As the Garden Grows

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New Question and Answer Page

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I don’t know if you’ve noticed it yet, but across the top of the page under the header I have listed a number of what I feel are this sites important pages. Green Thumb Sunday, how to join the GTS list, A list of what I’m growing in my garden (just updated!), a contact form and now I’ve added the new Q&A page.

Every once in a while someone will decide to take a chance and they either leave a comment or contact me via email in order to ask me to help them identify some strange plant that’s growing in their yard or maybe they are writing to me to ask about a plant that’s not doing well in their garden or in their home.

I’m certainly not a master gardener, but I’ve been gardening since I was a young child and I’ve got a garden that’s chock full of a wide variety of plants, plus there’s a number of house plants in my home … certainly I can try to answer some questions.

As I suggested on the Q&A page – if you have a question for me about plant health, plant care or the identity of a mystery plant please feel free to leave a comment on that page and I’ll do some research and create a new post on this blog about the question.

If I can’t answer a question I’ll try to point the person towards resources that are sure to be helpful.

If you do have a question for me remember to try to give me a link to a picture of the plant in question. I may use the photo in a post (be aware). If you can’t point me towards a photo please do be as descriptive as possible as it will save me a bit of time researching the answer!

If you’re kind enough to send me your questions you’ll be helping me get more garden related content on this site. For the longest time I was doing pretty good about putting up new plant profiles and tips but that’s fallen off in the last few months. I’ll help you if you can help me. 🙂

Also, if you have a garden related event in your area and you’d like to get the word out feel free to tell me about it and if I feel it’s appropriate for this site I’d be happy to tell my readers all about it.

Send me your questions!






Datura is smelly in a few ways

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

This weeks theme is Smelly

daturaseedpod2

So the photo hunter theme this week is smelly.

With gardening as a hobby I know both good smelly and bad smelly.

Those of you who read this site or any of my others probably came here expecting a photo of something that smells good. I certainly have plenty of photos of lovely scented plants and flowers.

As one of my internet friends says “If only the internet had scratch and sniff capabilities”. You know I’d apply that technology to some of my photos.

The picture that I posted above is of a Datura plant seed pod. The seed pod doesn’t smell, but the leaves of the datura plant sure do when you touch or rub them between your fingers. The smell is a mix of skunk and coffee grounds. At least that’s the way it smells to me. It’s very repugnant.

It’s flowers on the other hand have quite a pleasant strong fragrance. As you can see it’s large seed pod is also quite ornamental.

All round it’s a very interesting smelly plant.

My hummingbird feeders paid off!

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Guess what!

I just about had a heart attack on Sunday. I was standing in the kitchen talking to my husband and I turned my head to look out the window at the garden and some fluttering by the hummingbird feeder caught my eye.

I realized that I was seeing the first hummingbird of the season!

I had just taken a Tylenol because I had an awful migraine on Sunday (in fact I still have a headache!). In fact I’m not even sure that I’d finished swallowing the pill when I saw the hummingbird. I was so surprised all I could do was point out the window and go “Oh” “oh” “oh”.

I scared my husband. He thought something was wrong with me so he wasn’t even looking out the window where I was pointing. I either finally spit out the word hummingbird or he turned his head enough to see the bird examining the feeder.

We’ve only had one hummingbird that we actually saw before and that was three years ago! We’ve since purchased and extra hummingbird feeder and I guess it paid off.

So we were both staring out the window amazed that a little colorful hummingbird had bestowed a visit upon us when my husband decided to try to get the camera. I wanted to take photos, but overall I was more interested in watching the bird rather than running to get the camera and losing those precious seconds of hummingbird sightseeing.

He did manage to get my new SLR digital camera for me before the bird flew away. Luckily it takes several photos in a row so I managed to take about 20 pictures before it took off.

While the hummingbird was visiting it hovered around the bird feeder. I was surprised that it tried to get at the top of the clear glass bird feeder even after it had found the feeding stations in the bottom. It also visited the purple petunias that were nearby, two or three of the white phlox plants, the Rose of Sharon, and I think it also hovered near the bee balm. It even rested on the clothes line three times. We also have another hummingbird feeder near the back of the yard beside the huge rose bush William Baffin. The hummingbird visited that feeder and possibly the purple clematis Jackmani beside it.

As I said I do have photos. I just haven’t uploaded them to the computer yet. I’ll post some of the better photos soon.

I’m going to be looking out my kitchen window a lot more often now that I know we have hummingbird that’s discovered our feeders!

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