My Back Yard

My daylilies have bloomed for this first time this year. Yippee!

Just planted a packet of sunflower seeds on my front berm. Last year I did the same. Only three of them grew to maturity. Can I do better this year?

My peonies are shedding their petals, while my columbines are still going strong. Two of three shrub rose varieties have started blooming.

My favorite squirrel girl bagged a load of nuts today.

Freddie ran right over when I went outside to plant kale and Swiss chard seeds. She circled back when I pruned my shrub roses. She knows a sucker when she sees one.

As I wrapped up my outdoor work, Sucker #2, my husband, Iggy, emerged to clean and refill the bird baths, restock the Squirrel Palace and our bird feeders, and dispense nuts to a certain cheeky girl.

It was a good day for Freddie. And for Iggy and me.

Diamond Frost euphorbia adorned my container garden this year.

Its delicate white flowers lightened up the heaviness of my New Guinea impatiens.

Plus, it’s hardier than impatiens. So it’s still blooming now that my impatiens have been felled by frost.

Too bad it’s an annual, not a perennial. But I will definitely look for it again next spring.

I’m adding some perennials to my garden, courtesy of a friend with extras:
* Lysimachia nummularia ‘Goldilocks,’ also known as creeping jenny
* Forget me not
* Daisies
* Coneflower
* Eupatorium rugosa ‘Chocolate Joe Pye Weed’

Can a plant yield vegetables more than once a season? That’s what I wanted to learn from the green bean plants I raised from seeds.

My specimens were sparse. Of the 50 or so seeds planted in my first round, only one grew to maturity. It seemed dormant for weeks.

Then, I returned from a two-week vacation to find five plump beans on the plant.

Not enough for even a single robust serving on my plate, but enough to satisfy my curiosity.

Some of my hostas STILL haven’t bloomed. But at least most of the veterans are showing buds now.

The newbie hostas aren’t even budding. I’m guessing that won’t happen until their third year in the ground.

Three beans. That’s my entire first crop of green beans.

I planted quite a few bean seeds, in rounds at least a week apart. Only one of the first seeds made it to maturity, hence my three-bean harvest.

I ate one right away. I can’t say it tasted different than a store-bought bean. But I felt thrilled to have grown it myself.

I chopped the other two beans into a salad and then forgot about them.

Five other plants have sprouted. So it doesn’t look as if I’ll get enough for one full serving of beans. But, I’m still enjoying them.

Squirrelogs should be for squirrels, right?

Iggy and I run a Squirrel Cafe, which is meant to feature a corn cob jammed onto a nail for squirrels’ eating pleasure. But dried corn cobs have been in short supply since the ethanol boom started. Iggy hasn’t found them at Agway in months. So, on his last visit to the store, Iggy bought a package of Squirrelogs made of sweet corn flour molded into a corn cob shape. My fluffy-tailed friends don’t like the Squirrelogs as much as the real thing. But they seem to enjoy gnawing on the logs occasionally.

The squirrels had the Squirrelogs all to themselves. Until yesterday, when I noticed some sparrows pecking at the rain-moistened corn product. They came back again today. Next, I noticed a blue jay working on the Squirrelog.

Birds had ignored the traditional corn cobs in the cafe, but now they’ve taken with gusto to the ersatz replacement. The poor squirrels are sharing yet another food source with the birds. In my backyard, there’s no food that’s exclusive to squirrels. The birds get in on all the action. Plus, they have three feeders that hang off a wall of our house where the squirrels can’t reach.

The grackles enjoyed two suet squares and my new “water feature”–a bucket with a tiny hole so water drips into the birdbath below. Grackles’ shimmering blue head feathers are their only subtlety, so I’m much happier about the chickadees and woodpeckers that also visit the suet.

Five raccoons spread themselves over two of my neighbors’ trees around 7:30 p.m.–in broad daylight–on Friday night. Rachel Gooseberry, the mother, has four children of varying sizes. Three of the four seem to hang together. Earlier I saw three heads peering over the edge of the birdbath as they stood on the orange plastic chair Iggy put there years ago to ease the squirrels’ access to water. I worry about child number four, the runt.

Also this week:
* Black-eyed Susan’s bloomed in my yard for the first time. They’re transplants from a neighborhood lady’s garden last fall.
* Most of my Oriental lilies bloomed. They got through the season without any beetle infestations. Hurray!
* A couple of my numerous hostas are finally showing buds, long after the neighbors’.
* Some of my bean and cuke plants have flowered.

Away from the garden, Iggy and I biked 18 1/2 miles from Burlington to Bedford to Billerica and back. Turned around after reaching the historic Middlesex Canal.