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I was very conscientious about only buying plants that were supposedly unattractive to deer. Things like daisies, cone flower, daffodils. But when I got bulbs last fall I bought a Lily bulb too because I really liked the picture on the package. I thought maybe the deer wouldn't notice it in between all the other "deer resistant" greenery and flowers. I planned to spray the lily with Plantskydd just before it bloomed on the hypothesis that while they might miss seeing the leaves they would probably spot the huge orange blossoms.

Here's the lily as it appeared in mid-June, the stem over two feet tall and crowned with seven or eight flower buds. I loved the look of it then and anticipated taking fabulous photos of huge orange flowers.

I dragged my feet on the stinky Plantskydd spraying just a little too long and the deer got there first. A third of the leaves are chomped off and there is only one bud left. Oh well, maybe next year..

I took an online photography course this spring and one of the lessons was on using a telephoto lens and photographing the sun and moon. I don't have a real telephoto lens so I practiced with my camera's 3x optical zoom lens. In the area where I live now it's hard to find a place to capture a good sunset shot and I'm not much of a morning person so getting organized for photography at dawn is pretty much out of the question. So no sun photos for the course homework. I also tried photographing the moon but none of the pictures turned out.

I had to try again.

In May I visited my hometown on the shores of Lake Huron, a great location for sunset photography. I did have a two good sunset evenings and also tried again for pictures of the moon.

Then, after my return to Vancouver Island, I photographed a sun halo that occurred on May 25th. Cool, eh?

 

 

As of Monday the wall is finally finished. I have 37 blocks left over which I can return to the landscaping supplies place, ugh, that means more loading blocks into and unloading blocks out of the truck.

Next steps include a visit to my chiropractor (just my regular appt but I think I better tell him about the wall building since I am feeling a few after effects,) and filling in the garden with a layer of sand and then garden soil. I won't have time to buy and plant the plants until after I get back from my May holiday but that's ok, it gives me more time to think about what to plant.

I started a new landscaping project, a follow-up to last fall's Big Rock Garden. I'm creating a walled border under the windows in the front of our house and another low profile border along the entryway to our front door. For now, I'm calling this The Welcome Garden and I plan to populate it with low maintenance shrubbery, a few flowering bushes and lots of heather.

Just like I did with the Big Rock Garden, I dithered for weeks over dimensions, shape, walls vs no walls, height of walls, potential architectural features, lots of flowers vs lots of green shrubs, how to keep the dogs out, hungry deer, bark mulch vs bare earth, size of plants, how much it's all going to cost, and so on and so forth until one day I just started digging the weeds out. The weeds have had more than 18 months to get established in the rock-hard stone-infested fill that comprises most of the landscape around our house and it took me a few days of digging interspersed with resting to clear out the area for the new garden.

Then we got a load of sand, a load of garden soil and concrete blocks for the walls. We decided not to pay for delivery of the blocks and it took us three round trips with the truck to self-deliver the blocks. That's 170 blocks, 14 lbs each, loaded and then unloaded, plus, after we neatly stacked them all beside the driveway, The Big Guy changed his mind about where he wanted them and moved all 170 blocks one more time.

In the meantime I spent a couple of hours trying to get a line strung perfectly level more or less along the path that the wall would follow. The wall has to be built level or else it doesn't look good.

More digging was required to create a shallow trench for the lowest row of blocks. Now I'm working on the wall. The first row takes a long time to get right. The next two (it will be a three-level wall) will go quick since all you do is stack the blocks neatly on the first row. But every single block in the first row has to be correctly positioned and pounded as level as you can make it. Or else the whole wall is screwed. This means more digging, moving sand around, shifting blocks, pounding with a mallet...

I've been working on the first row for hours and hours already and as of yesterday I only got 22 blocks down, 33 more blocks to go before I can start the second row. Plus I had to take down half my perfectly level guide line since one of the stakes was where a block for the wall had to go. Then Carter unhelpfully destroyed the rest of the perfectly level guide line so I gave up on that and reverted to working with a carpenter's level.

I keep myself motivated by imagining how the plants will look -- mounds of Heather in several shades...a Pieris in the far corner covered with white blossums in the spring...Rhododendrons in the partial shade nearer the front door, or maybe Azaleas...deep green Boxwood...

It's Earth Day. Show us something you love about our planet.

Last fall my landscaping project was the Big Rock Garden. This is what it looked like in November. The new plants looked so small and sparse that it seemed there would be nothing left after the winter. I added some bulbs to guarantee that something would be there to grow come springtime. So far this spring everything seems to have survived except that I can't find any sign of the Goldenrod, the tall grass thing to the right of the rock has no green shoots yet and the Lavender (planted despite discouraging comments by the garden centre girls) looks dead. Maybe it didn't like being buried under a snowbank for more than two months.

The bulbs I planted are Narcissi, Snowdrops, Siberica and a Lily. Snowdrops bloomed before the snow was gone and their flowers have all gone now. The Narcissi and Siberica are flowering now. The Lily has poked a fat shoot out of the earth and I expect it will flower this summer, if the deer don't eat it first.

 

 

I'm taking another photography course. This one is all about photographing nature - plants, animals, landscapes, etc. Here are two of the photos I finished for the Small Animals assignment.

They were taken in direct sunlight which results in exposure issues so I'm actually not that happy with either photo. If I get better birds and bees shots I'll post them too so you can see the difference.

 

March 1 - Got a puppy. Then, for two weeks, was much too busy to take any pictures except when he was sleeping.

March 15 - It snowed again. Dogs went outside. I stayed inside and experimented with pictures of fire.

March 19 - Went to the beach.

March 21 - Had guests from Winnipeg and visited the Malahat Lookout.

March 24 - Did my Photographing Nature course homework.

March 25 - Took pictures of the setting sun. None of them turned out to be any good.

March 26 - Found the quarry.

March 27 - Watered 15 newly planted trees.

March 29 - Went back to the quarry, this time with neighbours from up our street.

March 30 - Saw Carter, small in our backyard forest.

It's late March. The local nurseries have all reopened after their winter break and our favourite grocery store's front entrance is crowded with flowering bulbs, pansies, primula and a wide range of other plants deemed not too delicate for March's variable weather. I've been looking at the stony weedy dirt exposed around our house when the last of the snow melted in February for far too long and have to get started on something. Establishing a lawn seemed too big a job to begin the year with. But how about a few trees?

So, last week we went to nursery to get cedars to fill in the gaps between the bushes and trees on the west side of our property. I wanted to enhance our privacy and cleanup some of the haphazard messiness left over from the bush clearing and addition of fill at the edge of our property line.

I was thinking yellow or red cedar since cedar grows fairly quickly, is easy to prune if necessary and that's what grows wild all around here along with Alder, Hemlock, Douglas fir and Bigleaf Maple. And, hey, it's ecologically sound practice to plant your naturally occurring local flora, right?

At the nursery, I ask for yellow or red cedar and describe what we we want to do with them (not a formal hedge, fill in some gaps, etc., etc.) She shows me these. I hesitate, it looks like cedar but the label says Leyland Cypress. I ask about yellow and red cedar again. She says "Hard to find around here." I'm incredulous, after all just by looking up at the wild forest on the hills all around us I can probably see about one or two bazillion yellow and red cedars...maybe I should just go out into the wild and dig up a few of them.

But what do I know, this is the plant expert at the nursery who's showing me these trees. At $10.99 the price is a lot better than I expected to pay for trees this size and who am I to question the experienced and knowledgeable people at the nursery (although after several minutes of long silences and monosyllabic replies I start to wonder if she's got a hangover or something.)

After another silence and a sigh she finally works up some salesmanship.

"8.99 each if you buy more than 10."

The Big Guy is impatient. "Do you want them or not."

I feel pressured.

"They grow fast."

I don't like to shop under pressure since I tend to make decisions that seem imperfect when reviewed later.

"Deer don't like them."

That clinches the deal. I buy 15.

Two rainy days and one sunny day later, after many uncounted hours of hole-digging, dirt hauling, tree planting, soil shovelling and water carrying mostly done while scrambling up and down a 30 degree slope booby-trapped with thorny bushes, rocks large and small, trip-wire plant runners, muddy holes full of roots, half-decayed buried logs (red cedar), dead branches, and live branches I finally sit down at my PC and google Leyland cypress.

Now I am having second thoughts. How strong is a tree that grows a meter every year? How high is 20 meters anyway? 25 meters? Will the apparently shallow root systems be extensive enough to solidly hold 20-meter-plus trees loaded with snow on a windy day on a 30 degree slope? Will the neighbours like them when they're 20 meters tall and 5 meters wide? Will we?

It's too late, they're planted. I don't mention my misgivings to The Big Guy. We'll just have to live with them and try to keep up with the pruning.

Carter was nine weeks old yesterday. In the last two weeks since we got him our conversational scope has been reduced to remarks about eating, sleeping, playing and pee'ing and poo'ing. A few variations on these topics are included here just in case you were thinking about getting a puppy too.

• Shhh, he's sleeping.
• Has he pee'd yet?
• I don't think he should chew that.
• Carter come...Carter come...come...come...Come...Carter Come!...COME HERE!
• What a sweetie!
• I think he pee'd somewhere but I haven't found it yet, watch your step.
• Do you think he's getting enough food?
• NO!!
• Ohhh, isn't he such a good boy.
• Do you think he's getting too much food?
• This was in his mouth. Is it yours?
• I didn't think he could reach that.
• We need new toys.
• Carter! Get OUT from UNDER THERE!
• I can't find my other shoe.
• He's pee'd and poo'ed and now he's yours.
  

  Guilty or Not Guilty