Gardens and Birds-A May 08 Garden Tour and the State Bird of Georgia

Four weeks after quadruple coronary bypass and with THAT story told, time to pay attention to things that bring about an upbeat attitude. Not to mention an emotion so strong that it equates to nothing less than what life is all about and the joy of being able to live it.

First, the state bird of Georgia decided to build a nest in my hedge roses. I was just so honored. We've got pics of both the hedge roses what took over the world and the Brown Thrasher which so availed itself of that thorny bush.

Second, a video garden tour. My gardens won't win the prizes from Better Homes and Gardens but I built it with plantings from the old homestead and new native plants. This year, the fifth year of my handiwork, it looks right nice.

There's also plenty of garden pics for those without video capability.

Pic of the Day

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The Garden Matures

It's now been five years since I moved to my homestead of Serendipity Shore here in the swamps of Delaware. I'd left a plot of land in neighboring state Merryland that I called Critter Cove. Critter Cove had the benefit of fifteen years of my gardening ministrations. My Delaware home had a lackluster garden with no lawn whatsoever when I moved in. Over the five years I've planted various plantings from the old homestead, plenty of new ones from native plant sales, and I've added a few new gardens.

In this year of our Lord 2008 I finally discover that I've achieved my first gardening goal from that moving day of five years ago. Only now I've got to un-do a lot of my handiwork in my Serendipity Garden now run slightly amok.

For a perfect garden would be one that has perennial blooms that bloom happily for each segment of the growing season. Said garden would be neatly planted with plants that have enough room to grow without crowding out the others with space for a few annuals to accent the collection. The plants should attract the birds, butterflies and critters to use, opportunists that they are.

If a garden matures well, blooms will accent the space in each applicable garden season, the plants will wax and wane with those waxing taking over for the waning. The necessity of mulch will be a minor thing as the properly spaced plantings prevent a wild undergrowth of noxious weeds.









So I don't have to mulch every other day as I used to but now I face gardens that are, let me admit the truth, almost running away with plants wanting to grow and a few of them are selfish and don't want to share the soil.

This means, next year when my heart has healed and it is ready for the challenge, I'm going to have to dig out some of those plants and put them somewhere where they have more room to roam.

Below is the video of my garden tour of May 2008. Enjoy.



 


What's the State Bird of Georgia Doing With a Nest in My Hedge Roses?

I knew that rusty, reddish bird with the speckled breast that had been hanging around my front yard was some kind of "thrasher". I'd seen these birds before but always during the March period of migration. They were mostly just passing through is what I'm saying here.

Yet this thrasher didn't appear to be moving through back home to Georgia. I noted it was hanging around the front yard and that, to my complete surprise, seemed to be spending a lot of time entering and exiting the thorny depths of my famous hedge roses.

Those hedge roses do defy the laws of Physics. They were little scraggly things when I ripped then out of the ground from Critter Cove's shadowy lot and gave them a new chance in a new state. As yon reader can see from the pics in the garden post above, the things have grown into a veritable mountain.

They are filled with thorns but fortunately I planted them in a real nice spot and hey, the hedge roses like it there too.

Birds regularly flit in and out of the depths of those thorns and I often sat on the front porch and marveled over this. I couldn't even reach over a branch to snip a spent bloom without burying a nasty thorn somewhere in my skin but the birds love that bush, winter too!



It was right before I went into the hospital for my surgery that I realized that this very handsome pair of brown thrashers were, to my amazement, surprise and delight, actually building a nest somewhere in the depths of that hedge rose mountain! In fact, there was located, at the bottom and far right edge of the bush, what I referred to as a "door". It was an area where no branches, blooms or leafs of the hedge rose grew. This lack of growth was, as I figured out after much observation, was caused by birds endlessly flying in and out into the bowels of the bush.

By the time I got out of the hospital, those thrashers had babies in that nest and I spent many recovering hours sitting on my porch swing and watching the fledging.

It was mesmerizing to watch, as bird fledgings always are. I watched a parent bird sit on my Serendipity Shore sign and call the reluctant youngsters.

For reasons I don’t understand, I never got a chance to see one baby Brown Thrasher. I saw the parents all over the place and I heard their loud call and the soft warble they sent to their children, depending on conditions upon.

But they’re still out there so given time I might see the children thrashers.

This was one of the more delightful nests I’ve ever entertained in my yard and I intend to make a nomination that the Brown Thrasher be made the state bird of Delaware.

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