convincing an orchid to rebloom

I bought this orchid 3 years ago, when it was blooming beautifully.  Pale green petals, and a deep pink centre.  It bloomed for months, and when it finally quit, I waited patiently for it to bloom again.  I watered it with a quarter cup of water once a week like the books said - but nothing.  I moved it around the room to new locations it might like - nothing.

Then a maintenance man where I work bragged about his wife's reblooming orchids, and let me know the secret:  Once a week, fill the entire pot with water, wait 20 minutes, and then take out the plant in its inner plastic pot and dump out all the water.  I was willing to try anything.

Within 3 weeks, success!

Notice the difference between the air roots (pale green, blunt end) and the flower shoot (shiny dark green, with tiny buds at the end.)

I was pretty excited, but still looking for just the perfect location for the plant.  It was close to a south-facing window, and the leaves burned.  I moved it away from the window, but the leaves pointing away from the light curled up and the leaves facing the light stretched out.  I took it home and put it in an east window - more burned leaves.  I felt like a bad mother.

Then I found the right spot.  With bright indirect light coming from two sides, under a thriving spider plant, atop a shelf that looks like a waiter's arm.  Success!

capturing birds with my lens

The bird feeders are staying up all summer for the first time this year.  It is the best way to find out who is in the neighbourhood.  These pics are far from perfect - they were all taken through the window glass, but it is still fun to capture some images.

Purple Finch (right) with friends

All my Goldfinch shots are out of focus - I will keep trying.

Yes, it's just a sparrow, but it's still pretty.

critters of Cape Breton

Cape Breton certainly has its pick of cool critters.  We saw this female moose up close while walking on the Skyline Trail.  We were warned that moose can get cranky and sometimes attack people, but this one really didn't care that a bunch of people were frantically taking pictures of her, but we all were beyond excited to get up close and personal.

We were pretty tired as we walked the last of the 10 km trail, but we perked right up when this grouse sat perfectly still in the middle of the path.  She probably thought she was invisible, and let us walk right past, within 2 feet of her.

This bumble bee posed for Wayne on a purple thistle flower.

When we stopped for gas, these two long-horn beetles checked out their reflections on our car's wind shield.  This European invader species attacks and kills Red Spruce trees that are already under environmental stress.

flowers on Cape Breton Island

For 21 years of living on PEI, we avoided visiting Cape Breton Island Nova Scotia beacause we thought it was too far to drive.  This year, we finally got there, and the trip is really not so bad.  It takes about 6 hours to get to the start of the Cabot Trail.  We drove 1,500 km from PEI to Halifax to Port Hawksbury, around the Cabot Trail, and back home again.

The views are breathtaking - mountains, steep cliffs, and blue blue water.  We stopped over and over again, because every stop is worth photographing.  Although we were gone just 4 nights, we felt as refreshed and relaxed as if we had been away 2 weeks.

This flower bed at the Alexander Graham Bell museum in Baddeck is a lovely combination of leaves of different sizes and colours and textures, with hosta, ornamental grasses, purple smoke bush, Maltese cross, day lilies, and shrub roses.

These short shrubby akders covered with tiny cones grow close to the beaches.
The cones are an important food source for chickadees.

These blueberries need much more time to turn blue.

Harebells (Campenula rotundifolia) growing in a most inhospitable place between rocks on the shore.

Daisies, long grasses, and other beauties made me want to stop a while.

Elderberries will turn black when they ripen.  Birds love them, but we people need to cook them to make them palatable.

Evening Primrose struggles to grow through pebbles.

Pearly Everlasting has grayish foliage, a sure sign of a tough plant that can handle drought.

The Settlers Garden in North Highlands had examples of plants
the first European settlers would have used as food and medicine.

Honeysuckle flowers

Malva comes in white, solid purple, and purple stripes

Kalmia angustifolia was sprinkled all along the Skyline trail in Cape Breton.
It's common name is Sheep Laurel, and it is poisonous to livestock.

Native wild roses are found along the roadsides and close to the shore.

Rosa multiflora, a European escapee, is a beautiful plant
but can be invasive and crowd out native vegetation.

I picked wild strawberries at the shore near Neil's Harbour.

There are more wild flowers growing on the shores and forests of Cape Breton than I have room to show here.  It is worth a trip to find more for yourself!

funnel weaver

On summer mornings after a heavy dew, a whole new world opens up on my lawn.  Funnel Weaver spiders, whose homes are usually invisible in the grass, suddenly appear.

Here is what I found out about them at http://bugguide.net/node/view/1974 :  There are several genera of funnel weaver, and the most commonly found in Canada is Agelenopsis (commonly referred to as "Grass Spiders") Their webs litter the grass in summer to early fall, and are really noticable after an early morning dew. The small brown spider is striped with their eight eyes in two rows. They also have two prominent hind spinnerets, the silk spinning organ. The female spins the web and lies in wait at the bottom of the funnel for small insects to land on the web.  The males spend their lives in search of a female to mate with, after which they die.  What a life!

plenty of poppies

Poppies come in a huge number of varieties, and they look so different, it's amazing they are from the same family.  There are annuals, perennials, lots of colours, hairy or smooth. And the leaves are completely different.
Here's what pops up in my garden:

The first arrival is the Oriental poppy.  Each flower lasts only two days, but the delicate wrinkled petals are just beautiful.  Above is Patty's Plum, and I also have the more common orange one.  It's a tough perennial.  After the blooms are done, I cut the plant right down to the ground, because they can become a magnet for earwigs.  But by August, a new, fresh ball of leaves appear, gathering food for next year's blooms.  The leaves look very much like thistles - long and pointed, but with hairs instead of bristles.

I planted one Islandic poppy many years ago, and it has produced seeds so prolifically that it pops up all over my garden since then.  I try to keep the seed heads deadheaded, but I always miss some, which produce enough seeds for next year.  The leaves are very dainty and small.

This California poppy was part of a bee-friendly seed mix free from Vesey's seeds.  The leaves look almost like dill.

This beautiful pale pink annual poppy popped up in the vegetable garden.  Years ago, I snitched a ripe pod from a daylily garden, dropped the seeds around my garden, and only now have conditions been right for it to sprout.  The leaves are bluish green and ruffled.