16 posts tagged “flowers”

The heirloom morning glory, Sunrise Serenade, has finally bloomed!

 

 

And other good stuff...

 

 

 

I've spent all day working in the yard. It felt heavenly! And what an absolutely bizarre day it's been...

First, I planted some seedlings in the front beds. I planted malva 'Zebrina' and aubrieta close to the door. The malvas will grow tall (3-4') and be covered in daisy-like white flowers with purple veins. The aubrieta is a low-growing ground cover that's covered in bright pink flowers in spring; it probably won't bloom until next year since it's a perennial.

 

 

While I was busy planting these seedlings, Patrick noticed turkey vultures in the cornfield across the street. They were picking at something, so we grabbed the binoculars and discovered they were dining on a rabbit. Ick. Necessary creatures, but still...ick.

While we're watching the turkey vultures, we turn to our left, and standing in our driveway is a gigantic bird of some sort, like nothing we'd ever seen. At first, because it had pink wattles and a pink comb, we think it's a turkey vulture baby...but something about it looked like a game bird. Its shape and movement all looked game-birdy to me. 

I grabbed the camera and took a few pics while it was squawking up a storm, apparently unable to figure out how to get itself off the driveway for a good ten minutes or so. 

 

After a few minutes, our little friend finally ran rather than flew into our back yard and under the shelter of a spruce tree.

A few moments later, here comes another one! Now there are TWO! 

 

Our initial thought was that these two might be fledglings taking their first walk out of the nest, but they looked too mature. I ran into the house and grabbed a field guide, and discovered that the birds were common peafowl, an upland game bird...and probably escapees from a zoo! They've formed a feral population in southern Florida, according to the field guide, but aren't known anywhere else. I plan on sending their pics to Cornell's ornithology lab for confirmation and also so they can record their presence here.

 

While we're watching them stroll through our yard and reading about common peafowl, in swoops a hawk, looking for some easy lunch. I swear, it was like a freaking PBS special between the turkey vultures, the zoo escapees, and now the damn Cooper's hawk coming in to complete life's magical cycle right before our eyes. I saw the hawk before the peafowl did, and started running toward the birds. The hawk took off but didn't go far; I'm sure he (small, so likely a male) was waiting very close by.

Meanwhile, the peafowl kept veering a little too close to my vegetable beds, and they also seemed intrigued by the chickens (who did NOT like the new kids on the block, and proceeded to ogle and bug-AWK!!! at them when the peafowl came up to their run). I decided to chase the interlopers back toward the stream on our property...lest they be eaten by my dogs, eaten by the neighbor's Lab, or lest they devour my vegetable seedlings. They ran all the way back to the stream, squawking and screaming, and then Patrick called me to show me their nest...they were a mating pair! They'd created a nest directly next to our driveway, a deep cup shape behind a large shrub. I feel bad that we ran them off the nest, but my dogs most certainly would have killed them if we hadn't shooed them from the driveway area. They couldn't have been there more than a few days and there were no eggs in the nest.

After all the birdie hullabaloo, I went back to planting, working in a bed I've never done anything with. It's the one my office window looks out on, and we've just tried to keep it clear of weeds for the past four years. Now that I have thousands of seedlings waiting for new homes, I cleared a portion of that bed and put in some California poppies, mixed bachelor buttons, black bachelor buttons, and Jolly Jester French marigolds. My goal for this bed is a population of flowers that reseeds so they can bring themselves back every year. These are all self-sowing flowers. 

 

In case you couldn't tell, winter sowing has been a rousing success. I have a total of about 80 containers right now and will likely do 15-20 more, now that I have more containers (thanks to my friend Lori who casually raided her neighbors' recycling bins). The number of seedlings I have right now would have cost me thousands of dollars at a nursery, and that's no exaggeration considering that ten nursery plants usually costs about $50 here. Except for the occasional treat, I see no reason to ever buy nursery plants again...not when I can produce plants like this! 

Here's some of what I have yet to plant:

 

 

 

 

Happy spring, everyone!

The pink hyacinths by the lamp post are in full bloom, so I added some to my daffodils. You can almost smell them by looking at the picture...soooo fragrant.

 

I wait all winter long for this.