music

windchimes.jpg

I just love the sound of my windchimes.

I have them hanging inside our enclosed front porch so they don’t make a lot of sound unless there’s a good breeze coming in the window that they hang in front of, but it’s nice to hear them chime every now and then.

Sometimes I’ll walk up to them and make them make their musical sound by swinging the dangling pendant on my own.

Do you have windchimes? Do you like them or does the sound drive you nuts?

If you want to see my garden here’s a sneak peek

by

Warning! My garden is very small. It’s jam packed with plants, but it’s small.

Here’s a view of the garden. I took this photo while standing with my back against the edge of the house. In other words I took it from near the base of the back stairs.

IMG_1147

As you can see I utilized every space available!

To the immediate right there’s a small storage area. Basically it’s a large grey wooden box that’s attached to the stairs. We keep our garbage containers in it. On top of that area I have several balcony planters where I grow everything from lettuce to tomatoes. I’ve also got my Jasmine or Camellia or whatever it is (see last post) in that area, as well as a Christmas cactus, ornamental pepper and a passion flower.

Immediately in front of the garbage storage area and our enclosed back porch is our small patio area. You can only see a portion of this area in the photo. We have a nice patio table that takes up most of the patio space. We’ve also got raised flower beds surrounding the patio. You can’t really see the central flower bed well in this photo but it’s behind the table.

So the patio table is surrounded by lovely plants. This gives the area the feel of being a separate garden room. Yes, I’m growing some tomatoes in pots on the patio. I’ve also got containers with cucumbers, green beans and tiny tom or cherry tomatoes growing on the other side of the table.

The rest of the garden is a mass of roses, lavender, balloon flowers, brown eyed susans, spring bulbs, hostas, lilies, daylilies and at least a hundred other types of perennial and annual plants.

Our neighbors house is behind ours. He actually lives on the adjoining street so his driveway is at the end of our garden. We also have very close neighbors on either side and can in fact see at least four of our neighbors backyards from our garden. I suppose that’s why I’ve tried to grow plants that are 3+ feet tall along the edges of the garden. It creates the illusion of privacy even if our yard is not the least bit private.

Oh yes I said the garden was small. It measures about 17 feet wide by 30 to 35 feet in length from the back of the house.

There. So now when I talk about my backyard garden you’ll have a good idea of what I’m talking about.

BTW if you click on any of my photos it will take you to my flickr account where you can click on the words “all sizes” above the photo to see a larger image if you want to see the photo in greater detail.

Meta