May in the Garden

This wonderful hebe is in full bloom.  It sits in the front garden as part of the little rockery.  You see a few of the other plants in this area.  The hedge was not yet clipped at the time of this photo.

Here is a photo of some of the tiny plants on the little rockery at the back.  These are last year's transplants that are doing very well.  I think they may get bigger than their tags say they will be.  The next photo is full of shadows.  It is the view of the strawberries in bloom and the newly transplanted Chinese vegetables.  Behind them are the big black pots, that I have yet to plant up.  Behind the black pots, are the tall bearded irises.  They are going to have a great show this year.  There are lots of buds now.  The last is the mermaid at the top of the waterfall.  I need to find a different place for the mermaid or make moss grow on it.
Yesterday and the day before I spent a few hours trimming the hedges along the top and down the side by Parmar's grass.   I also trimmed back the burning bush off their sidewalk.  Now, of course, we can see their garbage cans sitting out there from our front door.  Amazing... people will keep their garbage cans by their own front door.  I have yet to clip the little bottom hedge.  Since it is a bit misty rainy today, I am taking the day off.  I watered the deck plants a bit yesterday, also.  I moved the grass front and back.  Since I have the access to the back grass covered in vine clippings that will not fit into the big green bin, I devised a way to take the lawn mower up the two back steps.  I have a light board that is easy to place down as a ramp.  I take a short run at it with the mower and it works, really very well.  I may do this to get to the back grass, all the time, now. 

The water garden today

The water hawthorn is in bloom. This is zoomed into the digital zoom, so there is noise. Too bad about the evergreen needle caught in the leaves, but it gives you some idea of the size of the flower.

I was attempting to 'freeze' the water with long exposure in the TV mode. I really should have been in manual mode and setting both time and aperture. This is 1/6 sec at f 7.1. Using a tripod would help too.

There are at least two kinds of lichens on the plum tree.

The light came pouring down
One more for the sparkling waters series

Metrocascade has changed its format. I actually like it better this way. It makes the site into more of a news worthy read. I can still find gardening - where my blog appears, and other subjects as well. Good work, gentlemen -- it looks good.

I emptied 2 inches of water from the rain gauge today. The sun came out for a minute, but before I could jump into my boots and jacket, the sun was gone. I really do need to get more leaves off the grass again. The tree might have 1/3 of its leaves hanging on yet.

Vancouver Island Rock and Alpine Show

Yesterday was a lovely day with 16 degree temperatures. In looking around the garden I see things popping up quickly. They seem to be making up for lost time in our cold Spring, this year. The aubretia, arabis, anemones, polyanthus, daffodils, hyacinths, hellebores, camillias, and others are showing quite a lot of color. My little rockeries need attention, but things are not looking too bad. The marsh marigold will soon be a mass of gold and green along the edge of the pond.

The Vancouver Island Rock and Alpine Gardening Society is having their annual show and sale this month. This is an annual event on my calendar, even though I am not an active member in the club. It is a very interesting club. They have field trips, open gardens, workshops, monthly meetings with speakers, a show of plants and sale of plants by the expert growers of the group. Some of the members are Internationally known speakers. This month, I missed the workshop on making styrofoam planters.... and I have a perfect round form just sitting on my deck, waiting to be made into a planter. Now I shall have to research it on the net, I guess.

Rock and Alpine Show and Sale:

Cadboro Bay United Church
2625 Arbutus Road, Victoria, B.C. Canada

Admission by donation.

Friday - April 17th
1 p.m. to 8 p.m.

Saturday - April 18th
9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.
VIRAGS club members' plant sale: 11 a.m.

Specialty nurseries will sell plants during the entire show.
Seeds will be on sale throughout.

Afternoon tea

Waterfall

This is the waterfall in my garden pond on March 17. I was fascinated by the bubbles formed by the falling water. The water comes out of its feed hose and falls 10 - 12 inches and runs about the same distance then falls another 12 inches into the pond. As it drops into the pond these bubbles form and travel across the surface. I must try this sometime when my neighbours have the wash out on the line.. I might get better reflections in the bubbles.

I now have carpet in my room. Its an wonderful gold and green color. Looks good with the yellow walls, grey/green patterned vertical blinds (on the patio door) and all the wood. Wally added under lay to the carpet and I now need to have the verticals shortened or raised by apx. 1.5 inches. So annoying. I tried to call Pacific Blinds who did the draperies... seems they are out of business. At least, the phone rings once and then there is a 'hang up' sound. David is to be here on Friday to finish the cabinetry. I will ask him if he will drill a few holes to put the screws in to raise the curtains :)) that 1.5 inches. I have my desk levelled, plants cleaned and ready for another watering tomorrow. I am slowly getting things cleaned and moved to where they will be sitting.

It is April 1 and I am on line... guess the worm is not going to be a problem. I have up dated anti virus and windows. I would feel safer if I was running linex right now.

Last evening I made a couple of soups from scratch. The califlower and broccoli stems we had today tasted pretty good. This cooking takes time. Time I might rather be spending in my kitchen than on my computer. In my kitchen and reading a good book. I am reading 'Arminius - Ceasar to Charlemange - a history of the German people. Its printed using the original pages and is sometimes difficult to read as it was written in 1850 or so, and they did not reset the typing... some of the pages might be missing. We finally found our atlas under the pictures in the guest room, so now I am a bit more familiar with where all these battles between the Romans and the German tribes are taking place. Really quite interesting considering the might of Rome and how it eroded. There are similarities in the erosion of our economy. The Roman people became used to receiving handouts, the army became used to 'ruling' and so the Republic deteriorated. Simplified in a sentence as there was more to it than that over a long time period. But if you look at how spoiled we are compared to ..... oh say ... India, not to mention the 3rd world countries ... you see the imbalance, and how it just cannot work with such inequity

Snow

Last night we began to get snow and this morning there was about 8 - 10 inches piled up everywhere. My waterfall is running and keeping the water open. Its quite a contrast between the dark water and light snow. I am pretty happy with this shot.
The Anna's Hummingbirds stay around all winter. I have been trying to get a photo of this bird for 2 months now. This morning I finally got a semi decent photo of it. It has its feathers all fluffed up and is not wasting energy flying. I refilled the feeder and the bird was back for a few sips all day. I did not manage a flying photo of it, though. It sits on the perch at the feeder to eat, so I would really have to be fast to catch it flying. The background is too light because of the snow on the branches of the trees.

Yesterday I loaded the Vilnius photos to my Multiply Travel album. I shall do the Amsterdam ones and then have the 2008 trip up on line, at least, if not on my own home page. They are on my blog, also.

I have my Flickr groups and comments pretty well caught up and had some time to surf around at bit. I followed a comment on my stuff back to the commenter's photostream and found some really nice Carlsbad caverns stuff, and another girl had some excelent stage shots of some band.

Gardening

I have managed to get the pond edges fixed, added the new pump, cleaned up the water plants and filled the pond. I had an extra rock to use on the rock path. I could use a few more nice flat rocks in the path. I have yet to clean up the Japanese garden area next to the pond.
Out front, I have raked the leaves off the grass and the rock plants a couple of times. There is still quite a few leaves on the tree.
I tried to load my video of the waterfall here, but it does not seem to want to finish processing. It has uploaded, as far as I can tell. This has been in the process for over 30 minutes. That is a bit ridiculous. well, just as I typed that, it finally loaded.

Tulips and waterfall in my garden

This photo of the waterfall in my garden shows the top part of the waterfall. The water drops about one foot, runs down a flat stone for about a foot and then drops off into the pond for another fall of a foot. The pond looks good with the debris skimmed off. The marsh marigolds are finished blooming. The water hawthorn is in bloom now. The lilies are beginning to put up leaves. The tulips are putting on their show right now. They seem to be quite tall this year. The one shown here is 'blue heron'.

In walking about the garden today, I saw at least two of the lizards, no frogs, some birds.

I have taken in rhubarb and have 2 cups chopped and frozen for our next pie. The plant should be more vigorous next year, I hope. I must remember to feed it.

More of the waterfall

A couple more photos of the waterfall of the p0nd in my back garden. The top part of the waterfall is growing some nice moss. This moss reminds me of the mossy fountains along the main street in Aix en Provence, in France. The fountains are spring fed. You cannot see the water running in the fountains because they are all overgrown with the lovely green moss that is fed slowly from the springs. The water in my waterfall is running a bit too fast to achieve that effect; unless, I let the moss grow thicker to intercept the water flow and/or slow the flow down to a trickle. I think I like it the way it is now. I will just encourage more moss to grow, if possible. The moss does wick away the water, so I will need to be more diligent about topping up the pond. Until I get plants to grow over the edges and hang down, this pond does not look good when it is not topped up. I suppose I could bury a hose that fed directly into the p0nd with a slow drip to keep it topped up. I might do this. I really should raise the flat stones and move them closer to the apple tree... thus removing more grass from the soggy (in winter) part of the lawn and giving me a more dry surface to walk on in the winter. I could bury the dripping hose at the same time. I would to need to dig out one of the old Y hose connectors.. or get a new one.

I clipped the big boxwood hedge and did quite a bit of cleaning up of the old perennials in the front, up to the cedar hedge. I have the little honeysuckle hedge and the little boxwood to clip yet. Neither one need much work as they have not grown much since their last clipping. The dandilions need attention all over the garden.

Today I made a pot roast in the pressure cooker. I followed the recipe. I don't think my pressure cooker is working quite right. It took twice as long as it should have.. the roast may not have been totally unthawed though. Was very good anyway. I seem to be managing to lose a bit of weight... not much, but its encouraging to see even a couple of pounds gone. There was no big carbohydrates in the pot roast, except what is in potatoes. So, I hope I managed another day of less intake than required.

Tomorrow, Easter Sunday, the guys go up to Ladysmith and see the Zust in its debut. Wish I had asked to go with them as it would be great to get some photos of it, and see it, in its racing form. Hopefully there will be other opportunities. I am getting quite a few hits on my blog post where I quoted the newspaper interview that the Blackstaffs did a few months ago. Its all very exciting for the antique car hobby to have the Zust right here on our Island!! AND restored!! New York to Paris race - 100th anniversary, the Zust finished third.