Spring Flings...More Visitors to the Garden

Look who's stopping by the garden this week...

Above is a hooded oriole. We get these visitors each March and they usually stay till September. Migrating up from Mexico, they really like the sweet. We look forward to them every year but the hummingbirds wish we had a more secure border...they don't care for the orioles hogging up their feeders.

Speaking of hummingbirds, we had three different kinds this week.

Here's an Anna's hummingbird, a year round local in our yard.

This black chinned hummingbird is a bit more rare and only seen during the warmer months.

The Allen's hummingbird is very aggressive and thinks the backyard belongs to him. Here he is in full warrior mode.

Not quite in our yard but in the park a block away is this guy, the red whiskered bulbul. Our research indicates that they are escaped pets here in the U.S.

Also at the park, this western tanager is a colorful spring and summer visitor but rarely makes it down the block to our garden.

Looking over the whole affair is this turkey vulture, a very common bird around here.

Darryl
Copyright 2013 - Darryl Musick
All Rights Reserved

The Orchids Are Coming!

Just a little preview of what's to come. This orchid, about the size of a dime, is dendrobium kingianum. Native to Australia, I got a five dollar cutting at the Santa Barbara Orchid Show. It's very easy to grow and, apart from the tiny flowers, very spectacular.

More dendrobiums...one of the easiest orchids to grow...will be blooming soom.

Also this week, I planted some cherry tomatoes in this basket.

Hanging outside our laundry room, I put an emitter on it an hope to have a crucial salad ingredient in a couple of months. I will have a more complete report on this project later, note how I left some of the "straw" sticking out so the birds can have a little nesting material and we have a bird viewing platform.

On the rose front, Mr. Lincoln...the king of classic red roses...is now in bloom.

Look at the size of this bloom, it completely covers my hand.

And, finally, here's an In-n-Out rose...a double Double Delight.

Darryl
Copyright 2013 - Darryl Musick
All Rights Reserved

Lovely Creatures of the Wild...Go Eat Somewhere Else!

See those grapes up there? They're Ruby Red Seedless grapes. I have a vine in my backyard.  On a good year, I'll get over 30 pounds off of this one vine.

Don't believe me? Here's one day's harvest from a couple of years ago.

They're really delicious and that's both a blessing and a curse.   

It's a curse because all the birds, possums, and raccoons in the neighborhood also know it.

It's a battle to keep all the grapes on the vine until they ripen. If I don't do anything, the critters will strip the fruit bare. This is the perfect time of year to do something about it.

Above is our grape vine as of this early March morning. You can see it's at the peak of it's dormant phase. If I want to work on it, now is the time...I expect I'll have bud break next weekend.

I need to put in barriers that will allow the plant to grow but block access to our animal friends.  For the ground varmints, like Mr. Opossum above, we installed this permanent chicken wire cage around the bottom of the plant that blocks access from below.

It's pretty straightforward...get a long enough piece from your local hardware store, wrap around the bottom of the trunk, tie the ends together...and you have a critter denial cage.

From above, we get the birds and squirrels. The mockingbirds and scrub jays particularly find our grapes irresistible.

This is the part that requires a bit more work.  I need to cover the vine with netting but if I do, it hinders the vine's growth and production. If I wait until the grapes are on the vine, the twigs, leaves, and fruit make it impossible to drape over.

What I need to do is put it on a little bit and just have it ready for later. Here's how we do it. First, I get some wildlife netting. Any good garden center should have some. It's not expensive.

The netting is very catchy and clingy. It even adheres to the surface of the bricks in our wall. This makes it impossible to easily get on. My wife, who we nickname "Momgyver" for her mechanical problem solving skills, comes to the rescue. 

She brings out an old sheet, spreads in on the patio, spreads the netting on top of that, then rolls up the sheet with the netting inside.

This makes it very easy to slip in behind the plant.

We unroll the sheet up the wall behind the vine...the netting is on the other side of the sheet in the photo above. With the sheet, it's a piece of cake.

Next, we pull up the sheet at the bottom a bit to expose the bottom of the netting and use some twist-ties to secure it to the chicken wire cage.

Here's another look at the twist-ties.

Finally, we remove the sheet and drape the excess netting over the back of our wall.

There it will sit until the grapes start to ripen, usually in July, weighed down by a couple of bricks. At that time, we'll take the excess, drape it over the front, and secure it to the other half of the netting. Then, the entire plant will be encased in it, allowing the fruit to finish ripening and blocking access to the animals that love to eat them. At the end of the summer, we should have some very tasty grapes to show you.

Darryl
Copyright 2013 - Darryl Musick
All Rights Reserved.

More Visitors to the Garden

While I fight off the last of this cold, let's look at some more of the Cheapskate's visitors...

Cedar Waxwings...

Red Tail Hawk...

House Finch...

Hooded Oriole...

Darryl

More Visitors to the Cheapskate's Garden

One of the joys of a good garden is attracting nature's visitors.  We've had around 50 different species of birds come through the yard over the years. Here are a few we've been lucky enough to catch on camera. Above is one of the western bluebirds that we see sometimes in the spring.

We also have a whole lot of birds of prey. The most common is the buzzard or turkey vulture.

Here, a house finch hangs out with a couple of white capped sparrows on our back gate.

The titmouse is a fun and welcome visitor anytime he comes.

...and, lastly, this Allen's hummingbird guards the feeders viciously.

Darryl
Copyright 2012-Darryl Musick
All Rights Reserved

Visitors to the Cheapskate's Garden

One of the benefits of gardening is the visitors it attracts. Here are a few of ours. Above is an acorn woodpecker swooping down from his utility pole to get a drink of water. Fun birds to watch, these characters can also do a lot of damage. We had to replace an entire wall of wood siding that they destroyed.

This lesser goldfinch is another of about 50 species we've seen in or from our backyard. My wife used to hang feeders for them but hasn't for awhile.

An Anna's hummingbird visits one of the four feeders that hang around our garden.

It's not only birds. On rare occasions, we've seen black bears on the hillside behind our house. Coyotes are not uncommon. Mule deer are a very common sight here.

Darryl
Copyright 2012 - Darryl Musick
All Rights Reserved