Wednesday, July 8, 2009

My Spiderwort is in full bloom. It is such a lovely shade of blue, so I took a chance and planted it several years ago even though it can become invasive. If you take care and put it into a location where it can't creep into a bed with your finer plants it is a very nice addition to the garden. Here in the woods we have a lot of hay scented fern growing (an invasive plant too), so I have planted the Spiderwort right next to the ferns and they are fighting it out and looking very nice together. They seem to like the same conditions and are living in happy harmony.

The 4th has come and gone, and still it is chilly and rainy. An occasional day of warmth and sunlight is a rare treat, but on the upside, I haven't had to do much watering in the garden. The mosquitoes seem to be loving all of the rain and are out in force. I imagine the death of so many bats in the northeast will lead to an increase in mosquitoes. I hope they will find a way to save the bats as they eat many insects each night and are fun to watch as the swoop and dive. My Astilbe is loving the rain too and will soon be in full bloom. I bought two new varieties this spring... August Light and Flamingo. They are enjoying the damp weather, so it isn't all bad.

Over the weekend our family was here and we took advantage of a break in the weather to go out for a ride in the boat. While we were exploring the lake we saw a bird soaring over the hills and realized, when the sun caught the white head and tail, that we were seeing a bald eagle. We watched it for some time and it finally disappeared behind the hills.

Today I saw a flash of orangish-red in the tree and finally saw that it was a redstart. What a beautiful sight when they flit through the trees! I did a search on these birds and found that often the males have two families, but keep them separated in different territories. They also stagger the mating so that they don't spend much time feeding two sets of young at the same time. It almost sounds like a soap opera. Perhaps birds are not much different than humans.

We are hoping that the forecast of two whole days of sun will actually happen. It will be a joy to get out into the garden again.

1 comment:

Sara said...

Its good to see the garden again!