Ephemerals

I happened to glance out my second story window and a few tiny hot pink dots caught my eye.

Under a flowering crab apple tree, struggling to push through dead hosta leaves, were some tiny beautiful cyclamens, supported by spindly, crooked stems. The leaves are beautiful too - heart-shaped and drizzled with silver.

These hardy cyclamen are considered ephemerals - flowering plants that last just a very short time. They are woodland plants that need to go through their life cycle: making leaves and flowers and seeds in the short few weeks of full sun before the trees above leaf out and cast the area in shade. Cyclamen don't last more than a few years in my garden, but I keep buying new ones for the jolt of beauty they provide.

Purple iris reticulata and snow drops will show their flowers for just a short time before disappearing for another year. Just a few inches tall, they both bloom while there is still snow on the ground, and sometimes under the snow in stubborn winters.

This yellow iris is another ephemeral. It blooms for a few short weeks, attracting early bees and flies, then disappears. Long grass-like leaves come later.

bird standoff

Since I started offering the birds home-made suet, it's been disappearing at the rate of one block every two days! The suet is a delicious mixture of bacon fat, meat fat, peanut butter, lard, sunflower seeds, corn meal, whole-grain flour, raisins, and whatever else I can think of. I love attracting every type of bird except the grackle (right) because they chase the other birds away, and if I'm honest, because they aren't nearly as pretty as a blue jay or a woodpecker.

This second picture is a starling, looking to muscle in on the suet supply. Contrary to what these pictures show, from my observations it's usually the starlings and grackles that win the intimidation game, and the bluejays and the other pretty birds are the ones scared off.

Yes, it's April 3, and yes, that is new snow you see in the background. It's been snowing for the past three days, about 15 cm in total, and we are back to a white world again. More snow is promised in a few days. Not sure spring is coming this year.

Seed catalogues

Ahh - the siren's lure of the seed catalogue.
When the snow is snowing and the wind is blowing, ther's nothing like a pile of seed catalogues to keep a frustrated gardener warm.
I get catalogues from McFayden's, Veseys, Stokes, Brecks, Spring Garden, Henry Field's, and more. I don't get Botanus, but I'd love to.
I doesn't matter that I realize, deep down, that the beautiful pictures don't always translate into reality. Last year, the purple bells that I was hoping would grace my planters didn't even come up. And what looked like a very pretty plant, the sun berry, turned out to be a weedy magnet for potato bugs and flea beetles, with berries that were inedible. We gardeners are a hardy lot, and we never give up hope.

This year I'm trying something else new - the Livingstone Daisy, also called Ice Plant. The pictures are amazing - daisy-like flowers in white, pink, and yellow. I remember getting a flat of those plants a few years ago. The best part was the foliage - somehow the leaves look like they are covered with shiny crystals of ice. I bought the seeds from Veseys a few weeks ago. I planted them right away, followed the directions of giving them bottom heat, and presto - within 4 days, the tiny seeds sprouted. The leaves are already shiny, sturdy little guys. I'm hoping for great things!

first signs of spring

It's been a rough winter. Snow and more snow, with no thaws in between. And it's been very cold, with high winds. But just this past week, miraculously, a few days of rain and plus-zero temperatures have reminded me that our deck is made of wood, not snow. The drifts have gone down surprizingly fast. And because of the heavy snow cover, there was no frost in the ground. So now that the snow is melting, fresh green shoots are already poking through the soil. Imagine my delight to find the first snowdrops in my front
flower bed.




As I walked around inspecting other signs of spring around my yard, I was drawn to a big hole in the snow around a rose bush. In two piles around the rose were the pathetic corpses of at least 2 dozen crocus bulbs. Each bulb has a bite out of it, and the severed shoots from the bulbs even show signs of the flowers that will never bloom. It must be squirrels. One pair of tiny red squirrels has been sharing seeds with the birds, and I didn't really mind because they really are cute. But this is different. This is not cute. They dug under at least 3 feet of snow and smelled dinner under the soil, which wasn't frozen. I am not impressed. I can only hope that some crocus bulbs escaped detection. In my many years of gardening, I have never seen this before, and I hope I never see it again. I know that crocus bulbs are like candy to a squirrel. Daffodils are a better choice. The bulbs are poisonous. I know what I'm planting next fall!

And to top it all off, I found a live earwig in the sink this morning! I'm afraid we are going to have a year of fighting off the pests.

enough snow already!

Yesterday we endured another vicious storm with high winds and white-out conditions, even on the main street in Charlottetown!

22 centimetres blew around in huge drifts.

Even the churches are expressing their opinions that all this snow is getting out of hand.

Our compost bucket was full to overflowing, but I wasn't looking forward to dumping it. Usually it's a pleasant walk through the back yard to the composter, but it's different now. There's at least 3 to 4 feet of soft white stuff back there. I have resorted to strapping on my skis to avoid skinking to my waist with every step, but even that was a problem yesterday. Hanging on to the compost buckets meant I couldn't use ski poles. Struggling up the first hill, I did more sliding backward than moving forward. When I finally made it back there, I found that the compost bins are fast disappearing, and I had to bend down almost to ground level to dump the stuff.

woodpeckers

I have always had trouble taking a decent picture of the woodpeckers that occasionally visit my feeders. They move really fast, and don't take kindly to posing for me. But this Sunday was different. The sun was shining, it was really cold, and these two paid an extended visit and didn't care who was looking.

I finally know why this species is called the "downy" woodpecker. At the base of the bill is a frill of fluffy feathers. Maybe the purpose is to protect the eyes from flying bits of wood when it is drilling a hole in a tree.

This guy was pecking the table to liberate sunflower seeds frozen in the ice, and ended up with ice in the down around his beak.

more winter birds

This morning I was having breakfast when I heard a loud bang. I looked up to see a blue jay had just beat its wings against the window and was perched on the rail of the deck, his beady eye staring straight at me. I got the message loud and clear: get outside, clear off this snow, and feed us birds!
A 50-pound bag of black oil sunflower seeds is $30, and I just bought the second one this winter. Also, suet is $2 a block, and the winged wonders have munched though at least 10 so far this winter. And I won't even mention what I have spent on bird feeders. Luckily,birds don't charge a fee to pose for pictures!
Here's a lovely mourning dove.

Here's a jittery little dark-eyed junco. These little cuties seem to be almost completely round, with a grey top and white bottom.











Taking pictures of downy woodpeckers is such a challenge.
I've taken lots of pictures of them over the past few years, and the shots are always out of focus. But I'll keep trying!