Choice Morsels

I've been watching various birds the frequent my feeder teaching their young fledging's how to feed themselves.  Today's photo is a Eastern Mockingbird Parent on right teaching the Fledging sitting on the suet cage that,"this is the cafe where we dine on suet." It's actually quite amusing. You can tell the fledging has no idea what's really going on.  The parent and junior land on feeder and/or suet cage. Junior keeps eyes on the parent. The parent feeds junior a couple bites, then flies away. Junior just follows them with his eyes, then just squats on the suet cage, wondering what's going on. Sometimes, Junior will help himself to a bite or two of suet, but mainly is waiting for parent to return. Clearly the parent is trying to transmit the idea of feeding themselves. One pair of Mockingbirds have 2 fledgings, who also dumbly squatted there when the parent flew off. The two Mockingbird families have been working on this for a couple days now. They are...

Garden photos of the day: My Gardenia Topiary in full bloom! This one wasn't effected by the hard freezes we had, so it's put on a good show! I trained this gardenia into a short tree form, called a topiary! Once it's done blooming, it will be getting a haircut.   Garden Art I love to add unique ceramic items to my flower beds. This cup/saucer is actually a small planter I picked up somewhere. The greenery is a succulent called "Chinese Stonecrop." It's hardy stuff and I like using it all sorts of places. It like ceramic pieces because they hold up well in the blazing sun, don't rust and can't be eaten by termites! I also like recycling regular mugs into garden art. This one is new. A friends Mom gave me this mug planter containing a begonia & palm houseplant, but the mug has no drainage and I keep my houseplants outside in summer, so I promptly replanted the two items into their own containers that do have drainage and added that mug here with C...

This Weeks First Bouquet: This is Glads, Hydrangea, Gardenias plus stems of Greek Oregano and Chocolate mint as well. I like to pick glads as soon as they bloom, because they tend to fall over from their own weight. The t rick with glads is they bloom bottom up, so I need to take apart, snip and rearrange the bouquet every couple days. I like remaking the bouquet, though. Flowers aren't the only garden bounty: from my raised veggie garden I've started getting beans, one zucchini so far and tomatoes that should be turning soon! Finally...weeded This photo is the front corner bed between my driveway & sidewalk--I'm finally mastering the crab-grass weed spots. I worked on the area along the blocks, removing young crab-grass, then laying down newspaper on the exposed soil and topping with mower mulch. Last season, I didn't keep up with the weeds very well and the crabgrass not only got well established in the front end of this bed, but went to seed--that is a mistake I...

My Front Bed is Doing Pretty Well This section used to be just grass. It's a small section bordered by road, driveway, gravel parking pull in and neighbors lawn. Mailbox is here. I got rid of the grass because it never did well here; flowers do better. All the white flower is Sweet Alyssum--something new I tried this year. This bed is starting to look like what I've imagined in my minds eye---lots of low growing color!  There are some things here that haven't come into bloom yet: daylilies, coneflower & vinca and I have Black-Eyed Susan seedlings I'm raising to add later.   Sweet Alyssum That's what this white flower is. I grew it from seed. Never tried it before, but it's done quite well. This is a container. In early spring it has Snake Iris in it and now is overflowing with Alyssum. I added the Red Salvia for a contrast. Alyssum is very fragrant, too! It's called "sweet" for good reason! When I saw the seeds at the store, I decided to get th...

  This weeks Mama Kat prompt I've chosen is, "Something that brought me joy this week." Well, there are two things that brought me Joy this week: One is my cat, Tawny, sitting on my lap for a nap while sitting in the easy chair watching a episode of a series, like Murder She Wrote. I'll often watching a second episode, just to go on enjoying her sleeping and purring on my legs!  The other Joy this week is my flower garden: This photo was taken yesterday looking across the top of my front flower bed. There are actually beds and borders all around my house .

Today's Garden Pics are various Eastern Box Turtle friends that visit my yard: I caught this shot one rainy day last week: This block path runs along the South wall bed. Actually it channels water away from my front door to my back yard and this Boxie girl was very intently toddling her way down it to my back yard. I happen to know she is female--but only because it's mating season and well, that's helped me identify who's male and who's female. This one has already mated. Interesting fact : a female box turtle can lay fertile eggs from one mating session for the next 4 years! And she is completely able to choose when she's ready to lay. Also the temperature at the time eggs are laid determines whether the hatchings are all male or all female! This shot is one of my regular visitors enjoying a cooling soak in my "birdbath" dish. They like to get in on a hot day for 15 or 20 minutes. This Boxie has albino face markings and he's been hanging around m...