Build Your Nest Here! X

Spring is here!  :D  I'm so excited!  Springtime's new life and birds and colors and blossoms and planning for a garden are some of the only things that can penetrate my darkness even a little these days.  So I'm throwing what energy I have into enjoying it.

I have a whole list of projects for birding and gardening I've been wanting to work on that, to me, say, "Yay Spring!"  This is the first I've gotten to (just hung yesterday), a little happy welcome to the birdies.

For some time now I have been seeing blog posts, pins. and DIY tutorials on offering nesting materials to birds looking to nest-build.  I love this idea, cause I am a huge birding fan and just adore those who nest in and visit my feeders.  I kinda took a little from each source and came up with my own thing.

MY MATERIALS:

*cat fur (been collecting for a while now)

*feathers naturally lost from my budgies

*small fabric scraps (Color is an eye-catcher!)

*little pieces of smooth hemp twine (frayed hemp can endanger toes and feet)

*bits from nature- dried leaves left from fall, small twigs, and dried moss

*empty suet cage

CAUTION: I kept all pieces of string-like material under 6".  I avoided using string/thread except for a tiny piece here and there, and made sure it wasn't tangled.  When all knotted or bound together, thread can catch in birdy feet and cause serious harm.  :/  I played it a little more cautious than the articles I read suggested, just to be safe!

INSTRUCTIONS: 

*Mix all of your goodies together- whee!

*Fit into cage, and close it up well.  

*Look for a place outdoors to hang it, preferably where birds will see it in their everyday travels.  Here is where using some brightly-colored fabric scraps is helpful! 

*Hang in a secure place.

*Watch birdies visit to nab fancy bits for their nests!  Maybe later in the Spring you'll even see a nearby nest with spots of color from your contribution!

Here are links to the articles I mainly used:
"Offer Nesting Materials For Birds" from Empress of Dirt
"Other Ways to Attract Birds" from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology
"The First Day of Spring" from Juniper Moon Farm

I'd love to hear about your experiences with this!  I'll update on mine (hopefully I'll have some).

In the Garden- An Update

September weather is my absolute favorite, although this year there seems to be a lot more rain. The mild temperatures and sun feel wonderful as the Autumnal Equinox approaches! As we move toward autumn, many green things in my yard are slowly ending their life cycle, including a few things in my garden. Many others are still in full, happy growth! :)

Late last week I fertilized the garden again, pulled weeds, and clipped/neatened veggies and herbs. Our porch flowers are thriving, with new blossoms daily and pops of color to brighten our home!


Tomato in the morning sun.


Happy Growth:

~Tomatoes! Both tomato plants are still blossoming, and there are plenty of baby tomatoes on each. They are a bit smaller than in later summer, but still vibrant in flavor, color, and deliciousness! This weekend I spent a while staking and re-staking the new growth!

~Eggplants! Well, it seems the purple eggplants we expected are not purple at all. Our little round, globe eggplants turned yellow and remained the size of eggs! Turns out we have an heirloom called Thai Yellow Eggplants! lol We have been collecting them, but haven't yet tried to eat any. There are loads of new blossoms and baby Yellows on our plant, which keeps on growing full and beautiful.

~Wildflowers! My very late planting of wildflowers is showing it's first buds! Alyssum is flowering and the Zinnias have their first blossoms. Can't wait to see what color they will be!


Zinnia!


Winding Down:

~Beans! Our bean patch is definitely on its last stems, and the leaves are growing worn, thin and brown. There are still some flowers and baby beans, but they stop growing at just an inch or so and become soft.

~Greens! The few more mature lettuces we have left are no longer producing new leaves, or their leaves stay small. We had to pull many that were bolting. We have new lettuces that I planted a couple of weeks ago. These have been thinned, but many remaining bolted this past weekend and had to be pulled. Those that are left are looking a little... wobbly and uncertain. :/ The spinach I planted along with the lettuce a couple of weeks back didn't make it. After two days of splattering rain, our new sprouts were smashed. The two that lived haven't grown at all, and one died this past weekend.


And in Other News:

~Carrots! Hmmm... Though we have gorgeous carrot greens that continue to grow, the few I have uprooted to check progress have had teeny, thin roots. :( Looks like another year without a happy carrot harvest. We will have to investigate what could have caused this, as last year's carrots, though small and short, were actually edible and tasty!

~Herbs! Most are looking great! We have some new dill and cilantro that needs some growth time before starting to harvest. We have pretty much depleted our basil- it's no longer replenishing after cuts.

~Broccoli! We've got about 12-14 broccoli seedlings growing! They've been thinned out a couple of times. Having never grown broccoli and never fall crops, I'm not sure what to expect. They are still looking pretty spindly (photo below).


Baby broccoli. Hoping for a fall harvest...

Zucchini Squashed, Tomato Hope- Garden Updates

Updates on my gardening hopes and dreams: Sometimes they fall hard.

~Zucchini squashed! I recently attempted to hand-pollinate zucchini blossoms after weeks and weeks of flowers with no veggies. My squash plant is now dead. I discovered it collapsed into a sad, droopy heap one morning. :(

~Tomato hope! The heirloom tomato plant that had grown super skinny and tall and was losing branches had a turn for the better! I noticed that the bottom of the plant began growing new branches a few weeks ago. I decided to give the top part of the plant a specified time to see if it would do the same. When it didn't, I sacrificed the few tomatoes growing there and lopped the whole, long, skinny part of the plant off at the base. The new branches are healthy and full and sprouting lots of blossoms (see photo below, tomato plant closest to camera)! We ended up letting the tomatoes ripen that were growing at the top of the plant before I pruned it, and they were delish! Hoping for more to come! :D

Our second tomato plant (toward back of picture below) has loads of fruit, and after our most recent fertilizing they look bigger and plumper than ever. Our first from this plant were also delicious!























~Green stuff! Our green beans and most of our herbs have continued to produce!

~New crops planted! The seedlings of our very first fall crops are growing: broccoli, spinach, lettuce & dill and cilantro. A hard downpour and hail damaged some of our spinach, but we still have some. The herbs have their first "true" leaves, and I thinned the lettuce and broccoli some just yesterday.

I Am Mother Nature- Garden Update

At least I had fun pretending to be when I hand pollinated a flower for the very first time! :)

After investigating the possible reasons behind having loads of zucchini flowers but no zucchini, we realized that the very few bees we have seen this year may mean our blooms have not been getting pollinated. I decided I had to become a pollinator. I studied pictures of male and female zucchini flowers and read about how to transfer pollen via Q-tip and waited through several mornings watching for open flowers. Yesterday morning I peeked out to see a big, fat blossom smiling at the sunshine. I grabbed a Q-tip & ran to the garden in my cat PJs. :)

The open flower was a male, but there were no other blooms open. I carefully peeled open some flowers that were ending their life cycle but hadn't fallen off the plant yet. All males. Then I found one that hadn't opened at all yet! I carefully peeled away the flower petals from the top and peered inside- a female! I gently swabbed the male flower with a Q-tip until it was pollen-coated, and inserted it into the unopened female bud and swirled it around to transfer the pollen. MOTHER NATURE! :D Just out there watering a few minutes ago, and there are some new buds ready to open tomorrow. You can bet I will be out there with swabs in hand in the morning! :)

My pollen-coated cotton swab post-transfer. :)

More Updates:

~Our green beans and most of our herbs have continued to give us yummy, fresh things to eat. Our lettuce suffered in the recent heat wave and hasn't given us much. We cut it way back and are hoping for good stuff soon.

~Tomato plants: One of our heirloom tomato plants is still struggling. An entire branch died, leaving the two tiny tomatoes that were growing on it in peril. We picked them and will harvest the seeds for next year. There are still two tomatoes growing on it, and it looks as though the plant may be able to sustain these to maturity! Our other plant seems to have stabilized- yay! There are lots of baby tomatoes and some blossoms, and we had our very first little heirloom pink tomato in a grilled cheeze! Delish! After more reading about the bolting plants, we are thinking that perhaps we don't have quite enough light for the garden after all.

~Golden raspberry. I found out that plants don't fruit until the second year. Berries next summer! :)

~Our rogue pumpkin plant died! Suddenly and completely! :{

~Planted new seeds! We decided to go for our very first fall harvest, and after some cleanup, pruning, weeding, and transplanting made room for broccoli, spinach, lettuce, and dill & cilantro. YAY!

More later!

This Year's Garden- Good Eats & Challenges

Gardening continues to be one of my true loves, and like love the garden yields joys and challenges in equal opportunity. :)

















My sweet little niece stopped by to labor in the garden for a while with me. :) She's a dirt-y girl after my own heart.


JOYS: Our harvest so far

~Abundant mint and sage bunches, shared happily with neighbors
~LETTUCE- we love fresh salads, and so do our Budgies
~Fresh Herbs (pronounced with the "h" in honor of global friends- heehee):
*fresh dill and basil and mints make our green salads spicy and vibrant
*crushed basil and oregano sprinkled on our pizza after the oven add pizzazz
*chives sprinkled into pasta salads and potato salad make both savory and delish
*peppermint and spearmint make wonderful tea and lemonade
~Green beans- T likes them raw, I prefer them lightly steamed. :)

CHALLENGES: This year's conundrums

~Tomato plants that are shooting skyward instead of bushing out. I guess we didn't prune as we should have early on, given the huge growth spurts that happened with the loads of rain and humidity. Lots of re-staking to keep up. There may also be an issue of not enough sunlight, but our neighbors' tomoatoes last year in the same area did well. Looks like one plant is struggling a little more and may not make it. :(

~Lots of blossoms, but no fruit on the zucchini. There have been so many big, beautiful blossoms that I was sure we would be eating loads of delish zucchini. For some reason, though, we haven't had a single fruit! All flowers, nothing growing in their place. :/ I have no idea why.

~Figuring out the golden raspberry. So far it's not doing much as far as growth, and I've never grown berries.

~Nibbling on some of our leaves and herbs by pests, especially the basil and sage. I haven't been able to find the little culprits like in years past, but I keep hand-inspecting. Today I noticed that whole leaves of the basil were eaten.

~Fickle herbs. Our cilantro plant and dill bolted after two weeks. :( This is my first dill (I love it), but I have yet to have success in keeping cilantro all summer. I just recently read it prefers to be sown directly in the garden soil, so I will try that over replanting seedlings. Rosemary is stunted, so we are uprooting from the garden and putting it in its own pot so it can stay dryer.

PLANS: Fall Planting

Reading up on some ways to make a garden more efficient reminded me that it's time to plant now for fall crops! Just got beautiful organic seeds in the mail from Homegrown Healthy on Etsy: broccoli, spinach, more lettuce, and herbs (can't hurt to give those another go, right?). I may just grow the herbs in pots so I can bring them indoors for winter.

Stay tuned for updates. :)

Garden!

Yesterday, we had our first green bean harvest from this year's crop! Delicious, sweet, crunchy beans lightly steamed with a touch of vegan butter. YUM!



Past years' gardening adventures didn't lead to very satisfying results. If you followed my posts last summer, you may remember we had our soil tested by the local cooperative extension and had been trying for years to build up the soil with compost, rototilling, planting, fertilizing. Not much success, and lots of hard work and heart invested to see very disappointing crops.

This year we decided to opt for raised beds, after seeing our upstairs neighbors have some positive results last year. We used our neighbors' bed from last year and built two additional 4x4' beds where our bed was last in years past. We used untreated wood to build our boxes, lined the space of each with grass clippings, then a layer of compost, then loads of organic soil (we purchased bags). I'm delighted to share that growth has been explosive since we planted at the very end of May! YAY!

Here are some pictures taken just after our first planting:

















Herbs and greens! The sage, mint, one dill plant, and chives showed up from last year.



















Our new raised 4x4' beds. So cute!


















Two heirloom tomatoes in the back (one red, one pink- wish I could find those name cards- doh!). Beans and eggplant in front.

















Zucchini, golden raspberry, and carrots in front!


And just 1 month later- we couldn't believe the growth! Have a look! We swear these photos have not been altered, and all growth is hormone- and steroid-free. :)






































































Here's our garden today (below), just after a fresh composting, weeding, staking, and watering. Tomatoes newly supported from fallen tree branches, squash caged happily, beans growing around expanded poles, carrots thinned. Dill and cilantro, as well as a lettuce and chard plant lost. We added a rogue pumpkin plant that had sprouted among the oregano- gave it its own spot among the greens. Lots of tomatoes, several eggplants, lots of squash blossoms but so far no squash. Excited at the prospects!

Needless to say, we are thrilled, and tending and watching our little veggies and herbs grow every day adds sweet little jolts of peace and joy to my day. :)

A Glorious Sunny Day!

It's a glorious, blissful day, warm with a tinge of fall crispness, a sweet breeze, bright and happy sun, and a brilliant blue sky. Though I do adore Autumn, this year I'm having a tough time letting go of summer days (the cooler ones). Just a few days ago we were seeing the end of a string of grey, cold, damp days that really affected my mood for the worse. I'm not ready for a season of that yet!

Anyway, this morning there are lots of good things to talk about. I just came inside from studying a beautiful Woodpecker traversing the giant trees in my yard for a mid-day snack, breathing in wonderfully woodsy air (I love living near the park and so many trees), soaking up some sun, and watching my kitty having an adventure in the yard. AND, I got package in the mail!


Sophie!

I love packages! I recently ordered an amazing handcrafted bracelet from my EtsyVeg pal Debbie of For the Animals Sanctuary! Debbie makes incredible vegan jewelry with passionate messages about compassion, and 100% of the profits from her Etsy shop go to running her wonderful non-profit animal sanctuary! I love my bracelet, which reads "ahimsa", or "non-violence" in Sanskrit, a way of living that involves passionate avoidance of injury to any living being through thought, spirit, intention, word, or action. I am very familiar with the concept from my yoga and Buddhism studies, and hold it close to my heart. The bracelet is sooo pretty, wonderfully made, and I love the chain and adorable heart clasp. I feel happy just having it on! Thanks so much, Debbie! Check out Debbie's shop to see her love-inspired work. :)



My beautiful bracelet! I love it! :D

Another good thing about the warmth and sun sticking around longer this year is that we still have plenty of lovely blossoms adorning our porch and yard. As I walked around today, I also visited our garden and the last of the tomatoes still growing.




A Clematis bud- the vine is still growing and blossoming.

Our garden was the source of much joy throughout the summer as we tended and weeded and tried to balance the nutrients in our soil with fertilizer and compost. The yield, however, was somewhat of a disappointment, as you know if you've been following my garden updates. Our lettuce and spinach were a bust. We got some tasty greenbeans and a few handfuls of oddly-shaped cucumbers. lol Lots of tomatoes, though pretty puny (and really yummy). Finally, within the past few weeks, we tried again to dig up our carrots and... we had some! They were ittybitty (we're chalking it up mostly to not thinning enough and packed soil), but they were there, and were so sweet and flavorful. The next step is to ready the garden for the winter.


The last one standing- our tomatoes! We had intended to plant a fall crop of lettuce and spinach, but got a bit too lazy for it.


Our teeny weeny carrot harvest, all pretty and multi-colored! It's a start- next year we're going for big!

How My Garden Does (& Doesn't) Grow

Feeling pretty discouraged about our backyard garden today, so I'm gonna start out by complaining. :P Turns out it is quite disappointing so far. :( Updating on previous posts, my wildflower bed is a bust, our spinach is gone with most of our lettuce, we have no cucumbers yet, and the cuke plant is starting to lose pieces. *sigh* Since first writing this, I learned from a friend that the heat can be hard on lettuce, so I'm thinking that our big 90+ degree F heat wave over the past couple of weeks may have something to do with our sad lettuce harvest.

Despite meticulous weeding and verbal encouragement, it seems our garden succumbed to all of that super hard rain we had loads of just after we planted. It ended up pounding our soil into hardness, packing it down so that there isn't much aeration and room for the roots to grow down. Or we may have to continue our quest for the perfectly balanced soil in terms of nutrients.











Sad little lettuce that has never reached its prime.













Our spinach (bottom of picture) never grew past a few inches, and went to flower. The empty patch beside the baby lettuce used to be home to our butter lettuce.


On the plus side, we do have lots of Roma tomatoes growing. Looking forward to seeing them ripen and redden (they seem to be staying green an awfully long time)! And we have quite a few greenbeans- woot! I love garden fresh greenbeans in butter (vegan), one of the only veggies I prefer in a dressing rather than plain. Our carrots are growing too, and we're hoping there are little ones growing underneath the pretty leaves. :)







Hoping for a pumpkin!


Plans from here include loosening up the soil, fertilizing and composting, and trying again with the lettuce and spinach. Maybe we'll have a crop for late summer and fall. And hopefully, we'll be eating lots of greenbeans and tomatoes!














The happiest part of our garden: beans (cut off in pic on left), cukes, tomatoes, and carrots.

How Does My Garden Grow?

Following up on my first garden post & pics with some updates! Well, with Pittsburgh's crazy onslaught of rain and thunderstorms, some of the garden is exploding with growth while some is, well... struggling. The storms and downpours have made for a lot of cleanup in the garden, and for hours I've picked little weeds, removed sticks ond rocks, and pruned demolished leaves on the greens. Some of the pics I'm sharing are pre-pruning and cleaning up from the storms.














Week 4

The tomato plant has grown a lot in height and has gotten it's first flowers! Yay! I think we'll need to trim it back a bit so that it is less spindly and more bushy. The cucumber plants are nicely building up. They are vining, but no flowers yet. We expect them soon.













Cukes and tomatoes.

The beans are growing, too! We saw our first sprouts the very day I last posted about the garden. Been training them to vine up the poles. The carrots are getting their *real* carrot leaves- woot!

Green beans (above) and carrots.

Urgh. The lettuce plants we put in the garden are slowly growing, but have taken a big beating by the storming. :/ So many leaves were tattered and buried in the mud that the plants seemed shrunken when I was done pruning. None of our own lettuce in salads yet because of this.The baby lettuce and spinach were totally pummeled by the heavy rain, smushed and flattened into the soil. Pruning was more like lifting the tiny leaves out of the mud and brushing them off (what was left) so that they can hopefully revive.

Pummeled greens. :(

Wildflowers? Eh. Also ravaged by rain and by the rain streaming off of the roof of the shed they are planted beside. I don't have high hopes for the explosion of flowers I initially hoped for. I added more seed and fertilized, so we'll see what happens.

Wildflowers. Sparse and beaten down or washed away. Come on little sprouts- you can do it!

Guess what? We have a rogue pumpkin plant in the garden, a surprise product of either last year's planting or the compost we added to the soil. :) So cool!

More later...

PUMPKIN!

Sophie is an excellent helper.

A Garden!

So my partner and I just planted our first garden in a few years after several years of poor yield. After ruling out lack of sun and water, we concluded the soil must be the issue and set out to solve the problem. We've spent the past couple of years enriching the soil with compost, and this year decided to have it tested by the local Cooperative Extension (Penn State). Turns out we were right and that we needed to add Sulfur and Phosphate, and along with more compost and lots of rototilling. So we're crossing fingers for a good year! :) And of course it will be organic!

This is our garden at week 1, with beans (seed) at the poles, cukes to the right, and tomatoes beside that. In front of the beans is a row of multi-colored carrots (seed), and in front of the carrots is spinach and lettuce, both from seed, and butter lettuce plants.










This is week 2, with all of the seeds sprouting already but the beans! Weee! :)







Spinach (look out, Popeye) and Lettuce






Cucumbers (I hate'em, but my partner loves them) and Carrots (Stay out, bunnies!)

As my own little side project, I also cleared and prepped a plot for wildflowers near the garden and sowed loads of butterfly- and hummingbird-friendly fleurs.









In less than a week there are already sprouts!











I love gardening, tending, weeding, pruning. I hope it pays off- looking forward to seeing what grows. :)