Arbor

This was last weekends project. I love doing these things but had the amount of time it takes. It pretty much took all weekend to do. Well there were a couple of breaks to let the concret base set up and go shopping for more plants. You have to have some priorties! As you can barely see in the one pic that this is where the uitilies come into the house. These means that Scott stood on the porch with the phone ready to call 911 in case I hit the electic line. This didn't happen as I had insured him it wouldn't. I was careful and just took thin layers of dirt and grass off the top and dug with a trowel for the holes. The rose I planted to vine over the arbor is CI Westerland. Here is a link to a picture of it http://www.heirloomroses.com/cgi/browse.cgi?page=item&cat=11&item=548 I hope it works out for me. I will keep you all posted

Turkey

We had an unexpected guest this last week. What is ironic is last Sunday I was talking with my mother and we had gotten on the subject of wildlife and the different wildlife we have around here. I told her one thing I had not seen around here was any turkeys. I had guessed that the turkeys stayed away from the more populated areas. As luck would have it the very next day coming home from work I see a turkey less than 2 blocks from our house. I thought what are the chances? I was pretty thrilled and couldn't wait to tell my mother we now had a turkey in the neighborhood. It gets better. Wednesday of this week Scott was home since he had to work the 10pm to 6am shift Tuesday night into Wednesday morning. He was able to get these pictures in our backyard. What happened is we had filled this bird feeder up with food for a couple of the cardinal that we have flying around and I guess the squirrel had knocked it off the branch and spilled the seed. So the turkey and the squirrel were having a meal together. Scott said the squirrel wasn't very happy about that. He would be making noise at the turkey and would have his tale going back and forth to scare the turkey away but the turkey acted like the squirrel didn't exist. Go figure. I have no plans to continue feeding the squirrel and or turkey. Once they eat all that no more.

2nd set of garden pic's

As you can see the garden is coming along. Even after the couple days of below freezing and near freezing temperature it is coming back. The roses took the biggest hit(pic with the bird bath). I had Scott trim them off last weekend a few inches from the ground. A lot of the canes that survived the winter froze this spring when we had the below freezing temperature. I guess since they had started to grow the stems were tender and were killed easier by the cold.

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I was hoping the garden and my work in the garden would be further along. I have some VIP people coming on May5th. That would be my mother and a couple of her old lady friends. At least I will be on vacation next week to whip things in shape.

Mom's birthday

Have to add this to my blog. April 17th is my mother's birthday and this year she will be 84. This last weekend we got together at the home of one of my nephews to celebrated her birthday. Here are a couple of pictures you might enjoy.

Potatoes

About a month ago one of the local garden experts on the radio here in Kansas City was talking about growing potatoes in a pot. This brought back a lot of memories of planting potatoes growing up. But we didn't grow them in a pot. Anyway one of the local hardware stores that this expert promotes was selling a kit to grow your own potatoes. I checked it out and all that it was a large plastic tub, a bag of potting soil and a seed potato for 19.99. That seemed a little high to me and since I had an old flower pot I had picked up from someones garbage and an old potato that was starting to grow I figured I could get some potting soil and save about 15.00. So here are the pictures of what I have done so far.

I put a about four inches of potting soil in the bottom of the pot. Cut the potato so that I had four pieces with sprouts on them. Laid those on top of the soil and covered with a couple of inches of soil. Now it is a waiting game. But as I under stand it as the sprouts come up I will have to keep adding soil until the soil is a couple inches from the top. This will the plant can grow potatoes all along the stem from the bottom of the pot to the top. The only mistake I have made is waiting too long to plant my potato. The general rule around this part of the country is to plant them on St Patrick's day. Not sure the history on why you plant them then but I would think it has something to do with them growing better when it is cool.

The power of mother nature

I has been a while since my last post. I have been really busy at work and fighting a sore throat that landed me in the emergency room last Saturday. I am better now, but the yard has faced the wrath of mother nature. I guess she wanted to let us know that she still had the upper hand. We had a couple of weeks of really nice weather then a week of below freezing temperatures in the morning and only highs in the 30's and low 40's. After several days it took a toll on the garden. Here are some pictures of the causalities. Not sure what will happen with some of the lillies and the bleeding heart. I am sure the roses and the Japanese maple will leaf out again. It is just one of the trials of being a gardener.