Hiatus

I know I said I would keep this blog going through the winter, but in all honesty it is not working out. My posts have dwindled to less than once a week, and comments that used to pour in are reduced to a trickle. It's a busy time of year for all of us.

So for that reason I am putting this blog on hiatus until April 1. I have already kept it going one month longer than I did last year, so that is something.

Until April, I leave you with one of my recent favourite photographs:


Photo belongs to kbgardenblog.blogspot.com and may not be used without attribution.

Decorations

I have to cheat and show you last year's photo of our miniature grapevine deer in the garden.

 

For one thing, there are only three this year. One of them has a burnt out lightbulb and doesn't look good at night anymore.

I must also explain that the snow is not very deep. The deer that look like they are up to their chests in snow are actually lying down deer. We now have this same amount of snow on the ground, about two inches (5 cm).

Although when they started out they were painted gold, I really like the natural look of these deer. 

Camouflage

Beautiful hostas under the tree.
What are they hiding that we can't see?

Hostas Under the Willow Tree in August



This is what the base of the willow trunk looks like without the hostas to disguise it.

Base of Willow Tree in Autumn

The Proper Use for Garden Clogs

Would you believe that I sometimes put these shoes on to wander into the garden and, say, dump the countertop kitchen waste into the compost bin?



And yet I will never let these shoes touch a blade of grass?



They are my house slippers and I wear them indoors only.

The Saga of the Cold Frame

Yesterday we made the twenty-minute trek to the little town with a second-hand store that had stacks of salvaged wooden windows for sale at reasonable prices.

The store looked different as we arrived. A large yellow sign out front proclaimed “Everything in the Store 50% Off – One Day Only.” The inside of the store looked different, too. It looked neater. Somebody had gone through it, removed the piles of junky stuff and arranged everything tidily. Where were the windows?!!!

At first I panicked and then we calmly searched the entire store; sure enough, stacked neatly in a hidden corner were the windows I remembered. We found the perfect one for a cold frame, and I gathered the three sap buckets that I plan to use as planters next year. When we went to the cash the whole lot was less than $20. There was enough change to buy another sap bucket if I’d wanted one. (But everyone knows that you should group things in odd numbers, especially threes—so I didn’t want another one.)

The Perfect Window for a Cold Frame



Three Sap Buckets




So, with the window now in our possession, we put together a hardware and lumber list for the rest of the pieces (we didn’t need to buy as much lumber, because we still have a scrap board in the garage which will finally be put to use), and Mr. Wonderful went off to pick up what we needed, making a side trip along the way to buy feed for the birds.

Ready to Start Building the Cold Frame



Early this afternoon he gathered the necessary parts, and with a bit of help from The Boy, built a beautiful cold frame. He mostly followed Mag Ruffman's design, but without the floor, and with a modification shown in the Canadian Gardening model that allows for us to make it taller by adding another stackable unit below.

Cold Frame Set in Place and Open



Cold Frame Closed



It sits at the back of the yard, at the top of the slope, facing south to catch the sun. Even when the sun is low in the sky and the house casts long shadows, the cold frame will get some direct sunlight every day. Well, every day there is some. Sunny days have been in short supply this autumn. I hope that changes by winter.

Facing South in the Garden



Oh, did I mention how Mr. Wonderful got his name? (Other than me copying Sigrun, I mean?) He got it by being WONDERFUL of course! I really must say that he did a great job on this.

Sharp-Shinned Hawk

My husband's camera sits on the kitchen counter with the large zoom lens attached awaiting opportunities. This morning as he sat eating a late Sunday breakfast, opportunity arrived in the shape of an immature sharp-shinned hawk who spent about ten or fifteen minutes in the area of our backyard.

My husband grabbed the camera, alerted me, and between us we spent an interesting quarter-hour observing the behaviour of the young bird who surveyed our back garden for opportunities of his (or her) own. Sure enough, prey was there in the form of a mourning dove trying to hide in the back northeast corner where the thickest cover of trees is.

Here is the prize photo, taken as the bird spots its prey.


Photo belongs to kbgardenblog.blogspot.com and may not be used without attribution.

Icicle Pansies

I still have pansies, but that's about it. (I still don't understand why "pansy" is sometimes synonymous with weakness -- these are some of the strongest little flowers I know; able to withstand cold and frost, they only die when the ground freezes.)

Cold Frame Information

Well, I am doing my research on cold frames and I thought I would share with you what I have found.

Here are some instructions for building a cold frame using an old window:

Canadian Gardening magazine
Canadian HomeWorkshop magazine

(These are the same basic instructions, just geared to two different audiences.)


Do we have what it takes to build one of these?


Illustration from http://www.canadiangardening.com.


Some cold frames make use of existing garden soil for their base. The Seasoned Gardener has detailed instructions for preparing the soil and building a cold frame to go on it.

Gardening by the Yard provides a neat idea that wouldn't work in my small suburban backyard, but might be good for people who have a lot of land and easy access to hay bales. Basically, you prepare the soil, build a wall of hay bales surrounding it, then lay a sheet of plexiglass or similar transparent material on top of the hay bales.

One of my personal favourites, ToolGirl Mag Ruffman also gives very detailed instructions for constructing a cold frame using an old window. This example contains a wooden floor and is meant to be used with pots rather than sitting on a prepared soil base.


ToolGirl Mag Ruffman with Her Newly Built Cold Frame


Photo from http://www.homeenvy.com.

These next two designs are more complex, but I love them because they are cold frames raised on tables, serving double duty as a potting shelf or bench.

Ron Hazelton has a relatively straightforward design, a cold frame raised on four legs with a simple shelf below. (The only thing with this one is that it has a flat top rather than being angled to take advantage of solar gain.)

The Western Red Cedar Lumber Association shows a rather more elaborate design allowing for two layers of pots behind a steeply angled pane. Like the previous design, this one also includes a shelf below.

I also looked into cold frames available for purchase. There are a few basic models that are carried by many online garden stores (not just the ones I happen to show here). Here is the most comprehensive listing of products I was able to find online. This page is not bad either, since it shows the most popular models of cold frames without any additional related items.

As a result of my research, I have plenty of ideas to work with. Now I hope I have the motivation to make it happen this year.

Lewisia Cotyledon In Its Pot

Lewisia Cotyledon Ready for the Cold
Originally uploaded by Philosophical Karen.

I got this beautiful pot from a Freecycler. It's the perfect size for transferring my Lewisia Cotyledon out of the ground and overwintering in a more sheltered location where it won't be subjected to a wet spring. I have two more Cotyledon, but alas no more pretty pots. (Plenty of pots, just not very "pretty" ones.)

Now I have some plants that would do well sheltered in a cold frame over winter. Hmm. A weekend project perhaps? (There are no guarantees, of course, but I would love to make this happen.)

Rainy Autumn Morning

The birds don't seem to mind the rain. I could do without it, though.



The Camperdown Elm tree, with its umbrella of tangled branches, will provide winter interest in the garden when the snow comes. Right now, it's providing a great roosting spot for these mourning doves.

Two Books

There's more to an interest in gardening than just doing gardening. As I learned on Snappy's blog earlier this year, you can take an interest in books about gardening, or that have a gardening component. So ever since I read about it on his blog, I have been meaning to read Blackberry Wine by Joanne Harris, the author who gave us Chocolat. (Links are to the author's own website.)

It's a great book, full of conventional and unconventional gardening ideas, among other things. I have come away with the idea of making my own cold frame out of an old window. Not that I have ever grown anything from seed that would benefit from a cold frame, but I know where I can get my hands on an old wooden window and now I just want to try it to see how it works.


Photo belongs to kbgardenblog.blogspot.com and may not be used without attribution.

Another book of a different kind that has inspired me lately is one by Sue Bishop. Her book, Photographing Flowers, not only contains pages and pages of flowery eye candy, but its subtitle is "Inspiration * Equipment * Technique" -- so it's full of good information on all of those, too.

I included the photograph above because I would like to be able to take more photos similar to it, and I hoped that Sue Bishop's book would help with that. We'll have to see next year, as there are no more daylilies to take photos of in the cold and dreary November weather.

Blue Jay Video

Hinterland Who's Who was a set of educational commercials about wildlife that was put out by the Canadian government. This is a video of a public service announcement that used to appear on television sets in Canada in the 1970s or so.

If you are a Canadian of a certain age the format and voice will be instantly recognizable. This video is about the blue jay.


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A few interesting links:

• The current Hinterland Who's Who web page for the blue jay. It contains quite a bit of detailed information.


• A link to the HWW page about the grey squirrel.


• (The next link is sometimes noisy, so hit the mute button if you need to.)
  A link to the Hinterland Who's Who web site.

More Garden Visitors

We are moving some food sources in hopes of luring animals closer to the house. You will see that it has allowed us to take some interesting photos of garden visitors.

For example, after moving the peanut feeder to the deck, we have found that the squirrels are spending time closer to the house. I can now tell the difference between male and female squirrels. I pretty much pictured them all as male, but some of the most dominant and aggressive animals have turned out to be female.



Very occasionally a blue jay will fly over to the deck and peck at a peanut shell, but for the most part they are loving the new low waste feed in the gazebo feeder by the willow tree. (Although, with the blue jays around, it's not so much "low waste" anymore -- they toss their beaks through it looking specifically for peanuts and corn and the ground is littered with smaller seed.)

Ah well, being a good-looking bird lets them get away with a lot. Here is a glamour shot of one of the blue jays who visits the feeder.



There is also an interesting bird hanging around, one that I have never encountered close up before. I had my suspicions that it might not be a regular crow, but what do I know? So when my husband got a couple of photos of the large black bird by the deck, I got out the Peterson Field Guide to Birds of Central and Eastern North America and checked it out.

Sure enough, its wedge-shaped tail, heavy bill, large size and solitary habit lead me to believe this is a Common Raven (Corvus corax) and not an American Crow (Corvus brachyrhyncos).


All photos belong to kbgardenblog.blogspot.com and may not be used without attribution.

Here is another photo (large size version) that really captures the spirit of this bird.

Garden Panorama

I found a new photography toy to play with. It is autostitch, a program for "stitching" two or more photos together into one large photo.

When I tried it using four photos of my backyard taken on August 11, I got the following result:


Photo belongs to kbgardenblog.blogspot.com. If you want to use it, you must credit this web site.

You might want to see a larger version of this to appreciate it fully. [I added this after reading Alison's comment that she couldn't see the "All Sizes" button. I also specified that it would only work if you actually have a Flickr account.]

If you have a Flickr account, you can click on the photo, which takes you to the Flickr page, then click on "All Sizes" at the top of the photo to see a larger version.

(I think this is the way it works. If you have a different experience, please let me know so I can put the correct information here.)