WE HAVE BABY BIRDIES!!!
So excited, we have baby birds in our bird house that I painted last winter. I heard them peeping today after work, my husband got our tripod attached the camera and recorded them for a second.
Ugly little dudes but they sound so cute! Lol.
I think there are three in there! Here is the video!
http://youtu.be/hnnh45wQ-jA
I planted my veggies last weekend and some have already come up!
I will talk about that more when more are up and I can take some pictures.
Today I planted all my baby veggies outside, tomatoes, squash, zucchini, cucumber and melons. I liked the idea to have them in pots last year. I did that with my leftovers after I had planted the bulk of them in my raised beds. Although I did get zucchini and squash, they took over my beds and I had a hard time managing them up there.
The ones I had done in their own pots later in the year worked out great, so this year I decided to put them all into their own individual pots. The only thing I didn't like last year was that grass grew between them and it was awful to mow (according to my husband) and once the squash took hold of the fence you couldn't move the pots.
So this year my husband put landscape ties on the ground and I put some landscape fabric down underneath so no more grass. My yard is sloped so I put a 2X4 down and set the backend of the pots down onto it so now they are level.
I'm hoping this works better and I get a decent yield :) I will still use the fence for them to crawl up. Every year I learn something new, I really love this hobby!
My first hole is plugged!! Well that didn't sound dirty at all did it, lol.
It's been less then two weeks since I released my bees and they have been busy working around my yard. I walked up to the bee house yesterday and saw that one of the holes in the nesting trays was plugged.
This is so cool, I can't believe it's all working out so fantastically. Now hopefully with a little more luck I will have cacoons to dig out in the fall!
The only problem I'm having is that all my fruit trees seem to be late this year, they are barely in bud. Except my one cherry tree, it's about to bloom but if none of the others go I'm afraid I won't get cherries on it again this year :(
Either way I am totally excited about my bees! They really are a joy to watch.
So I've really been craving wonton soup, and I've been eating it from our local Chinese restaurant. Which is amazing BUT, well you know.
So I decided to make my own, I have to say it turned out not bad at all!
Here is what I did.
1 pkg of ground pork
1 ham steak
4 green onions
3 carrots
1 C mushrooms
1 baby Bok Choy
1 carton low sodium organic chicken broth
1 small brocoli top
1 egg
1 Tbsp apple & sage spice from epicure
A sprinkle of salt
A sprinkle of coconut flour
Celery salt to taste
In a mixing bowl combine pork, egg, epicure spice, salt and coconut flour. Hand mix together and form little balls. In a soup pot bring chicken broth to a boil and carefully drop pork balls in. Turn down to a simmer and cut your veggies. Cut 1/2 the ham steak into chunks and add to your soup. Simmer for about 10-15min until balls start to float. Add your veggies and celery salt, simmer for about another 5 min and wa la, wonton soup. I may play around with the spices a bit more but I quite enjoyed it .
My second orchid, or I guess third, is in bloom! It opened up this morning. I've been feeling a little neglectful towards my orchids lately because I've been so busy with my spring flowers and planting my garden.
My baby orchid from last year finally lost its one and only bloom a couple of days ago. Not bad for a one year old, it bloomed for about 6 weeks. Momma orchid on the other hand is still going strong with no sign of flower drop yet :) so exciting!
I think I have finally done it, I've been able to get my orchids to rebloom, I haven't killed any new orchids in the last two years. I even did a little experimenting with one of my orchids in a wall mount bird cage, and it grew a new leaf. I think I finally figured it out. I guess it's onto the next :). Not sure what that is exactly but I'm sure I will write about it!
So I wasn't sure how this was all going to work, I read about it, followed the instructions, but I didn't think it was going to work exactly how everything said it would work. But it has!
I was sitting out front in my flower bed weeding and moving a few perennials around when I heard them, BEES. More importantly, my bees. I was so excited to see them again, I was hoping I would but you never know they are solitary bees after all. The instructions did say that if I was lucky and all goes well I would see the females return to the bee house.
Well I saw at least three different bees return to the house, and one fat local. I'm pretty sure she wasn't one that I released. The other females all seemed to give each other their space except the fat local one, she was a little mean and went in after one of my bees, there was a short scuffle and then the big local bee left. My little bee seemed ok and flew off then came back shortly.
I hung my bee mud close by and hopefully things will continue to go well and I will have new bees for next year. The video to there release and where to get them is in the previous post. This is so exciting, I sat there for almost an hour watching them. They are the cutest little bees I've ever seen, I had them flying around my head and I was really close to the house. Such a gentle bee. I love it, this was definitely worth doing and I would recommend it to anyone with a garden!
Ooh, I also have a nesting pair of birds in my bird house.
So I'm writing my second post for today, wow I'm on a roll. Lol.
I released my bees today, it was so awesome! I've never seen this or have been lucky enough to be part of it even though I grew up on a farm. I decided to release them today because it was a beautiful day and things are slowly starting to get green, I've also seen other little critters around the yard.
I put out my petunias and a few other flowers to give them a little head start, I will put them out daily for the bees. I'm so excited I'm hoping that this year my fruit trees and shrubs will be pollinated a little better.
This is the video I made, hopefully it works :)
http://youtu.be/biFEJNtfWcE
Here is the website I got my bees from
http://www.westcoastseeds.com/product/Gardening-Supplies/Pollination/#sthash.jVOmh0KE.dpbs
Thank you West Coast seeds for an amazing experience!
Although I'm not a mother to any human variety children I do have some four legged ones. I just wanted to wish ALL women a happy Mother's Day, and whether you have human children or not I think all women should be appreciated on this day!
I for one stalked my greenhouse full of flowers this weekend and transplanted about 100 plants yesterday, now I know that doesn't sound like a lot especially when professionals do thousands in a day. However it was still a lot of work and I loved every second of it!
I did buy a few things, only because I only have so much space to start my own, I did transplant all my veggies the other day and yesterday I did all my flowers. Marigolds, morning glories, moon flowers, sweat peas and planted about 24 strawberry plants.
I'm very happy with my little greenhouse, I just bought a little 5x5 pop up plastic greenhouse and it's been great. I was very careful of what I put in there at first because we are still getting freezing temperatures at night. I did put a little heater in it for the evenings and that's been working out great so this weekend I moved everything I could fit in there.
So Happy Mother's Day to me and all of you!
So it's been just over a month and they are still in a beautiful bloom!
One of my other orchids is about to bloom as well, I will post a picture when it does. I don't remember what color it is, lol.
It's been so busy that I have completely forgotten to write. My house has exploded with plants and I'm finding I'm having a little trouble keeping up. I have a little plastic greenhouse set up outside but it's been pretty cold in the evenings so I have put a heater in it for at night. I still don't trust it completely so I only have bulbs out there right now, I would be devastated if I move all my petunias, snapdragons and marigolds out there and they froze one night.
I did start my veggies, tomatoes, squash, cucumbers, peppers, cauliflower and celeriac. But again they have grown so big in two weeks under my lights that I need to transplant again but am running out of room! I might just pop them in the green house because if I loose them I can start over, my flowers not so much.
Well have a fabulous Sunday everyone!
