The Battle Rages On: Squirrels Versus Hummingbirds

It's like Clash of the Teeny Titans in my yard this week. After determining that the hummingbird feeder had neither leak nor hole, we realized that the culprit was the squirrel that looks a lot like Pierre the cat (gray with big white hourglass on his belly).  The hummingbird feeder hangs from the metal trellis that flanks the entrance to the flower garden. In the winter, we hung the bird feeder with bird seed there. I swapped it out earlier this week. Now my squirrel friend is angry...and he's developed a taste for hummingbird nectar.

I watched from my office windows, a perfect view from above to see his antics. He hung by his back feet and tail and used his front paws to twist off one of the fake plastic flowers on the base of the feeder. Then he hung onto the trellis upside-down, tilted the feeder, and drank from the open hole. The problem is when he's done, he uses the hummingbird feeder as a launching pad, making it swing like a bell....and gush red nectar everywhere.

My poor hummingbirds. They keep zooming around the feeder, darting this way and that. Their flowers are blooming in the garden, but they want that nectar.

I've got to cut back Mr. Squirrel's supply this week, so no more nectar until either I can find a squirrel-proof hummingbird feeder, move the bird's supply closer to the porch, or think of a clever solution.

Considering I saw a nature program on television in which a scientist tested the gray squirrel's intelligence and found that he could put 24 obstacles between a squirrel and a bird feeder, and the squirrel could figure out and remember how to overcome each one....I am not hopeful. I think this guy has me at an impasse.

From the Garden

Will you join me in another part of Seven Oaks - my new blog, Recipes from the Garden?

I'm in the midst of readying two books for publication to kick off a new series.  I've also started a new blog called Recipes from the Garden. I'd love it if you can join us over there and follow that blog too! You're invited...pull up a chair at the table and sit a while.  I'll be sharing seasonal recipes so you can fix all the wonderful vegetables, herbs and fruit growing in the garden into tasty meals.  And I'll provide basic cooking tips for some vegetables that perplex newcomers to the kitchen.

You know that I grew up a city kid...a  New York City kid to be exact. There's an old joke which I will paraphrase: What is the purpose of the oven in a New York City kitchen? Answer: to store the take out menus. 

I never learned to cook as a child and taught myself from issues of Cooking Light after my marriage. Because I worked until late in the evening, my husband got dinner on the table for his parents and saved me dinner. It wasn't until we moved to Virginia and this quiet, rural life that I've been able to indulge my love of cooking, baking and food preparation, experimenting with all sorts of recipes.  You've read about my trials and tribulations of learning how to can food last year and the disaster with the persimmon jelly.  Won't it be fun, though, to explore cooking from the garden together?

Do join me over on Recipes from the Garden!

A Nagging Hummingbird

Did you know that hummingbirds can nag you? They can. Each spring, I change over the bird seed feeder to the hummingbird feeder on the trellis in the garden. This winter, the very fat and crafty squirrel had learned to tip, tilt, and grab the feeder to gather as many seeds as he could. The very first day I switched out the seed feeder for the hummingbird feeder, Mr. Squirrel angrily tipped the hummingbird feeder over until all the liquid ran out.  We weren't sure at first what had happened, although based on a few sightings we thought he might be the culprit. Just in case the feeder was leaking, I filled it with plain water and hung it back in place to observe the water level for 48 hours. If there was a leak, I'd see it. If it was Mr. Squirrel, the plain water should discourage him too.

Forty eight hours passed and the liquid level remained the same. I'd planned to swap out the plain water for red sugar nectar on Wednesday. It's cloudy, overcast and chilly this morning and I have piles of work waiting for me including my new book, Diet from the Garden, and the companion booklet Recipes from the Garden  to ready for the publisher. So I decided to wait another day before swapping out the feeder.

The trouble is, the hummingbirds had other ideas. My office is in a tower on the second floor of our modern Victorian-style home. My desk is tucked under a big bay window and overlooks the garden. I rose at dawn and began working on my book manuscript, putting in a solid two hours before switching over to client projects around 8 a.m.  But every time I began to work, a blur and whirr caught my attention.

The hummingbird was at the window.

He hovered, a green jewel, then zoomed to the feeder, dipping his beak quickly at the yellow ports and then zooming back into the woods. The first time it happened I thought, "How cute" and went back to work. 

On his second pass, he went by the open window and hovered, looking right at me. Then he flew back to the feeder, circled it a few times, and disappeared into the woods.

I felt the hairs rise on the back of my neck. Perhaps it was a coincidence. But why would the bird look right at me? How did he know??

I immediately left my desk, filled the feeder, and returned to work. I haven't seen him since.

Pictures today are courtesy of Morguefile

Perennial Combinations Using Lavender

I never could grow lavender in my garden on Long Island. Being an island (even though it feels like living in an extension of Manhattan - oops, that's an island, too!), the humidity was awful and lavender often died from molds and fungi. Not so in Virginia. I went a bit crazy planting lavender my first spring here. I bought a set of various lavender seeds from Parks, planted them and kept my fingers crossed. Two of three varieties, lavender Munstead and and lavender Hidcote, love it here. They're thriving in all the sunny beds but especially in my rose garden. I have a new Spanish lavender that promises purple-burgundy blooms started from seed and nearly ready to transplant, too.

One of the most unusual lavender perennial combinations I've discovered is this startling lavender and yellow Rudbeckia together. It's not Black Eyed Susan but a yellow Echinacea variety.  There's also Echinacea "White Swan" and "Purpurea" planted in this border.

I mentioned my rose garden, and that's where the lavender really combines well with the scent and colors of the roses. It combines beautifully with my pink "Bonica" roses as you can see here, but it also looks beautiful with the red miniatures roses, too.

I seem to gravitate to pink and lavender combinations - the last perennial combination to share is the lavender on the slope with the lovely Misourri primrose blossoming alongside.


For more photos and ideas for perennial combinations, see my other blog entries -

• Pops of Color
• Perennial Combinations: Salvia

Books on perennial combinations that may be helpful to you:

Window Box Blooms

Skies are gray today and thunderstorms predicted for the afternoon, but the garden awaits. I plan to work in the vegetable garden today. It's really a sorry sight as compared to last year's bountiful harvest. I looked at photos from last year; sad, really.  Watermelon seeds are going in if I have time. I also need to deadhead the roses and plant more tomatoes and snapdragons (see how it always turns back to flower gardening, no matter what I set out to do? It's like my flowers are magnets, drawing me back to them...)

I did want to share photos today of my window boxes. My husband made these for me as a birthday gift from pine boards picked up at the hardware store. We'd looked into fancy contraptions from garden centers and home catalogs, but nothing suited us. So he made these and mounted them onto the wooden porch rails. The flower combination was pure serendipity: we found geraniums on sale for 99cents and the lobelia pack was left over from a bunch of annuals he bought in the spring. I had no idea all the geraniums were two different shades of  pink. How do you like the pink and blue combination? The lobelia has just started spilling over the edges of the window boxes.  I'm a huge fan of geraniums, and I've even put more into the Mexican ceramic pots flanking the front steps.

Who Ate My Sweet Potato Plants?

Okay, 'fess up. Who are my sweet potato plants?

After all the "Am I planting these right?" and questions from the spouse "Are we even going to get $16 worth of potatoes out of the $16 we spent on these root things?" I left the garden bed to be soaked with rain this week. Today was the first sunny, warm day, so I traipsed down to the fenced-in vegetable garden to check my sweet potatoes.

And half were GONE.

Not just "it keeled over and died" gone, with a little sad stem left. I mean - gone. Absent. As if I'd never planted it.

But only in the big bed. The others I'd tucked into the onion bed were all accounted for and perky. Here's a picture of one, pretty as can be, happy and green.

But where did his friends go? Why am I missing half of my seedlings?!

So what is eating these? The garden is fenced. I checked the fence. It's tight. No holes or tunnels dug underneath. The ground is soft enough to show footprints....Shadow's tracks were clear, and I didn't see deer.

Someone send Columbo. Jessica Fletcher. Monk. Yes, I want Adrian Monk here to figure out the case of "Who are my sweet potato plants?"

Now I've got sneak out to Lowe's and find replacements before the spouse realizes that some critter ate $16 bucks worth of seedlings in one night. Boy, I will never hear the end of that.

The Garden Path Construction Update

The paths are shaping up! (and that's my garden helper, Shadow, at left.)  We finished about 75% of the cement work on the rock edging and this weekend, we finally found stones for the paths that we like. Guess what they are? They have the oh-so-sexy name of "Masonry Gravel" and were hidden among bags of cement at Lowe's. Now why Lowe's would put similar bags out in the garden area (where we were originally looking) and this one particular stone among the boring old bags of cement and mortar mix, who knows? All I know is that we stopped by Lowe's before an evening out to dinner to pick up cement, and as John studied bags of cement I found the stones. They are close to what we wanted, so our plan is to buy a bag or two every time we go into town. How I'm supposed to lift a 50 bag of rocks I have no idea. I think the staff at Lowe's is going to run the other way when they hear my cheery voice, "Excuse me - can you help me load this into my car, please?"

We are laying out rolls of landscape fabric, which is the dark-colored mat you see in the pictures. It's tacked down with U-shaped metal stakes which hold it firmly in place. It kills weeds underneath and stops them from germinating.  Next, we layer the pebble-gravel. The slates are different thickness, so we must rake the pebbles into place to ensure the pathway stones are relatively stable. Lastly, we brush off the stones  and make sure the gravel flows to the cemented in place rocks edging the paths.

Already I am excited. That's one nice, long strip I won't have to weed this summer.


Building a Flower Garden in Two Years
Before: a bare, steep slope of dirt, mostly red clay. Soil pH was about 3.5 - 4 to start with. The New York based lab called me when I submitted the soil sample; they wanted to know where it came from (considering they usually dealt with New York soils, that really does make sense - Virginia soil is different.). They had never seen such awful soil.  The lab tech I talked to in 2006-2007 said the soil was completely devoid of organic matter and so acidic he wanted to know what had grown there before. He said, "You've got your work cut out for you."  I'll say....


In March 2008, I used small stones to outline beds for the flower garden. I worked organic soil conditioner from Gardens Alive into the earth, lots of compost, horse manure, cow manure, and more compost into the slope.  I planted perennial kits from Spring Hill Nursery. We began the endless buying trips to Lowe's, adding whatever pleased us.  And I grew most of the perennials from seeds. The rose garden plants were a birthday present in 2008.

In 2009, we shored up the hillside temporarily with thick pieces of wood. Rain washed the original sand bed under the slates right into the butterfly garden and woodland beds, killing lots of plants. Annoyed? You bet.  Time for most compost....

2010: the paths are shaping up. The perennials are thriving. I'm tucking new flowers this way and that way in among what's there now, and we have so many volunteers I'm digging them up and moving them about.  The wildlife loves the garden. While we worked this weekend, a huge frog hopped out of the butterfly garden (hope he wasn't planning to EAT them) and I've seen large painted turtles and lizards of various kinds.  Birds this weekend spotted in the garden include mourning doves, sparrows, goldfinches, and an Indigo bunting.

This is what two people (well, mostly me, with hubby on the heavy work and cement work) accomplished in just two years. If you're dreaming about creating a garden, YOU CAN DO IT.  I was a city kid. Yes, I was fortunate to grow up in a family who gardened as a hobby and with my next door neighbor Mr Hoffman who loved to garden and didn't mind me tagging along. But I'm self taught.  If I can do this, anyone can, including you.  Grab your trowel and get your hands dirty! Go play in the dirt today!




Below - what it looked like in 2006-07 after the land was cleared - you are looking west, as if standing on the path pictured in the today photos.

TODAY -  The garden this weekend. You can see the path with the fabric down in the upper left.  You are looking southwest.

Sweet Potatoes and Corn Planted

I feel like a pioneer today. Didn't they plant corn and sweet potatoes or something like that?  I planted the sweet potato sets (roots? sets? what's the proper name?) today. They're in the big 16 square foot raised bed where I had the sweet corn last year. I rotated the vegetables around so they're not growing in the same bed two years in a row. Sweet potatoes, corn, cantaloupe seeds, more winter squash and beet seeds all went into the vegetable garden. I think I was just in time;  the sweet potatoes started to look unhappy in their vase in the kitchen, a little droopy, the roots starting to smell like rot. I don't know if they were starting to go bad or if some of the packing materials decomposed in the water but the smell was unmistakable.

The vegetable garden struggles along this year. Two sudden frosts really took their toll on the tomatoes, and insect attacks that have almost killed most of my larger tomatoes forced me today to pick off leaves from the tomatoes festooned with clusters of golden insect eggs. The peppers look good, but I lost the eggplant to the frost. The cucumbers and some squash survived.  John helped me make a string and post trellis today for the peas. I need to get more in this week too.  The lettuce and spinach did fine, the only vegetables and fruits that seem happy right now, so I am going to harvest the spinach and make our famous Italian stuffing recipe later this week.  The recipe will be repeated from my Christmas 2009 post over on my new cooking and recipe blog, Recipes from the Garden, which will features lots of recipes to use up all the yummies you grow in the garden and more.

It was too warm today for us to work comfortably outside this afternoon so we wrapped up around lunch time. We measured the flower garden pathways and put down one bag of pebbles; it's not what we want. I really do feel like Goldilocks with the pebbles for the pathway. Nothing is quite right! We know what we want but we just can't find it in the stores - white colored, smooth pebbles around the size of lima beans or marbles. Nothing like that in Lowe's or the local hardware and supply stores. The hunt continues....

I did plant the geraniums John snagged at the discount store. Only 94 cents each and some had really unusual leaves, a sort of bronze center with a light green rim. I planted those in the Mexican ceramic pots for the porch, so that I could see how they developed and hopefully get them to winter over.  The rest went into the island bed in the front lawn and a few in the flower garden.

The hummingbird flowers throughout the garden have begun to open - trumped shaped blossoms, reds and pinks. I haven't seen a hummingbird yet, but it's probably about time to swap the seed feeder for the nectar feeder.

Too hot to work anymore outside, so I'm content to sit and watch a rerun of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe on television and blog.  When will they get Prince Caspian on cable??? Have a wonderful Saturday and happy gardening!

Are We Having Fun Yet?

Sometimes I wonder at my sanity. I work and work, putting in 10 or more hours a day. Then on the weekends I race outside to weed, plant, harvest and then back inside to clean and create some semblance of order out of chaos inside the house.  I wonder why. Are we having fun yet?

This morning was different. I just put aside my work. I made a fruit smoothie (recipe on my new companion blog, Recipes from the Garden - check it out and subscribe, hint hint!).  I poured it into a tall glass and stepped out into the cool of the morning with Shadow and Pierre at my heels.

I strolled the garden paths. I planted the flower garden for pleasure, not to create yet another project. Yet how often do I stroll its paths and stop to smell the roses - literally? Blaze is my favorite rose. I stopped. I admired its rich crimson petals. I inhaled the heady perfume. I noted how the pink Missouri primrose have taken over the slope, and spotted a few places where some of my new snapdragon seedlings can tuck in among the primrose to create some height and variety.  I've got lots of spaces left for my new Echinacea Cherry Sunrise and the platycodon "Komanchi" seedlings still in the house.

Although it was hard to do I refrained from weeding. I just admired and strolled, sipped my breakfast, and took a deep breath.

I am happy again.

Yes, I'm having fun again in the garden. And you?

You Know You're a Gardener When

So the other day I left a friend in my kitchen while I ran upstairs to grab my purse before we headed out. When I came back downstairs, she was poking at greens spilling out of a vase on the kitchen island. "What's this?" she asked.

"Sweet potatoes," I replied, thinking nothing of it.

The next day, I overheard her tell someone, "Jeanne puts hers in a vase of water before planting them. You should try that too."

I had a good chuckle over that. Truth be told, I stuck the sweet potato sets or roots into a vase because they came on a weekday.  The box said "open immediately" and said I should keep the roots "moist" and plant immediately. Fat chance. Between a crazy-busy work week and a weird cold front that resulted in a late season frost, there was no way I was going to risk planting them now. So I grabbed a vase out of the closet and stuck the sweet potatoes into the vase like a bouquet of flowers.  Hopefully I will get out today and plant them in the garden.

You know you're a gardener when instead of FTD delivering a bouquet of flowers, Parks delivers a bouquet of sweet potatoes...which merits your best vase.

Happy Gardening!

My Blaze Climbing Rose

My Blaze climbing rose has finally begun blooming! Last year, I had one sickly looking blossom. My makeshift pine tree branch support tee pee has done its job beautifully. In March I hammered branches into the ground and then used twine to gently train the Blaze to grow against the support. The result is an interesting pyramid form in the garden and nodding scarlet blossoms. The scent is just lovely, a soft rose perfume that was a delight as we worked today in the flower garden, finishing the cement work on the walkways.  The walls around the butterfly garden, the rose garden, and the main pathway are finished, as is the rock wall that will now keep the hillside in place. One short wall and one long wall to finish and my long-awaited pathways can be finished. I tell you, laying down weed barrier fabric beats laying down a red carpet anyday!

When I was little, my mom had two Blaze roses climbing a trellis next to the garage. I loved those roses but they were sacrificed when my dad used the garage wall as the fourth wall of his greenhouse.  I have heard the rose hails from the 1930's, but a quick look online didn't turn up anything more than sales pages.

If you look very carefully, you can see more red peeking up from the miniature rose bush at Blaze's feet.  I bought these Valentine's Day leftovers at Lowe's.  They weren't in flower and were missing tags, but for $2 who's going to argue?  They started blooming this weekend - all red.  Now I will have a shower of red roses in that corner of the garden!

For All the Motherless Daughters

Sunday, May 9th is Mother's Day - and it is also the 20th anniversary of my mother's death.  I just wanted to acknowledge all the other motherless daughters out there.  You are like me. You did not have the benefit of a mother's wisdom during your formative years. For me, my mother become ill when I was in the first grade, and her illness consumed my childhood. I raised myself. I dealt with things children should not have to deal with. I cared for my parents when they should have been caring for me. Today's post is not a recitation of past issues, but a heartfelt, long distance hug to all the motherless daughters out there.


When I met my friend Eleanor, she gave me the book "Motherless Daughters." Her mother had died from breast cancer when she was in high school and we shared the common bond of the motherless daughter. Feeling lost and rudderless as we fumbled our way into adulthood, marriage, and for her, children. It is a peculiar place to be in and Mother's Day always feels slightly off kilter to me. Probably because of the double whammy, having it be all about mothers and having my own mother die a few days before that day (back in 1990 the 9th fell on a weekday I believe...at least that is what I remember).

Today there will be lots of talk about motherhood, gifts given, and breakfast in bed made by tiny hands. And that's beautiful and wonderful and deserved for all those special women out there who have children.  May God bless you on Mother's Day.

But for me and millions of other people who did not have the active participation of mothers while growing up...for those of us who lost our moms when we ourselves were children....I am praying for to today.  Let us pray for one another on Mother's Day.

So today's post is dedicated to all the motherless daughters....

Perennial Combinations: Pops of Color

I've been experimenting with perennial combinations in the flower garden and today, this one struck me as particularly beautiful. The peony is a white "Festiva Maxima" and the dianthus is red. I don't know which one it is because the tag is so sunbleached I can't read the variety anymore. I love how the large white peony blossoms seem to pop against the hit of red, and the silvery green foliage of the dianthus is particularly lovely.  I also stepped back and took a picture of the blue salvia with the white peony, another combination I like.

Surprise Blooms in the Flower Garden

This morning a surprise guest popped up in the perennial flower garden....my foxglove bloomed! Can you see it in the background peeking up from behind the gorgeous Salvia? Neighbors claim they have trouble growing foxglove in our area but mine has seeded a patch in the flower garden quite nicely and returns with vigorous blooms. I wasn't expecting to see it until June, however. I guess the sudden heat wave this week fooled it into thinking it was later in the season than it really is. The photo today was taken this morning.  I hope to take more tomorrow...I'm seeing buds hinting at color throughout the flower garden and I'm guessing I'll see more surprises this week.

My sweet potatoes came from Parks, so I've got to plant them today. I got all the tomatoes in - two Early Girls, about four Better Boys, and something like six Sweet 1000's.  Peppers are mostly in although I have some seedlings left.  I am growing many more peppers this year since last year's pickled peppers were so good, I find myself craving them!  The strawberry patch has set fruit, so now it's just a matter of time before I can begin to pick berries.  The spinach that wintered over is ready to harvest and with diligent watering, my cucumber, squash, and zucchini seedlings have emerged and are almost as large as the lettuce I planted in the spring. The peas were a disappointment; they're about four inches tall, but struggling, probably from the heat. I think I need to get them into the ground earlier next year.

Happy spring! I love May....crazy busy between work, home and garden, but gorgeous nonetheless.

How does your garden grow today?

What's Blooming Today

As temperatures soared unexpectedly into the 90's today (very hot for this time of year), many of my perennials finally burst into bloom. Enjoy this little tour around the garden! I drove into town this morning for the Heart of Virginia Festival but only stopped at the plant sale at the train station. I picked up two tomato plants and two mums and looked for some of my local blog readers who said they would be there, but as luck would have it, they weren't at the plant sale tables. Sorry I missed you!

It's too hot to garden today but you can enjoy a little virtual tour of the flowers....

Happy Weekend!