What have you done today in the Garden?

Thank you Sjoerd and back at ya..I always enjoy garden pics. It must be Spring..

 

I actually did one small job today.
We encourage the small birds to use the feeder behind the fence around the azaleas, but the wood pigeons make too much mess. They can't get at the food but "hang around."
One perches on the beam of the pergola above the end of the balustrade and I'm often having to remove bird droppings off the end of it.





So I made this deterrent, which solves the problem.

 

@Doghouse Riley looks like you made a pretty Good deterrent. I have similar issues with pigeons and stellar jays. I set out separate feeders just for them. Oh and the squirrels…And they seem to leave the feeders alone for the song birds feeders are so much smaller .

I also have a family of hawks that like to sit in places where I don’t like them. Their droppings are like a huge bomb across the walkways and driveways. No way to deter them. We are hunting buddies. The hawks will follow me around while I mow the pastures picking up dinner as the tractor scares the mice and voles to hop up . Then the hawks swoop down and get their treats. The hawks were here way before I was and this is their hunting grounds. They are very cool creatures with their nests up over 100’ in the top of our Douglas fir trees.

 

Planted 10 bare root strawberries, planted the raspberry bush and planted the hollyhocks we started from seed.Also weeded out a few of the veggie beds.

 

Spent the afternoon at the Cinco de Mayo festival in Downtown Portland. The experience was very interesting, as was the light rail ride from the North side of town to downtown.

I did plant the following seeds in containers:

Zephyr hybrid yellow summer squash.

Dunja hybrid green Zucchini squash (for some reason I mis-remembered this one as "Dubya" LOL)

Blue Ballet hybrid Hubbard winter squash.

Galeux d'Eysines pumpkins, my favorite and I use my saved seeds for this one.

JWS 6823 PMR hybrid butternut squash (I just that name! ).

I also planted, in containers, a batch of saved green bean seeds. Unsure the variety, might be Blue Lake or Contender.

More tomorrow. I'm soaking some four o'clock seeds overnight, and have other seeds planned too.

 

@Daniel W I thought when the light rail was added to the area it could save us a lot of time and gas to get to Portland. But by the time all the stops were added , it took 40 minutes longer to get there than if I just drove. Go Figure.

Hope you had a nice time enjoyed all the entertainment and especially the food. We used to go Cinco D’Mayo every year.
This year …Instead we had home made Mexican food for dinner my DH fav food. Lots of scrumptious tasty treats dessert was sopapillas with honey and - drink with strawberry /pineapple crushed with milk and crushed ice with a pinch of tequila. The food there is delicious , so tried to copy some recipes.

I luv butternut squash , zucchini bread and cakes and grew them for years and huge pumpkins . Haven’t had time since I am my DH caretaker he is handicapped. I hope you have a great harvest if I remember correctly last year was a bonus harvest. I used to be a judge in the county and state fairs for veggies and floral divisions. Was so amazing to see the fruits and flowers brought in for competitions. Talk about picture perfect. Always impressive .
4oclocks are worth growing adding a lot of color and easy to grow. Looking foreword to see how all your hard work turns out this summer.

 

Finally have the weather worthy for May here. Amended the pepper bed this morning. Planted Chamomile, Lavender and Mint in a planter. With my average frost date passing a few days ago the planting of my starts will be coming soon. First need to harden off two flats perennials to get out there,

 

Exciting business, Clay. Of course I shall be wishing for pics and update reports. Well done, mate.

 

You are going to have a fragrant herb garden!

 

I made this feeder which is attached to the left pergola support post next to our French windows. It's a recycled mesh pan basket, which can be removed. It clips on at the back and held in position by a nut and bolt at the front, it's very secure. The bar across the front prevents anything bigger than a blackbird getting in. It's also used by blue tits, sparrows, a robin, the occasional starling and of course "our" squirrels.
They are well behaved, they take turns with the birds with the feeder.

" Cyd" likes to get in, select a bit of a fat ball and then sit on a wisteria branch below it, to eat it.
We know she's female as she occasionally "flashes her teats" at us.

 

Today I pruned the espalier apple trees nd some others.

Redlove Odysso before pruning.



After pruning.


The top tier is the disease resistant variety "Freedom". It didn't need pruning.

I pruned all five espalier apples, most of the mini apple trees, a larger Liberty apple, two pear trees, and sone fig trees.

We might get some figs this year.



I also planted seeds for Chinese beans, Turtle beans and 4:00's.

 

Transplanted several varieties of miniature irises and a couple of grocery bags of black eyed Susan. Also dug and moved a miniature variety of hosta that is very tiny and a larger bicolored small hosta. Hopefully all will recover from the harsh treatment.

 

Trimmed the grape vines some , took 3 loads to the compost pile. Mowed the lawns. Too wet to mow the grass hay is now 15” tall. Tuesday will be 70’. Did some house chores. Tried to blow the cherry blossoms off the patios, pink petals everywhere looks like it snowed .scooped out a few blocked gutters… uh pink bloom petals…from the cherry trees.

 

Love those wisteria DHR.

I saw bird discouragers like that on line last week. Good job making your own. They would make quite the mess.

Bird Poop...it's crazy stuff. When I lived up north, very large ravens would perch on the boxes of our pickups and do their business. Most of us had streaks down the sides of our trucks. If you didn't wash it off ( which was impossible to do for half of the year) the paint would be damaged and one would have permanent poop like marks down the sides of the truck. I tried to put a coat of wax on before winter to help prevent it.

 

Today all of the peppers get tucked into the greenhouse. They are in 1 gallon pots. I've been picking blooms off for a month now ( heartbreaking - I counted 120 so far) because if I didn't the plant would be stunted. Now everyone can do their thing.

I walked into the greenhouse two days ago and a vole was in there. It ran out, and I found it's hole. Today a trap line will be up between the greenhouse and the pen it's hiding in.