Absolution

Forgive me, but I gave into temptation today.

No, not chocolate. (Although I did eat a few Almond Joys left over from Halloween.)

No, not wine. (I did open a bottle of Malbec tonight to go with my Mushroom Barley Soup.)

I don’t feel guilty about either one of those. What I feel guilty about is my latest purchase:

ANOTHER ORCHID! But this one was all alone and I was saving it from going to the dumpster! It was only $10 and I don’t have one this color. And it’s deformed; no one else was going to take it!

See? One of the spikes is growing out of the dirt. Somehow, it got pushed under and is coming up on the other side. Ok, so I know the first photo is a little out of focus and so I tried for another shot:

BAD KITTY! Let’s try for another one…

BAD KITTY! The orchid is not a snack.

Much better!

My new addition makes 14 or so orchids. I’m about at the point where I need another grow light. I think I keep adding to the collection to force myself to buy another one. Then, I’ll need a few more to crowd up under the light to keep the humidity up… Sounds like a good justification to me!

Garden transitions

I have a feeling that today was the last nice day to work outside until about April. And unfortunately, I had procrastinated my way into a HUGE backload of work. I had to write two exams, finish the joy that is assessment of the student research program and write lecture notes for my class on Wednesday. That last one sounds like I’m trying to get ahead doesn’t it? Ha! Next week is advising week, which means that I meet with each of my advisees for at least 30 minutes. I have 22 advisees. None of this includes all of the stuff at home that needs to get done. My poor orchids are starting to droop. The carpet is starting to move, even though all of the cats are sleeping.

The garden is in a sorry, sorry state. I did take a few minutes to rake up some leaves which were killing the grass. I also cleaned out my water feature. My sad water feature. I loved having it during the summer, but come to find out guppies don’t like it when it gets cold. They die. In droves. I’m also wondering if a raccoon decided to use it as a buffet.

Here are a few pictures that bid farewell to summer.

The tomatoes didn’t fare too well this summer. Between the deer and the slugs, I think I got one whole large red one. The yellows pears did better. They made a really yummy bruschetta.

I harvested a few more even after the first frost this year. The frost caught me by surprise this year. I lost my African violets and didn’t get in any of my basil this year. Thankfully I moved my orchids in about two weeks earlier.

My geranium didn’t do too well this year at all. It never filled out. I wonder if that is because the birds were using it as a place to eat the sunflower seeds. Too bad the deer like sunflowers as much as I do.

There is one last splash of color in the garden – the gaura. This is my second time planting them in my perennial garden. If they don’t make it, I’ll probably keep planting them. They are so beautiful and vibrant in the bed. I love how the flowers dance at the end of the stalk in the slightest of breezes. Plus, the deer leave them alone. What more can I say?

Bumblebees

I’m pretty lucky. I’ve never been stung by a bee or a wasp. I think they know it’s because if they are good, they’ll get their photo taken:

I’m ready for my close up.

I’m a little shy.

Pollen never tasted so good!

I love the last one. He is such a messy eater! If you look close you can see the pollen all over his body. The yellow spots on his legs are pollen sacks full almost to bursting. The bees are in a frenzy all over the garden, trying to gather up the last bit of goodness before the winter sets in. I even used my flash for the last one. I was a little nervous about that, thinking that he would come at me in surprise, but we’re not that different it turns out. When I’m hungry, you could shoot me and I probably wouldn’t turn away from my food either!

To get these shots, I was laying on the ground, rolling around to get the best shot. At one point I looked up and had an audience:

What the heck are you doing?

This is Lexie, our neighbors dog. She is so good and usually stays in her own yard, unless I am outside. She loves to come say hi!

Lazy Weekend

I did nothing this weekend. Well, let me take that back. I did stuff this weekend, just nothing that had to do with work. I spent two blissful days being lazy and doing things that I wanted to do. And what I did on Sunday was play with my camera. My friend Amy gave me some good pointers on close-up photography and I spent the morning playing with my f-stop.

These are the fall colors in my gardens.

Careful, these guys breathe fire.

Even spiders appreciate beauty.

Pride.

After and before.

Butterfly masquerade!

Marsh or just plain mallow?

Beauty is in the eye of the marigold.

Autumn joy.

Bartender, bring me another.

I also spent the day playing with my christmas present that I finally opened. Husband got me a Canon Selphy CP770 printer when he got me my camera. I hadn’t opened it because who really needs to print out photos? I have them all on my computer. Well, Husband finally guilted me into setting it up today and boy was I wrong.

I really like this little printer. The print cartridges and paper are sold together. Each cartridge can print 36 photos. The paper comes in packs of 36. When you are out of paper, you are out of ink. It make more sense than that whole 8 buns but 10 dogs thing! The prints are rich and actually look like photos, not like cheap printouts.

Only two disadvantages – 4×6 is the largest size and the prints are a little dark. The first one I can’t do anything about, the second I can. I’ve wasted a lot of prints playing with the exposure in iPhoto and comparing the printout to the original. I almost have it down.

Tomorrow or Tuesday: Bees.

I have babies!!

I guess that post title needs some explanation. But I think we have to go WAY back to the beginning…

[Cue the music...]

I’ve had the fascination with fountains, or “water features” if you want to get all modern. It started back in Italy. I must have spent 2 or 3 hours looking websites trying to find something that was within my price range. I didn’t want to spend too much or make something too big, just in case I got bored with it.

I finally found a ginormous planter this summer that must hold about 50 gallons. I immediately went and spent way too much money at Van Atta’s (my favorite nursery) on water plants. This is what it looked like after I got all of the water in and the solar fountain working.

That was almost exactly one month ago. This is what it looks like now:

The pickerel weed (the stuff in the back) hasn’t changed that much but everything else has just exploded. I have lily pads and it is even blooming now! It was really easy to put together. All you need is a big container, a water conditioner (if you want to add fish), an aerator (I got mine from Ebay for $40, including shipping) and plants. I used bricks to make different heights in the container. I was careful when I was choosing my plants to make sure that I had things that would work at the right heights. While I really loved the irises, They need a pretty shallow depth and dirt. I didn’t want to muck up my fountain too much.

One water feature wasn’t enough for me though. I bought this amazing plant (which I later found out was a papyrus plant – I’m making paper next) but it didn’t work in the water feature. So I made a bog:

Pretty cool huh!! I love the curly grass:

It’s a perennial, so I might even get it next year! I need some moss to go on top of it but I love it already. It draws wildlife to the backyard like nothing else. There was a garter snake the second day that I had it in. The water feature has birds that come and take baths too. No frogs yet, and we’re going to try to keep it that way.

We did have a little bit of trauma with the water feature in the beginning. Too much light = lots of alga. Alga is yucky. Goldfish, while they eat mosquitos, don’t eat alga. So I added an enzymatic cleaner to help keep the alga down, but promptly killed the goldfish. I later read the instructions and realized that you add 1 ounce per 250 gallons of water. I think I added about 4 oz. I only paid $0.57 for all three goldfish, but it was still traumatic for me. I tried to go without fish, but that didn’t last long. The mosquitos are really bad here. I looked in one day the sides were covered with little wigglers.

I had to face reality. I would need some sort of biological control to make sure that the cats weren’t drained dry the next time I let them out. I decided to go with guppies. That’s what the bag is in the second picture. I didn’t do much research before buying them. All I knew is that come winter, I wouldn’t mind keeping guppies in an aquarium. It was only after adding them to the pond, I wondered “Will they actually eat the mosquito larvae?”

Two of the five guppies. The blue one is definitely a male.

The internets is a wonderful thing.

Yes, the guppies do eat mosquito larvae. In fact, some asian countries have them wild in the ditches in the wild. So I added guppies.

I understand the facts of nature. Really. But I also thought that only the male guppies had big fancy tails.

Apparently not.

I HAVE BABY GUPPIES!! There are seven of them this afternoon. The babies need plants to hide in so the big ones don’t eat them. I have plants! I know that birds use the water for drinking, so there is a chance the birds could get them too.

Now I’m worried about making sure everyone is getting enough to eat. And inbreeding.

Anybody want some guppies?