AN ARTIST'S GARDEN

This is a home from a June garden walk. I try to snap photos of elements that are unusual or interesting. With the exception of the Khlem gardens (which I will show in a future post), all garden walk yards are designed maintained by the homeowners.

A tiny bungalow with only a retaining wall and porch in front. The backyard was postage stamp size, about 20 x 30. Not really much in the way of plantings but a pleasant area with some ideas for creating outdoor living space.

Creeping Jenny trails over the retaining wall. A few flower accents and some metal artwork adds and interesting element to the wall. Shrubs are all pruned up to better show the plants beneath.



A brightly colored deck attached to the house holds some art, stuffed flamingos and an assortment of chairs and tables.




A mustard colored fence and bright stepping blocks accent the tiny lawn and a few plants.




Trellises frame the seating area and a painting hangs on the fence. Planters dot the patio and odds and ends are are positioned in any available space.





This is the garage door.




One wall of the garage is a startling blue with metal artwork accents. The stock tank is painted a bright copper and the hydrangeas are artificial.




More artwork hangs on the house’s rear wall. The woman in the white hat is the owner/artist.




A dead tree brightly painted to give it a few more years of usefulness.




A hanging swing becomes a planter.




The driveway, colorful sidewalk and boxed trees.

...hopped on the bough, then, darting low, prints his small impress on the snow ~ From Emerson's poem The Titmouse

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas.

We had an ice storm here on Wednesday into Thursday that interrupted power to more than 40,000 homes. My sister's home was one of them. Her family spent Wednesday night and all day Thursday wrapped in blankets in front of their fireplace. They had no electricity, no heat and no hot water.

It rained on Christmas morning and later in the afternoon the temperature dropped. The roads were a sheet of ice driving home on Christmas night. Later the snow started and we had another eight inches by Saturday evening.

In spite of the weather, our family had a lovely Christmas, eating a wonderful meal, laughing and chatting.

One of my best gifts this year has been this little visitor I call Mouse. I’ve hoped for years to attract a Tufted Titmouse to my feeders. I often see them at Severson Dells and at my father’s feeders. This is the first year I’ve been successful in bringing them to my farm. Aren’t their large, black eyes appealing?

These little birds maintain their pair bonds year round. In fact, family bonds are so strong; youngsters from the previous spring often remain with the parents and help with nesting and feeding the following year.

Females are very particular about nesting materials and prefer soft hair. People have reported seeing them pull fur from live squirrel and woodchuck tails, and from men’s beards.

The annual bird counts judge these birds to be a tentative success story. While most bird populations are rapidly decreasing, Tufted Titmouse numbers show a moderate increase. It is guessed this may be because more people are feeding birds over winter and these adaptable birds are benefiting.

The Titmouse comes to the suet feeders for Kaytee suet dough, then to the hopper feeder for shelled peanuts. I'm sure they will eat sunflower seeds also but haven't seen them at the sunflower feeders yet.


Wishing all of you a very happy New Year.
May you have and abundance of love, peace, health and comfort.

Blessed is the season which engages the whole world in a conspiracy of love! ~ Hamilton Wright Mabie

The legend of Father Christmas is such a wonderful old story.
The details are different from place to place, but the central idea remains the same. A kindly old man bringing rewards for good children (be they rich or poor) at Christmas.




I've heard that the chubby Santa Clause we see depicted in this country originated with an artist working for the Cocoa Cola Company. He is a much more earthy figure in older cultures that perhaps aren't so commercial.

The tradition of poinsettias originates in Mexico.
Children picked bunches of weeds along the roadside to decorate the village nativity. On Christmas day the humble weeds were blessed and turned to bright red flowers.

Christmas is the time for all things gaudy, glimmery, and glittery.

Fail not to call to mind, in the course of the twenty-fifth of this month, that the Divinest Heart that ever walked the earth was born on that day; and then smile and enjoy yourselves for the rest of it; for mirth is also of Heaven's making. ~Leigh Hunt

Our hearts grow tender with childhood memories and love of kindred, and we are better throughout the year for having, in spirit, become a child again at Christmas-time.
~Laura Ingalls Wilder

In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer. ~ Albert Camus

Blowing snow has erased the rest of the world and left only this row of trees along my fenceline.

The first winter storm of the season brought a foot of heavy, wet snow.
Its weight bent my lilacs to the ground.

Color disappears in a snow storm and the world turns to black and white...mostly white.

Announced by all the trumpets of the sky,
Arrives the snow, and, driving o’er the fields,
Seems nowhere to alight: the whited air
Hides hills and woods, the river and the heaven,
And veils the farm-house at the garden’s end.
The sled and traveler stopped, the courier’s feet
Delayed, all friends shut out, the housemates sit
Around the radiant fireplace, enclosed
In a tumultuous privacy of Storm.
~ Emerson

In the bleak midwinter Frosty wind made moan,

Earth stood hard as iron, Water like a stone;

Snow had fallen, snow on snow, Snow on snow,
In the bleak midwinter, Long ago.
Christina Rossetti

A Hairy Woodpecker female.
Heavy snow creates desperate times for the birds.
Their survival may depend on the kindness of people.
I always put out extra suet and seed
so they won't run out of food while I'm at work.

The Downey Woodpecker female is similar in color but smaller
than the Hairy Woodpecker.
Her beak is much shorter than that of the Hairy Woodpecker

A tiny Junco.

A finch huddles against the chill wind.

I wonder what it would be like to live in a world where it was always June. ~ Lucy Maud Montgomery

I'm varying my usual Wednesday posting because I won't be online tomorrow.

Another set of photos saved from a June garden walk. I horded these away thinking they would be fun to bring out on cold winter mornings.

The snow is beginning to fall in earnest this morning and blizzard warnings for tonight. It seems a good time to let the mind drift back to a sunny, warm June day.

Tinker's Cottage built in 1865 is now a museum. The grounds feature a small heirloom rose garden maintained by one of the local garden clubs.

A new vegetable garden has been added and it features these unusual trellises for growing vine crops.

If I don't look out my window at the snow piling up on the lawn, I can almost believe it might be June...almost.

"I heard a bird sing

In the dark of December

A magical thing
And sweet to remember.
~ Oliver Hereford

When the flowers have died back for the winter months, my backyard looks empty. This is the season I really depend on wild birds to add movement and interest to my garden. On frigid winter mornings, tea or cocoa in hand, I sit by the window and watch them for hours

The first two photos are Downey Woodpeckers. The male and female are very alike except for that spot of red on the head of the male. They announce their arrival at the feeders with a little quacking sound.

These tiny woodpeckers are the most frequently seen at feeders. Although very small, they are not as shy as their larger cousins. Downeys usually find the suet and bird seed quickly and lead the larger woodpeckers to the treats.

If you are trying to attract woodpeckers to your backyard, use one of the premium suet cakes like the Kaytee or the Wild Birds Unltd brand. You can also use real suet from a butcher shop but hang it somewhere the raccoons, cats and opossums can't reach it.

In addition to the Downeys, last weekend my suet feeders were visited by Hairy Woodpeckers, Red Bellied Woodpeckers, Nuthatches, Chickadees, and a Tufted Titmouse. I have been hoping for a Titmouse for ages and finally one has found the suet and peanut feeders. I'll try for more photos next week if the weather cooperates and provides some sunshine.

The Gold Finches are wearing their olive drab feathers now. Thistle seed served up in a soft 'sock' is one of the best loved treats in my garden. These feeders stay busy all day, every day, with hungry finches squabbling over the tiny seeds. Later when we have snow cover, the Red Polls may visit this feeder. If food is in short supply farther north in the forests of Canada, they arrive in the area in large, hungry flocks.

The Gold Finches are year round visitors at the feeders. They will eat thistle seed, millet and sunflower seeds. I usually hang the thistle socks above the flower borders near the house. The seed is irradiated and will not sprout so you don't have to worry about thistle growing up among your flowers.

There haven't been the usual large numbers of House Finches with me through the summer months. I'm starting to see more of them as the weather gets colder and their natural food supplies decrease.

There is nothing in which the birds differ more from man than the way in which they can build and yet leave a landscape as it was before.
~ Robert Lynd

Shade garden

I've been saving photos from my June garden walks to use on days like this--dreary, cold and colorless. This isn't my garden, altho I wish it was.

This back yard garden was all open shade. The first thing that I noticed when I rounded the corner at the rear of the property was the heavenly scent. Four huge clumps of white astilbe perfumed the garden (somehow I didn't get a photo of them). Who knew astilbe were so fragrant?

Answering some questions on previous postings.
The wild berries below belong to the

Smilax lasioneura
Carrion Flower Vine
which is not common in this area.

The deer in the previous post are fallow deer and are approx 30-39 inches tall at the shoulder. These are probably native to Europe altho I was not able to identify the exact variety and the origin.

VETERANS DAY

On this day set aside to honor our veterans, I'd like to express my heartfelt gratitude for the sacrifices they have made for us all. This includes both my grandfathers who served in the Army in WWI; my father who served in the Air Force in WWII; and my brother and sister who served in the Army in Vietnam. Thank you and God bless.

We have an adopt a soldier campaign going on here. Everyone is urged to donate items to send overseas to our military. Soldiers back from deployment say the smallest things like junk food and powered drink mixes are morale boosters and help them remember the folks back home are thinking of them. If you can, donate in your area and put a smile on the face of a service man far from home.


AUTUMN IN NORTHERN ILLINOIS

In a few brief days we go from the scene above to the one below.

The trees are bare, the leaves are on the ground. This Friday it was my mission to move them off the grass. I know it sounds foolish to rake leaves in a 30-mph wind, but I can't always pick my times. In the end there were leaves in my hair, leaves in my shoes and down the back of my neck, but the majority were on the gardens. It may not have been an efficient job of leaf removal but it felt good to be outside using my muscles and breathing the fresh air.

In fact I have a limitless need for leaves and often pick up bags set at the curb for the trash haulers. These bags go into one of the barns to save for mulch on next spring's gardens. It's hard to believe anyone would go to the trouble to neatly bag this lovely stuff and set it out to be hauled away.

This is my window tree.

Robert Frost wrote...

Tree at my window, window tree,
My sash is lowered when night comes on;
But let there never be curtain drawn
Between you and me.
Vague dream-head lifted out of the ground,
And thing next most diffuse to cloud,
Not all your light tongues talking aloud
Could be profound.
But tree, I have seen you taken and tossed,
And if you have seen me when I slept,
You have seen me when I was taken and swept
And all but lost.
That day she put our heads together,
Fate had her imagination about her,
Your head so much concerned with outer,
Mine with inner, weather.

Later I took a drive up to Janesville, Wisconsin to visit a scrapbooking store. Some scenes along the way...

My resident hawk surveys his domain from high atop a telephone post. Magnificent creature, but not welcome at my bird feeders.





The seed pods below are Euonymus atropurpurea growing in the hedgerows along my lane. A rather nondescript little tree until it produces these pretty pink pods.

Interesting non-native residents like this shaggy llama can be seen along the back roads around my farm. Actually, llamas originated here in North America about 40 million years ago and remained until fairly recently. Before the last ice age occured , many had migrated to South America. After the glaciers receded, none were left in North America.

These tiny black deer, which I can't identify, are diffinitley not natives. They are smaller than our white tails, even smaller than a goat. This photo was taken from a very long distance. Wish I could have gotten closer. If anybody knows anything about these deer, please tell me.

I hope you are enjoying beautiful autumn weather where ever you are. We are having a spell of indian summer here. No way of knowing how long it will last so making the most of these warm, sunny days.