Friday, January 11, 2008

Notes for January 11, 2008

The weather has been warm and wet and we even had some rumbles of thunder this morning. The dog is our thunderstorm proximity alarm and he visited us at 1:30 and 5:30 this morning.

I have started to look through the seed catalogs and painted daisies have caught my eye.

I think I might also purchase daylillies and iris from different companies several times this year. I will have the space for them and I want to keep the catalogs coming.

Wednesday, January 2, 2008

Notes for January 2, 2008

Hope everyone had safe and wonderful holidays.

Not much going on in the garden at this time but I do have a few nuggets of info.

The winds blew again in the last few weeks and I had to repair the bird feeder wire for a second time. We saw a Red Tailed hawk in our yard on Christmas eve. It was scanning the back yard from our fence.

I did get to do some more leaf collecting for the compost pile the week before Christmas. The same wind that blew the branches down on the bird feeder wire also piled leaves up in my yard which I was able get cleaned up before the holidays. I did find something interesting. Instead of bagging right away, I mulched them with the mower first (like I was going to leave them in place) and then bagged them. This made the bag heavier and I was able to fill the wheelbarrow with more (since the leaves weren't as big) and now the compost pile has leaves that are much smaller and will be quicker to decompose or work as better as mulch in the spring.

I did get a couple of gardening books for Christmas that I had asked for. One was for shade perennials and another was for perennials requiring less water. I haven't looked through them yet but I will soon.

I do have some shade grass seed leftover from last spring and if I get a warm day I will scratch the ground and spread some seed. It worked well last year. I spread some seed back in April and most of the areas are looking much better.