Shoots and Roots

Another week, another walk through the garden.  The japanese irises are still blooming nicely.  They make lovely, though short-lived, bouquets.

A row of small neat bushes, formerly anonymous-looking, started putting out spiky pink flowers.

Up close, they're so beautiful.

I was delighted to see a small patch of lungwort.

These spread nicely and love shady areas.  Only two plant are blooming and I'm going to leave them alone this year.  Next year, I'll dig some up and move them to the front yard.  They have small, jewel-like flowers that I really enjoy.

 

I've loved seeing hostas pop up in unexpected places...

Pretty vines with variegated leaves...

Even lilies!

I normally don't pay much attention to the back yard beyond the driveway.  It's mainly overgrown with ivy and just reminds me of all the work we need to do there.  But I did notice this beautiful bush had bloomed.  At first I thought it was spirea...

...but the flowers aren't quite right.

I'm absolutely delighted with it!

I'm also excited at the way the "Golden Carpet" sedum is cascading over some of the stone walls.

I picked some to try to start roots, so I can plant it in other parts of the yard.

I've had good luck with this method.  Several weeks ago, I put some "Autumn Joy" sedum leaves in soil and kept it moist.

One leaf died, but four survived.  I saw a tiny green sprout at the base of one of the leaves and knew they were ready for a transplant.

The others didn't have sprouts, but resisted when I gave them a gentle tug.  Sure enough, they'd formed roots.

I repotted these and several other sedum that had rooted.

These sedums cost around $7, so I was pleased to be able to multiply my 'stock' for free!

Creeping Jenny, too, is easy to propagate in water, and is one of my favorite green plants.  It should root in a glass of water within a week!

The little Carolina wren eggs on our front porch have hatched.

Mama seems to only visit the nest at night, but I guess she knows what she's doing!

I've been seeing some interesting insects, like this mystery creature who watched me through the glass while I worked this week...

I've seen some beautiful spiders, like this one (type unknown) who made a tidy nest between some bushes:

And this funnel web spider, who made a clever ground web that hinges on a stiff, dry magnolia leaf:

I'm keeping an eye out for more!

I've made some cards recently, and although the pictures were taken quickly and in poor light, hopefully you can get the general idea.

A birthday card for a cousin, stamped, using sewing thread to 'anchor' the paper-cut balloons:

Another birthday card with a center cut-out:

The candles are double-sided and suspended on white sewing thread so that they can rotate.

I've done little baking, but I can pass along this modified "healthier cheesecake" recipe that I toyed with recently.  It's not exactly cheesecake, but it's close enough to pass the test with me when I want something sweet and relatively guilt-free.

No-Bake Pumpkin Cheesecake

Modified from Ezra Pound Cake

Crust: 

1 cup graham cracker crumbs (9 full crackers)

4 tablespoons butter, melted

1 tablespoon sugar

1/4 teaspoon cinnamon

Filling:

1 cup pumpkin puree

4 tablespoons butter, softened

2 eight ounce packages of Neufchatel cheese, softened

1 teaspoon vanilla

1/4 teaspoon nutmeg

1/4 teaspoon cardamon

1/4 teaspoon cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon salt

3/4 cup powdered sugar

Directions:

Preheat your oven to 400 degrees.  Mix your crust ingredients and press into a 9-inch pie pan.  Bake for about 7 minutes, and let cool completely.

To make the filling, combine pumpkin, butter, neufchatel cheese, vanilla, spices, and salt and beat until smooth.  Stir in sugar 1/4 cup at a time and combine well.  Spoon into graham cracker crust and chill thoroughly.  

You can adjust the sugar if it doesn't taste quite sweet enough.  It's a unique flavor but by my second piece, I was hooked!

Hope you give it a try.  Have a great week!

Creature Comforts

I love the life I'm seeing outside every day.  Not too many butterflies yet, as we're in between flowering plants, but I've seen evidence of them.  This wing is from a Tiger Swallowtail:

I've seen our resident heron in the pond:

...and in the driveway just below my office window!

I'm happy to report that the anole lizards are out!  I saw a few over the winter when I walked over the leaves in the backyard, where they had their little nests, but I'm glad to see many out sunning themselves on a pretty regular basis.

They're only about 6 inches long and Tabitha was able to catch one fairly easily when she escaped through the patio doors this week.  She brought him back into the house to toy with before the kill, but I think I rescued him in time. 

More and more turtles:

And, of course, we have our beaver.  I see him nearly every day, bringing twigs and branches to the nest he's so thoughtfully building on our bank.

Todd bought some chicken wire to wrap around our trees for protection!

I've been seeing these strange creatures all over for a couple of weeks. 

They're about an inch long, with a strange, spiky back.  I found out that despite their size, they're ladybug larvae!  After this stage, they pupate and become the ladybugs that I'm so familiar with.  Speaking of ladybugs, do you know where they got their name?  In Europe they were called Our Lady's Beetle, referring to the Virgin Mary, who was frequently depicted in a red cape.  That became Lady's Beetle, and we here in the states changed it to "ladybug", even though it's a true beetle.

Speaking of beetles, this may be the most amazing one I've ever seen.  It's over an inch long and absolutely shimmers in the sun.

It's a Caterpillar Hunter Beetle, and was brought over from Europe at the turn of the last century to deal with our gypsy moth infestation.  They are wonderful to have in your garden since they eat all sorts of pests and grubs.

I left a bundle of roots in the back yard...

It is absolutely swarming with bumblebees!

They're chewing on the roots.

Bumblebees can nest in the ground or in grass clumps, so I wonder if they're excavating a new home?

I've been keeping an eye out for spiders.  I was rewarded this week with not one, but two of my favorite spiders - the daring jumping spider.  I know that I've gone on ad nauseum about them, but I'm so fascinated by the different types.  One is even called the audacious daring jumping spider - so charming!  I like the idea of an audacious spider.

This particular daring jumping spider has a lovely downy coat of a soft grey color:

...while this one has a hard abdomen streaked with yellow.

As different as they are, they both have the typical eye pattern - the line of eyes wrapping around the front and both sides of the head.  Here a female - easily identified because the chelicerae, or fangs, are not the telltale iridescent green color - holds up her front legs to warn me that she's a very dangerous spider and not to be trifled with!

Speaking of spiders...I've been keeping an eye out for a fairly common spider here, the black widow.  We have a white plastic deck railing on the back of the house, plus a small landing and stairwell off the sunroom, and it was absolutely gritty and grey with dirt after the winter.  It showed up slug trails nicely, but was disgusting to touch.  It had spiderwebs everywhere and big clumps of dead leaves.

It took hours of scrubbing to get it clean.  As I was cleaning, I was nervously making a mental note of everything I knew about the black widow spider:  "Makes messy webs.  Shiny black with hourglass shape on back?  Under abdomen?  Hides in leaves.  Bite can kill."  I couldn't believe it when I looked up and saw a black widow spider casually clinging to the side of the house.  I looked closer.  It was bigger than I expected, with no hourglass shape, but it was shiny black and had some kind of markings.  I normally leave our spiders and insects alone, but I killed this one with my broom.  I found out later that the size indicated that it was probably a female, the most venomous sex.  Apparently they aren't aggressive, though, but I still don't want to be too close to them!

I am keeping an eye out for more creatures every day!

I was pleased to see a bed of Japanese irises rise from the side of the house like magic this week!  The bed looked like this earlier this spring:

I wasn't sure if they were daylilies or irises...or something else...but I'm so glad they're in bloom!

They're such a nice, vibrant color.

I haven't baked - at all.  I've been so busy with my regular routine, plus work, plus the upkeep of the house and the yard, that Todd has been eating an awful lot of loose meat sandwiches and tortilla chips.  I hope to get back to baking soon, once I've gotten things around here in "maintenance mode".  However, I have been knitting and making cards in little snatches during the week.   One card that I made recently for Mother's Day was especially fun. 

I took a big lilac stamp and a hydrangea paper punch:

I stamped the image and then cut out flowers from various sheets of purple construction paper.

I filled in the purple border with the flowers:

...then made a little banner for the top.

This idea, sadly, was mainly cribbed from Pinterest.  But when things calm down, I plan on creating some things from scratch!

Now it's time for me to get a little yard work done before the house cleaning, supper prep, and eBay work.  I don't mind the work, though, especially when this is my canopy:

Have a great week!

Made in the Shade

For a long time - years - I didn't want any green in my flower gardens.  Oh, sure, I'd put up with the little fringe of leaves that was an obligatory partner to each bloom, but I was focused on the color.  Sometimes I'd remark on a leaf - the fantastic lily pads of the nasturtium, the smooth clovers of the columbine, the ferny stalks of achillea - but they were secondary to the flower. 

Then I moved to a house that was in almost complete shade.  For the first time, I had to consider the leaves.  Could a garden of mere leaves be beautiful?  Well, I can now say with increasing confidence - yes.

We have morning sun that hits the front of the house, and I'm really pleased with the variety of plantings there.  While some azaleas are hanging on, the interest here is mostly on the leaves:  the peony-like leaves of the helleborus, the tropical japonica, and the ferns.

On the other side of the porch, we have more of the same, and I love the wild riot of different shapes and varieties. 

However, just beyond this pleasant jumble, we have tidy orderly lines of ornamental grasses.

One after the other, like little soldiers.  I'm eating supper, look outside, and see...little marching rows.  Tidy.  Boring.

This is a huge bed, and it's almost completely in shade.  I wasn't sure what to do, but I've been really inspired by the South Carolina Botanical Gardens, where my Master Gardener class meets. 

Beautiful ferns.

Native woodland plants.

Paths lined with hostas and other shade plants.

Areas under trees, in full shade, with a variety of shapes...

Sizes...

...and shades of green.

Sun-dappled beds, just like mine, but full of columbines...

Solomon's Seal...

And other beauties.

I've already spent quite a bit of money on plants this spring, so I may have to piece together this look over time.  But I'm really inspired and can't wait to rip up those tidy rows!

I also have a little work to do in our fenced-in side garden...also in shade.  It was bare dirt all winter, and I didn't know if anything was planted there.  But one spring day, I saw this:

Soon, hostas were slowly coming up all over:

I think they're all up now...

But I want some variety in there...and I want some winter interest.   This will keep me busy for a while!

We've had a week of cold, rainy temperatures, and I finally finished a knitting project I started months ago.  It's a pair of stranded gloves, but I made several modifications to the original plans.  When I started them in January 2012, I quickly put them aside, because I hated using thick worsted wool on tiny size 1 needles.  I wasn't sure about the cuff, either.

Here is the original pattern:

Here is my finished version:

First, I decided to leave off the cuff design.  Instead of knitting the designs and doing a thick braid between them, I knitted a length of cuff, added the picot edge in a contrasting color, knitted an identical length of cuff, folded it over, and did a 3-needle bind off.  This makes a double-layered and I think a tidier cuff.  I knitted another contrasting line, and then started the pattern.

The palm is alternative straight lines. 

As usual, when I finished knitting, the colors bunched up and looked puckered.

I knitted them very tightly, because I have small hands and many of the stranded gloves of this size, even when knitted on size 1 needles, are much too big.  This puckering is easily "blocked out" by wetting them, squeezing out the excess water, and then tugging them into shape. 

I am very pleased by them!

One final note:  I was deadheading some potted flowers on the front porch when I thought I saw a bird fly out.  The purple annuals in the medium-sized brown pot:

I poked around in the pot but didn't see anything that looked like a nest - just a a jumble of debris that may or may not have been in the pot after sitting on our porch for a few weeks.  I checked it again a few hours later, and this time I definitely saw a bird fly out.  I looked closer and saw a nest, way back in the debris, with 5 little eggs inside.

After doing some research, I learned that it was a Carolina Wren nest.  I was in a bit of a panic...not only did I clumsily poke around the nest area, leaving my scent everywhere, but before I'd seen the bird I'd moved the flowers onto the middle step, and then we had drenching rain for a week.  Would the mother still stay with her eggs?  I hated to bother her, but I had to check.  Today I peeked into the plant and hooray!  She was sitting on her eggs.  I can't wait to hear the little hatchlings!

Have a great week!