gardening | Jaci Dawn

Archive for the ‘gardening’ Category

A Little History of How I Came to the Garden Path

Posted in gardening, tagged garden, gardening, herb-garden, herbs, vegetables on June 15, 2025| 1 Comment »

I took a bit of a hiatus from blogging. It’s a mental health issue: I struggle with anxiety, sensitivity, and depression. Sometimes, no matter how wonderful life is, I get sidelined psychologically. Emotionally. Whatever – I simply get sidelined.

I have stayed busy, and I have not forgotten that I was going to write about my adventures in herbs next. I do think I will bounce back and forth between herbs and other things gardening, because I am just (re)learning about herbs and I have several other projects going on in the yard as well (hint: water features!).

To write about herbs, I need to revisit the past. I started out gardening with the intention of becoming an herbalist way back in the 1980’s. I’d just landscaped my first yard, a project that was more about digging out unwanted periwinkle overgrowth and discovering what was underneath that mat of ground cover than it was about actually designing a garden of flower beds. I was also a young mother, unemployed, and a volunteer at a local birth center. We were poor and heading deeply into debt, living on the edge of losing the first house we attempted to buy. Life comes at you hard.

We started attending a small Pentecostal church. The pastors and most of the congregation were our generation, so lots of little kids, nursery duty, and spiritual changes all happened at the same time. For the record, I hate nursery duty: I loved my kids but am not so fond of other people’s tots. You know how it goes: “from a distance and only when I can give them back to their rightful owner”. I never minded teaching Sunday School or Vacation Bible School with older children, but those little wobbly-legged creatures – and especially those that cannot walk yet – are cute from a distance but not when you have to care for them in a group.

The ”Church” frowned on a lot of things. The pastors were just coming out of legalism, but the tentacles of bad teaching were wrapped around a lot of hearts and minds. Herbalism equals witchcraft and witchcraft is bad. Witchcraft is Satanism. Heck, midwifery is bordering on witchcraft. I gave up volunteering at the birth center and I gave away my books on herbalism. I embraced the theology of the day. Eventually we split away from the whole movement and that’s a story in itself and one I am not going to tell, at least not now and not in this forum. I still have a lot of friends from those days and they weren’t all bad and cultish.

I – We – have been “unchurched” now for nearly fifteen years. My husband slipped out the door long before I did and I left reluctantly. There was no place for me without my husband. We were paying off the last of our bad debts, we’d moved into the house we live in currently, I was working full time, and our children were moving into adulthood. During that time period I landscaped my second yard. It was a full-on landscaping job but a very small trailer park yard.

I started working on this yard with all the energy of a much younger woman (twenty plus years can age a body). The last couple years, I have begun to look into growing herbs and becoming an herbalist after all. A dream deferred and now there’s time to work on it. I have the space, the time, and no critics to listen to. I’m in a different place spiritually although I would argue I am just as strong a Believer as I was then – I merely choose to follow a different path, a path I believe is one that God set before me. The garden path.

I never fully gave up on growing herbs. I’ve always had a few in the yard and I’ve frequently dried flowers and herbs somewhere in the house by hanging them from the ceiling in bunches. I’ve planted oregano, borage, lavender, rosemary, parsley, chervil, sage – all the culinary herbs. Now I am branching out into some of the medicinal herbs and the foraged herbs. I will attempt, over the next few posts, to elaborate on what herbs I am growing, some uses, and how I have used them (or intend to use them). Some are surprising to me, some I have always known, some are new, some are old, and some I have had to eradicate from my garden (comfrey comes to mind).

So – here’s a patch of oregano to spice your appetite and I promise to write again soon.

Oregano is basically a weed, IMO. A tasty bee-friendly weed, but a prolific and self-seeding one all the same.

Read Full Post »

Native Plants in the Garden (Part 3)

Posted in gardening, Uncategorized, tagged bear grass, camassia, checkermallow, Douglas Meadowfoam, flowers, garden, gardening, milkweed, native plant gardening, native plants to Oregon, native-plants, nature, Oregon native plants, stinging nettle, wild irises on May 17, 2025| Leave a Comment »

Tiny pinks on long stems. This mallow started life in out garden as a tiny free specimen. I put it in a planter and it thrived. Moved it into the ground and it nearly died. It is in a large planter, soil mixed with sand, and it is happy once again. It is a bee favorite & common on the Coast.

I hope you know what plant that is without the ID below it: run into this without enough clothes on and you’ll wish you had never met it. I crawled into it once when I was a child. Nettle stings all over my face! Fortunately, the damage is never serious and the sting can be dealt with (in my case, I probably smeared mud all over my face. I was a clever child – HA!). I started growing it for the medicinal benefits of nettle tea. It is in a pot so it doesn’t escape into the yard and I deadhead the flowers before they produce seeds: this is all the nettle I need in my yard. Harvest with care: garden gloves, long sleeves. I dry the leaves in the dehydrator instead of hanging them to dry. I’ve read you can cook the leaves as a spinach substitute (I’m not fond of cooked spinach except on pizza). The leaves lose their sting when dry. I mix the leaves with feverfew and yarrow for a green tea that I can drink without sweetener.

Nettle may lower your blood pressure, help with blood sugar, hay fever, reduce inflammation, and help with enlarged prostate, and contains antioxidants and many vitamins. (I may write more on nettle in another post on herbs in the future.)

Oregon blue-eyed grass – stsyrinchium bellum

Wild irises.

I love irises! These are my wild native irises (I have “domestic” irises as well). The first two iridacea shown love moist soil and are planted in a little shady swale next to the south fence of our yard along with the camassia. I need to divide the flag iris this fall. The Douglas iris is more like its commercial counterparts: dry soil is fine. They love sunshine. The blooms are larger than the flag iris but still delicate.

Wild camas (which is related to asparagus) is a beloved forage plant for the Indigenous peoples of the PNW. I loves marshy areas. I have not tried eating it: I have too few of the plants to forage just yet.

false Solom0n’s Seal (m. stellatum) & bear grass (xerophyllum tenax)

My husband brought me a gift of bear grass one year along with the deer ferns. Falso Solomon’s seal hitched a ride. My bear grass has never failed to bloom: the spikes tower above the heavy leaves. I think one of my plants is showing its age and beginning to die out, but it produced three beautiful spikes of flowers this year. And the false Solomon’s seal never disappoints, but it is gone by summer and the ground bare where it flourished in the wet of spring.

“poached egg” flower/Douglas’ meadowfoam – limnanthes douglasii

This beautiful ground cover was also a hitch hiker. I think it came with the yew and maple (long gone now). It spreads quickly, covers the ground beautifully, and attracts every bee, bee fly, and wasp. It greens up in the Autumn, overwinters green, and blooms in the spring – and then it is gone. The ground bare.

I have not tried too many other plants mixed in with the false Solomon’s seal to cover the bare spot in summer, but I have tried where the meadowfoam is. And meadowfoam does not like to be shaded out during the dormant stage! The bare spots in the photo are where i removed plants that shaded out the meadowfoam and it died back. However… it seems to love peonies and grows profusely around them despite the shade of summer, so I may try putting a couple peonies in there.

Don dug this out of a bar pit one year. he intended to make it into a Bonsai tree, but vane maple grows too quickly and he had to put it into the ground. It is as large as it is ever going to get. The leaves turn brilliant red in the autumn. The squirrels love the helicopter seeds. Very little grows under it but I am hoping some huechera (coral bells) will take off.

narrowleaf milkweed – asclepias fascicularis

Milkweed. I could write a blog post on this, the last of my Natives to show off. I planted it by seed: two kinds of native milkweeds, the showy (pink flowers) and a few of the narrowleaf. They didn’t grow. Well, to heck with that idea, right? I could purchase some starts but it just never seemed to happen. And four years after I tossed those seeds in the garden, I had a thick stem poking out of the ground. Suspicious, I broke a leaf off and watched as it oozed thick milky sap. Eureka! It only took four years for those seeds to grow! And grow they did: I now have to fight the plants to keep them contained in the corner of garden where I planted them: milkweed spreads by runners underground.

Bees, flies, butterflies (but never Monarchs – so far), and milkweed beetles love the plants. Invasive as the plant is, it grows well in the little corner of yard where it is, sharing space with peonies, asters, Voodoo lilies, and grape hyacinth. The hyacinth blooms first, then the peonies, followed by the voodoo lily. The milkweed rises up and blooms, fades and dies, and the asters bloom. A perfect full summer garden of bloom.

That is it for my native plants! My next posts will be about herbs in the garden, uses, recipes, and cautions. I’m excited for those posts!

Read Full Post »

Native Plants in the Garden Part 2

Posted in gardening, Uncategorized, tagged blue elderberry, bunchberry, garden, gardening with native plants, Pacific bleeding hearts, pearly everlasting, pricklypear, wild ferns, wild ginger, woodland strawberry on May 14, 2025| 2 Comments »

One small plant Don dug up in the forest has turned into a spreading clump of wild ginger ground cover. It is nestled beneath the forsythia, one of the rhododendrons, and a sword fern. I don’t think there is any use for it (I could be wrong, but it is not the same thing as the ginger root used in cooking – that’s from Asia). It does smell the same!

We just purchased this. I’ve tried to grow bunchberry several times and failed miserably, but this time I hope to succeed! Planted in a shady place with lots of rotten wood to latch onto. It has pretty white flowers like a Dogwood tree, but is a wild ground cover.

California poppy – escholzia californica

It is not blooming yet. But I have quite a little collection of this – one of my favorite roadside wildflowers. My husband is not a fan, but what does he know?

?big leaf lupine – lupinus polyphyllus lindl (?)

I can’t swear to the identification. It came in the same wildflower seed packet as the California poppy, and was just labeled “lupine”. Lupines are among my favorite wildflowers, and there are so many varieties! Unfortunately, it was infested with white aphids earlier and I sprayed it with an herbal concoction that burned the leaves (dang!). A better solution was to spray the nasty things off with a small stream of water. I keep checking and they have not re-infested, so… Here’s hoping. I have several of these throughout the yard as well.

Another little ground cover that has exceeded! Don brought this home and I was dubious because of how quickly it spreads, but it hasn’t crowded out anything and sometimes there are actual tiny berries on it.

pearly everlasting – anaphalis margaritacea

I wish I had a photo of this in bloom! This makes a great dried flower in the fall with its tiny white flowers with yellow centers. It spreads through rhizomes and I have to be careful weeding out the insidious grass that entangles it in the winter and spring. But when it blooms, the flowers are well worth it.

Columbia Plateau Pricklypear – Opunta columbiana

This one is a bit of a stray. I have moved it several times, trying to find the right spot for it to thrive – and maybe bloom! Those long thorns are nasty little suckers! We dug this baby out of the roadside between Arlington and Hermiston, Oregon, on the Columbia Plateau. It is planted in sand, in a well-draining planter. I moved it to its present location (very carefully!) a year ago, and it seems very happy here. Whether or not it will ever bloom is a question: we might get too much rain for it to be that happy,

Western larch ( larix occidentalis) & Western sword fern (polystich munitum)

I don’t think you can have a yard or garden in Western Oregon without having to fend off the Western Sword fern! It can grow quite large. I have several that came with the house and I am slowly moving some of the off-spring to the north side of the garage where we have a rather inaccesible 3′ set back. It was lawn, but who wants to mow a lawn you can’t get to easily? Ferns are an easy answer: they grow naturally in this part of the world, they fill in the space, and don’t need extra watering! They can be ignored.

The Lady fern came from a single plant my husband brought home. It dies back completely every fall and comes back even bigger every spring. The deer fern is just an interesting border plant, also something my husband dragged home for me to adopt. I think I helped him with that one. ;P

And the western larch (known colloquially as a Tamarack) is just one of those Bonsai trees Don dug up in the middle of a USFS road and made into a Bonsai. I added it to this gallery because of the fern in the pot: how easily the Western sword fern attaches itself!

Pacific bleeding hearts – dicenta formosa

Where ferns grow, Pacific bleeding hearts grow. They spread via rhizomes and they spread profusely. Some may even refer to them as weeds. I rip them out enthusiastically when they grow into areas where I don’t want them. They look best in late winter and early summer, then the heat comes and they fade quickly: wild bleeding hearts like the moist, cool, shade of the Western half of Oregon. And I happen to like them better than their commercial cousins with the larger and more colorful blooms.

Blue elderberry – sambuca nigra subsp. cerulea

It is easy to get a red elderberry around here, but I grew up with blue ones. I don’t know if there is any use for red elderberry outside of herbal ones (I could be so very wrong on this, just speaking from my experience, not knowledge). Blue elderberries: syrup, wine, jelly… My husband swears they make the best syrup, I swear by chokecherry syrup (but we don’t have chokecherries in this climate). I’m not going to go into the benefits, but a great place to start looking is on WebMD. I do think I will try dyeing with my elderberry this year (hoping I get flowers and berries! It looks very healthy).

I am going to stop this post with this plant: Oregon hazelnut. A filbert tree. Oregon and Turkey are the leading producers of hazelnuts. Roast them, dip them in chocolate, use them in your beer brewing. This bush planted by birds. It is around 20′ in height, has been pruned back by neighbors and us, and all the shells are empty of meat. You need two trees to have nuts form inside the shells, something we learned after watching this on take over our corner for nearly 20 years. A year ago, my husband brought home two small hazelnut starts from the woods, and (hopefully) (the squirrels and jays are praying) we will eventually get nuts.

I have more Natives in the yard. I just planted several. And I haven’t started on the herbs. 🙂

Read Full Post »

Native Plants in the Garden (Part 1)

Posted in gardening, Uncategorized, tagged flowers, garden, gardening, native plant gardening, native plants to Oregon, native-plants, nature, Oregon native plants on May 12, 2025| Leave a Comment »

Lewis’ or Oregon mock orange – philadelphus lewisii

It has not bloomed yet, but I’ve only had it since 2023. It grows rather spindly – perhaps too much good soil and water and growing too quickly? But I found if i staked those spindly branches, they were much stronger the next year. One of my favorite wild bushes, blooms in June – July, smells amazing, and reminds me of rattlesnake draws in Eastern Oregon or Nevada where it commonly grows along a spring in the basalt.

Large flowered colloma – collomia grandiflora

We discovered this growing along the roadside after a fire. It grows about 3-4′ tall. It is a native annual and we could purchase seeds (we tried seed collecting last fall, but beetles had devoured most of them!). This year, we dug one up (you can get a permit at the USFS). Hopefully, it makes it. Pic on the left is the one we dug up, pic on the right is a photo from last summer.

Penstemmons are hard to identify without a field guide and a key, but we love them. The one on the left is one we dug up on Saturday (we dug up two, we won’t know if they are the same species or not until they bloom. There’s a fourth one in the front garden, but it is still very tiny and hasn’t bloomed. The one on the right – I am fairly certain it is the Little Flower penstemmon: the flowers are tiny. It came with a yew and Rocky Mountain maple (both dead and gone now). Penstemmons make great ground covers, especially in those dry, rocky spots.

Note: we don’t know what killed the trees, but all the plants that came with survived. The trees thrived for about five years, the maple died off first. The yew lived a couple more years before suddenly dying on us.

Who doesn’t love paintbrush? It is parasitic which I didn’t know (and which explains why I’ve never succeeded in growing it in the past). The plant on the right is one I just purchased from a native plant nursery, complete with instructions on how/where to plant it and what plants it might want to attach to. The second one is one we just dug up. Unfortunately, it is attached to an oxeye daisy – a native daisy, but one that is a bit of a weed. I prefer my Shasta daisies which stay in their place, but they aren’t natives, so…

I planted the purchased paintbrush near a large leaf arnica (also a native, no photo). I will plant the new one nearby as well.

I’ll be honest: this could be an ornamental sedge. I don’t know. Birds planted it in our yard. I made the decision not only to keep it, but to move it to a better spot. I’d be happy if I learned it was a native dense sedge as my husband thinks.

Ah – the Hawthorne! Long ago we lived in a trailer park next to a large open space full of nasty Himalayan blackberries (very invasive) and a lot of native plants (including the afore-mentioned oxeye daisy). This little tree was bulldozed a couple times by our landlord and chewed on a lot by the local black tail deer population. When we purchased our house, my husband dug this up (it was about 3′ tall at the time) and planted it in the ground. I believe he was planning on making a Bonsai out of it, but it just loved its new location.

I bought a honeysuckle from a nursery. It is pretty. The aphids love it. But I *really* wanted a native one. Last summer, my husband and I made a foraging trip into the Cascades and found this growing there. No, I don’t have pics of the flowers (yet), but we know it is a hummingbird plant and it is what I wanted.

But the real story is about the bear. I have only seen one in real life, and that was a grizzly in Yellowstone when I was ten (1965). I take that back: I saw a black bear once as it raced across the road in front of us in Central Oregon. I was in a car. I’ve hiked, camped, and hiked some more, and never seen a bear in the wild that I could count. Until we were digging the honeysuckle. A young black bear was making its way downhill toward us as we finished up our lunch. Not a scary thing, but we had the dog with us (unleashed – we weren’t anywhere near other people or dogs). So we quickly packed up to leave and we let the bear wander off in another direction as we secreted the dog out of the area.

I have seen this for sale at garden shows. That factoid makes me laugh: fireweed is invasive. Once you have it in your yard, you will never get rid of it. I know: I planted it. And I ripped it out. It is pretty, I will grant you that. Alaska’s State flower (my daughter tells me that you can tell when winter is near because the fireweed quits blooming in Alaska). It blooms all summer. I found this survivor of the fireweed I killed nearly ten years ago (hahaha!) hiding behind the shed. And I am letting it go because it is better than English Ivy, black nightshade (Solanum americanum), and Himalayn blackberries – all of which we also have (only the nightshade is native).

The birds planted this. I fell in love with it. I trim it up and will allow it to grow, It is not the same as a Bay Laurel, but it smells the same and you can use the leaves the same. Pretty yellow flowers in the early spring. Easy keeper.

This is just the beginning of a blog post I have been mulling for quite some time: what native plants do we already have in our garden? It began as a small idea but I soon discovered I have more native plants than I previously thought – and some plants I thought were native are really “naturalized” introductions (foxglove, common mullein, ground or creeping juniper). It also grew with the photos ♥

Read Full Post »

Allergies, the Dog, and Me

Posted in gardening, tagged allergies, bugleweed, cone of shame, dog, flowers, garden, gardening, mystery plant, nature, pet surgery, pollen, tickseed on April 29, 2025| Leave a Comment »

A quick post tonight: my right eye is beginning to itch, and I will have to give it a rest soon. With all this sunny unseasonably dry weather, pollen has been high. The kind of pollen I am allergic to, to be exact: some pollen doesn’t affect me at all. But let it be haying season somewhere up the Valley and my nose knows. Or when the cottonwood fluffs are in the air – my eyes swell shut.

I have been taking OTC meds, eye drops, and drinking herbal teas. I have been putting cool compresses on my eyes (I learned a cottonball soaked in milk on the closed eyes for ten minutes works wonders at stopping the itch. Conversely, used chamomile tea bags are hell on my eyes: my eyes are apparently allergic to chamomile tea leaves). I’ve been getting in some gardening in mornings and heading to bed early to rest my eyes, blow my nose, and check out mentally. ‘Tis the season to go through boxes of tissues AND carry a hanky around the garden, even after taking the prescribed dosage of “24-hour relief” antihistamines. More like 12 hours, if I’m lucky.

Toss in the dog’s antics this past week, and life has truly been a riot.

Yes, he is wearing the Cone of Shame. On Easter Sunday he decided socks were a better treat than hard-boiled eggs hidden by a bunny. Two socks came right back up, covered in undigested dog food and bile. But he didn’t get better and by Tuesday we were headed to the vet and a huge surgery bill. The THIRD sock was stuck in Ruger’s gut and had to be carefully removed.

The Cone of Shame really is FOR SHAME. Bad Ruger.

Socks now must be placed as high as possible when not on the feet they were made for. Also tissue and toilet paper, but at least those don’t come back up or block the intestines: he merely poops those out.

Still and all, I planted my herb plants out front. Spread some early seeds out as well (we’re pretty much past the last frost date – we hope). I need to edge my new beds. Plants need to grow a bit. The yard art is just what I do: I consider it “faerie gardening” and hope it entices some of those wee creatures along with the pollinators and birds. You never know.

I found a third plant to put around the base of the pedestal birdbath: a tickseed (the yellow and red flower). A Bidens something – I’d never heard of this perennial, but I’m excited to add it to the base of the pedestal along with the bugleweed (ajuga) and my mystery plant.

I love the faerie lights in the little garden statuette at the base. 😊

(Cover photo: my bottle bush (fothergilla) is looking very nice this year!)

Read Full Post »

Garden Palooza

Posted in gardening, tagged budget, budleweed, clarkia, creeping thyme, farewelltospring, flowers, flowertags, garden, gardening, gardenpalooza, mysteryplant, nasturtiums, nature, peppermint, rue, spring, thyme on April 20, 2025| Leave a Comment »

It has already been two weeks since we went to the “biggest” early garden sale of the year. Where does time go, we ask. Well, we have had unusually DRY weather, and I have immersed myself in gardening, not writing. Then allergies hit and I am presently confined to the inside of the house, my eyes itching, my nose dripping, and my life a prisoner to tree pollen. I have no idea which trees: ash, alder, birch? Not evergreens: I can watch the yellow pollen coat the cars and everything in the yard with nary a sneeze. But these deciduous trees try to kill me. Every year.

There was no allergen in the air on the day we went to Garden Palooza. I carried my list of plants and set a budget. No annuals: it was still much too cold during the days and nights for me to fill my planters with my favorite annuals: petunias. Petunias are a nod to a woman who was very influential during my childhood (my best friend’s mother). This year will be especially poignant: Marie passed away at the age of 98. I love petunias because she grew them every year and they were beautiful and sunny.

I wanted Native plants and perennials and a good ground cover. Something to plant around that pedestal bird bath, something that would bloom throughout the summer. I had it in my mind to get a couple creeping phlox plants, but learned they only bloom in the springtime. Well, shoot. But I found something else that blooms all summer and snagged those up.

Problem is: the vendor pulled the identification tags out of the pots when he sold me two of them and now I have no idea WHAT I was buying!

I did find a Native plant nursery that had one of the plants I want, but the owner read through my list and told me he would have several plants on my wish list later in the season – just call and ask in a couple weeks. Woot! He sold me a clarkia: “Farewell to Spring”.

I grabbed a peppermint to put in a planted by the front door to discourage rats from hiding beneath the stairs. Most of our house has been “rat proofed” but there are a few points where they *might* get under the house and peppermint works as a great deterrent. I’ll just pot it (to keep it from getting away – it can be invasive) and place it by one of those points. Lovely scent as well.

Rue for out front in the bed I am preparing for an herb garden. I’ll also plant holy basil, hyssop, English thyme. More, but I haven’t given that much thought (yet – it’s early for seeds). The English thyme was another purchase: I have one in a planter, but it would be nice to have one in the ground as well. My live-in chef uses a lot of fresh thyme in his cooking. (My husband, folks, I’m nowhere near rich enough to pay for a chef. Gourmet cooking is his retirement hobby, and it keeps me overweight and sated.)

Another creeping thyme for planting between pavers out front. It’s a yellow thyme, very eye-catching, and – I hope – drought tolerant and prolific.

Last was the mystery plant.

I tried my plant app, but it wanted to identify the plant as arugula. It is NOT arugula. We have that growing wild and unkept throughout the vegetable garden beds. I’m not a huge fan of arugula, but the aforementioned chef loves it. He let it get away. I know what arugula is.

Google lens wanted to make it arugula as well. What the heck!? Why did that vendor take the tag out!? (Well, I know why: inventory, plain and simple. The other vendors used two tags in the pots and kept one but left the other for me. This particular vendor only had one tag per plant.) Dang-nab it!

Soooooo – until it flowers, I have no idea what I purchased to put around the bird bath. In the meantime, I placed some bugleweed around it. I’ve been trying to get rid of the bugleweed since I planted it twenty years ago, but it returns every year in a new place. Might as well make use of it. It blooms early and has pretty purplish leaves. Whatever it was that I bought at the garden sale blooms late and has green leaves. Fingers crossed I can identify it sooner than later.

Oh, and I bought a few nasturtium starts. I prefer the trailing kind, but I had a weak moment and suddenly four starts were in the cart and paid for. Yummy nasturtiums. Pretty nasturtiums. I have since purchased seeds for the trailing kind so I can run them up trellises.

Also: I stayed under budget so I have more to spend later.

PS – yes, those are silk flowers. Some day I will explain those. Maybe.

Read Full Post »

Crows and Bird Baths

Posted in bird watching, gardening, tagged Bird Bath, birds, garden, gardening, nature, wildlife on April 7, 2025| 5 Comments »

Yesterday’s post ended in a pile of dog poop. It was a photo of one of our birdbaths where the crows like to rinse off the dog poop in search of undigested nuggets. Crows can be so fun (sarcasm font).

I started with just one bird bath in the yard many years ago, but the crows kept soaking dead baby birds in it. I started feeding the crows to keep them from raiding neighboring nests and depositing the fledglings in the bird bath – and that has worked quite well. But after I added the central one to the back yard last year, dog poop has become the primary crow issue.

I love crows… Until I don’t.

I have added several more bird baths over the years, some of which are no longer: ice and winter have a way of breaking up ceramics. The original bird bath was destroyed in a nasty winter storm. My husband purchased a new one for me the next Christmas.

It’s concrete. The bowl surface is rough, giving small birds and insects a fighting chance if they get stuck in the deeper water. The small birds and wasps love it. I placed it in the backyard where the crows don’t use it. They don’t use it mostly because of its proximity to outdoor seating, an issue that the wee song birds don’t seem to have. And it has worked well. I need to clean it a few times in the summer and I ignore it through the winter.

Last year, I added this plastic monstrosity to the front yard. It is there specifically for crows. They put everything into the water before they eat it: peanuts, bread and hamburger buns that other people toss them, and things I probably do not want to think about. I have yet to find a fledgling bird in there but fried chicken… Oh, yes. I hose it out over the retaining wall and think no more about it: whatever is in it drops behind the wall of orange daylilies, out of sight – out of mind.

I have often perused the aisles of thrift stores for bowls or platters that are the right depth for bird baths. A lot of them don’t make it through the winter: ice is hell on porcelain and glass. And I forget to haul them inside for the season. I have a variety of plant stands (wrought iron) and plant hangers that I use to suspend the make-shift bird baths (and bee watering holes). And we have gone through a variety of cheap dishes.

Last year, we remodeled our bathroom, and I grabbed the porcelain pedestal to our former sink. I spent some time thrifting until I found the “right” bowl to glue onto the porcelain (E6000 – the best crafter’s glue!). It lasted the season before the glue gave out and I hauled the bowl into the house for the season. The only caveat: dog poop, undigested peanuts, and crows. I’ll return to this eyesore in a moment.

A couple years ago, we hit a yard sale with plant hangers and more for sale. I got my Rose of Sharon there and four of these funky home-made plant hangers. The bush is doing quite well, but I discovered the plant handers are much too heavy for shepherd’s hooks when plants are added to the mix. But I had four of them and they are so cool. (Did I just date myself with that phrase? Probably. But they *are* “so cool”.)

Two became bird feeders. I wired a screen onto the first one. It’s easy to clean and the small birds love it. So do the squirrels, but that’s another issue I haven’t quite dealt with (yet). I converted one of those frames for hanging plants into a basket to hold the other bird feeder platform: an inverted aluminum canning lid sainted white and punctured with holes for the rain to soak through. The crows and squirrels occasionally knock this one off the hanger, but it works quite well otherwise.

I have found small platters or bowls to place on the other two that can be used by birds or bees as watering places. I only have one in use right now. The last is languishing in the shed waiting for inspiration or a new cheap porcelain bowl for the birds.

Somewhere in that timeline, we wandered through a town-wide antique fair and I came across a very unique hanger. The seller was offended that I wanted to use it for birds (“It’s a hanger for Aladdin lamps!” he protested). Yes, but it has no lamp, and you want more money than it is worth. We compromised on the price (I paid too much but it was the principle of the argument). $5 got me this hanger that I use for watering bees and wasps. Yes, I do need to clean the lower bowl, and the marbles contained therein, but its not like bees or wasps are thirsty right now. The guy selling it wanted $10 but he didn’t have a corresponding lamp to go with it and I know you probably can’t find one. At least not one you’d want to hang outside in the weather.

Which circles me around to the original subject: the birdbath I had to clean today. I mentioned to my husband that I needed a hose out to clean it, he thought I was whining, muttered something about “the hoses are on hose reels with wheels”, and proceeded to dig the hoses on wheels out of the shed for me. I did not mean he had to do it instantaneously and he forgets that a hose reel with a 100’ farm hose on it weighs more than I can easily move. So, we were both irritated with each other. Isn’t marriage fun?

Yes, yes it is. I’d sooner have a growling contest with someone I know will stay with me regardless than have to haul those heavy hose reels out on my own. In the rain.

Last night before I fell asleep, my brain hashed over the challenge of the crows. I came up with several non-viable ideas before I thought of this one: using one of those wire flowering basket hangers they sell at the supermarket laden with flowers. I was going to use this particular basket for something else (even purchased the coconut fiber liner) but… It looks nice and I’m hoping it goes a long way toward discouraging crows without making enemies of them – and keeping the integrity of the bird bath in place for the smaller birds that would like to use it.

This solution is To Be Determined.

Read Full Post »

Bits of Spring

Posted in bird watching, gardening, tagged bees, bewicks wren, birdhouse, birds, crows, garden, gardening, native-plants, nature, plant sale, rain, tiller on April 6, 2025| 1 Comment »

Rain, rain, rain. Weeds, grass, plant sales. March and April are months when the sun comes out and warms the earth, then the rain comes down and soaks the ground. We still have frost some mornings and other days we can break out the shorts and t-shirts. I keep trying to find good subjects to write about.

A summary of my weeks:

The Native Plant “Sale” was not a plant sale. Tables of pamphlets and flyers from every conservation and forestry group within fifty miles, a few tables hawking garden tools, a lot of free evergreens (Noble fir and Douglas fir for the most part), and one single, lowly table with a few native plants that I have already dug up in the woods and started at home. Waste of time.

On dry days, I have argued with the different grasses, but the soil is saturated and weeding just isn’t productive.

Veteran gardeners in the area know that you don’t start setting out plants or sowing seeds until after Mother’s Day (a few cold crops are excepted but I’m not a vegetable gardener). It is far too muddy to rototill the veggie plot and make the beds, at least in our yard. We did get some pruning done, but I have already posted about that.

We had a three-day streak of lovely dry weather last week, but three days is not long enough for the saturated earth to dry out sufficiently for weeding or tilling. I did pull up cardboard from a couple areas in the hopes the ground would dry enough for me to try my nifty new electric hand tiller. It was not long enough. But I still tried.

The tiller works reasonably well on sod, but the mud clings to the tines and I had to stop three times, unplug the tiller, and clean out the tines for another go at it. The tiller tends to bounce along the surface, not really digging into the hard clay so I can see myself making several run throughs to get the ground broken up enough to plant. But where I’ve already done the work of removing the sod – oh, that tiller LOVES to dig.

Native bees are starting to come out of their hives: a field of mining bees in the neighbor’s yard was buzzing with happy bees in the sunshine and our paper wasps have returned for another year of building nests and pollinating flowers. We have even spotted a few tiny butterflies, too small and too quick to identify. I was attacked by thrips one afternoon (apparently, they like beer and human flesh). Hm. Will need to watch for plant damage from those pests!

The turkey vultures have returned. I love the turkey vultures. The bald eagles are sitting on a nest in the nearby wild park, but we see them soaring on thermals on nicer days. The crows are rebuilding a nest across the street. And three pairs of small songbirds have scoped out the little birdhouse under the grape arbor!

We’ve seen white-breasted nuthatches look at it, and yesterday the chestnut-backed chickadees tried to claim it (the black-capped chickadees raised a brood in it a few years ago – photo on the right is from then). But the Bewick’s wrens (photo on the left) have first dibs this year! When the chickadees used it, they didn’t bother with a nest or any filler: those little eggs and hatchlings grew up on the hard wood floor. But Bewicks have carried grass, stems of last year’s goldenrod, and feathers into the little house until the lip of the nest is even with the little hole on the side.

I don’t think the birdhouse is actually meant for birds, just for backyard decoration. There’s no hinge to lift for easy cleaning in the fall, for one thing. We’ll have to completely dismantle it this fall in order to clean out the nest debris. But we love that it gets used and now I think I need to find a couple more similar sized bird houses for the nuthatches and chickadees!

Finally, we have a huge plant sale coming up the end of this week, and this one really IS a plant sale: “Garden Palooza” out at Bauman’s Farm. We go every year and every year we find unique plants to add to the garden as well as the few annuals I like to grow (petunias and nasturtiums). They aren’t very strong on native plants, but I would like to find some creeping phlox and some “walkable” ground covers to grow between pavers. I have some more room for sempervivums in my rock garden as well.

Last, because it was nice out, I glued to decorative bowl back onto the porcelain pedestal for a pretty bird bath. The crows found it as soon as it filled with water and they immediately picked up peanut-laced dog poop to wash in it. As I have no hoses out yet, the water remains gross and smelly.

I love crows…Until I don’t.

Read Full Post »

Garden Buddy

Posted in gardening, tagged blind dog, dog, dogs, family, gardening, pets, writing on March 20, 2025| 2 Comments »

I am deviating from writing about gardening today. I have a post that will come up Saturday or Sunday (depending on how the Native Plant Sale goes) but I want/need to write about my Garden Buddy.

A Wirehaired Pointing Griffon.

The dog. The dog loves to help garden. When I dig up sod, he picks up the pieces and shakes the dirt out of them (everywhere – I’ll be picking up pieces of sod and dirt after he’s finished). He steals weeds out of the weed bucket. He walks in front of me and places his nose in whatever hole I am digging. Or he drops his purple indestructible ball in front of me and wants me to throw it. He also walks through all the little wire fences I put up to KEEP him from walking through tender plants.

Sometimes (a lot of the time, really), we play “Hot and Cold”. He can’t find whatever toy we’ve tossed for him and we tell him if he is “hot” (near) or “cold” (wandering away. He knows the difference and often zeroes in on what was right in front of his nose all the time. It’s funny.

We also play “Squirrel!” where we point to where a squirrel is on the fence or in the yard and Ruger looks the other direction. We have come to the conclusion that certain squirrels are paying him off to not chase them. And, sometimes, he lands right under the fence after them, chasing the length of the fence after them – often in the opposite direction of the squirrel. He’s an Idiot.

Or so we thought.

What he is, aside from being epileptic, is brilliant and blind. And we did not know he was blind until his neurologist came into the exam room and looked at both of us and asked, “You do know he’s blind, don’t you?”

Jaws dropped. Denial set in. Surely, she didn’t know our Ruger, a dog who was on his second Vet visit of the day and who had wowed everyone he came into contact with, the dog who just had his Rabies vaccination completed and didn’t run into a door or any object in the first vet’s office. Surely, she hadn’t just watched him leave our side to go with the Vet Tech to her exam room, confident and pulling at his leash?

Then she asked how long did we think he had been blind? Did it coincide with his first epileptic fit in April of 2024? Had we noticed anything before then?

And were we willing to shell out another $5,000 for a doggie MRI to see if he had a tumor in his brain or not.

They did more tests. The inside of his eyes are “normal” according to the doggie ophthalmologist onsite. The blindness seems to stem from his brain, confirming (to the neurologist) that he probably has a brain tumor. We really should just borrow the money from Care Credit and pay for the MRI.

So we asked questions: if he has a tumor as proven by this Very Expensive procedure, what would be the prognosis and treatment? Quality of life? If we refuse that test, what is his prognosis?

Honestly? They’re the same. Steroids (prednisone) and more pills and lethargy for a very active doggo. We’d just be out the five grand and however much money it costs to keep pumping him with drugs to feed out need to have a companion and beloved dog. And we’d be making huge credit card payments on top of our HELOC and Mortgage, all with our Social Security income and static pension. And the bigger question:

Would Ruger even know if we denied him the MRI (a test that would stress him further)? Does he even know he is blind, or does he think that this is just the way things are? He navigates just fine, he jumps on the bed and off the deck (and occasionally falls off the deck), and we have already banned him from coming up to the second floor because he has a tendency to go too quickly back down the stairs, losing his footing, sliding into the wall of the small landing and crashing into the pantry at the foot. Which has a mirror.

This is so much to absorb and come to terms with. I have already decided that the first person to Troll us for deciding against the MRI can pay for the MRI (not a loan, but a gift of $5000). I expect there will be those people who think we should “spare no expense” for our fur baby, but – Hell – we’ve buried a human child which is a pain unlike the loss of a beloved fur baby (and I don’t mean to dismiss that pain – I still cry for a cat I lost 30 years ago).

The gist of this tale is this: blind animals don’t know they are blind. They navigate by senses so much more attuned to the world around us that they can hide their blindness for years. Ruger has no idea he is “handicapped” by a lack of the ability to blink when a flashlight is shined into his retina. We had no idea we were dealing with a dog that plays “Hot and Cold” because he can’t SEE the object he is hunting for. Or that the reason he looks the wrong way when we point is because HE DOESN’T KNOW WE ARE POINTING. He only knows there is a squirrel out there, somewhere, and it’s up to all his other sense to “find” it – even if it runs the opposite direction than he does (along the fence that he never seems to run into).

When I told the neurologist that I think he’s been blind a LOT longer than a year, she felt there was some hope that he doesn’t actually have a tumor. He’s on a regimen of prednisone to see if any of his sight can be recovered. He’s on a regimen of Phenobarbital to stop him from having epileptic seizures (which could also be a brain tumor, but we aren’t going there – not yet). He’s going to be dopey and stumbly for about a week, but then he should just be his normal adjusted-to-downers self.

He’s four years old. We got him a month before we buried our son. He’s been a therapy dog without knowing that is what he is. He’s beautiful and has these deep (unblinking) brown eyes that stare into your soul (probably his nose smelling your soul, but – hey!). And he still likes to help garden.

And – PS – if you don’t like our decision to not pay for what we cannot afford, I take PayPal or Venmo. 🙂

Read Full Post »

Pruning

Posted in gardening, tagged apple trees, espalier, garden, gardening, hawthorne tree, nature, plants, pruning on March 13, 2025| 1 Comment »

The weather cooperated in time for the annual pruning of the apple trees and the Hawthorne. I forgot to take “before” pictures of the apple trees, but, hey, “after” pictures work.

We purchased espalier apples in 2003 to use as a “fence” around the vegetable garden site. There are six varieties on each tree, some do better than others, and we always have more apples than we can use. I think of investing in a cider press off and on: we could make a lot of vinegar, juice, and cider!

Certain varieties do better than others: the dominant apple (the base to the espalier) does best (yellow trasparent). But we still get a decent crop of Granny Smith and Red Delicious off these trees, and – maybe – someday we will figure out why the other three varieties struggle. The fence around the apple trees is twofold: the dog can climb under the apple trees and get into the garden and the dog likes to pick apples off the tree (ripe or not ripe). Apples are not good for the dog (apple pips are poisonous). He still manages to get apples off the trees, which he then plays with as a cat would play with a mouse, until we take the apple from him and toss it into the yard debris bin.

Pruning takes place before the leaves unfurl and the blossoms swell. Then we hope there won’t be a late hard frost. It is all you can do.

The Hawthorne is a little more involved. Apples don’t have thorns. The apple trees are not over five feet tall. That darn Hawthorne…

We didn’t buy the Hawthorne. We dug it out of the horse pasture when we gave my horses away (to a good home) and moved into town. It was all of three feet tall and had been run over by a Caterpillar multiple times and browsed by deer almost as often. It is a Native tree. And it absolutely loves its new location.

20 years after moving it, it stands over 10’ tall. It hosts birds and insects. We don’t allow it to blossom but if we did, it would host pollinators and produce berries (seeds). Pruning it is a several-day production that includes ladders, avoiding stepping on my peonies, and picking up anything the dog might later step on and puncture his footpad.

The dog has enough problems without thorns between his toes. And when I weed under the tree later in the season, I have enough trouble without a sharp one-inch thorn piercing my gloves.

Also, I don’t do any of this work. I take pictures and sometimes pick up the stray thorny branches my husband misses. My husband is proprietary about the apple trees and I wouldn’t touch pruning that Hawthorne with a ten-foot pruning hook. Nope, nope, nope. Not I.

What ensues is a bit of a photo documentary of the pruning on one native Hawthorne tree in our back yard, including some dangerously slanted ladders on the mound of earth where we decided to put said Hawthorne.