This is a garden journal of our garden here in Tulsa, OK featuring illustrations and garden notes that include discussions on botany, botanizing, entomology, garden ecology, botanical illustration and art.
Stickfigure Gardening with Leonardo de Stickfigure
Here are some wasp houses I put up. They are just those decorative fake bird houses you get in flower arrangements. When I lived in the country I would put up inverted coffee cans for them to live in and had renters every year. The ones shown here are nice ornamentals put no wasps have moved in as of yet. It's going on three years now, glad I don't pay taxes. I suppose they don't like the neighborhood because just below them are the Croakers......a frog family (also a vacant house but the wasps don't know that, ha)
The wasps dine on cabbage moths, as do the sparrows. They are constantly grooming the plants and carrying away the squirmy prize to a place other than the houses I set up for them.
Temp 43-57 The weather is supposed to be cooler than normal this spring. I started my garden by setting out onion slips along with potatoes. I am planting a full set of cole crops this year in anticipation fo the cooler season. The price of food had gone through the roof. A good reason to grow more veggies. I dug up a lot of iris to make way for the veg garden.
I made some cloutches for the seedlings by staking boards alongside the row. I will put plastic over that & hold it down with rocks & dirt. I'll put buckets over the brocolli seedlings that I put out a few days back.
Harvested a great batch of award winning size and blemishless turnips.
Lynda (one of my grandaughters) and I planted an iris she had "borrowed" from one of the vacant houses yard. She named it "Lil Kim" after a rap artist....a very lewd one at that. I bloomed the next year with a slightly dirty yellow. The stocks have a tendency to grow bent.
While in the yard today I heard this great comotion of birds behind me. When I turned around they all suddenly became quite. There were about 10 sparrows perched in the mock orange bush. When I turned around and headed back to the shop they resumed their squabbling. Suddenly they all lit off in a cloud of aviary angst and into the chain linked fence, then as quickly as they had left they were back in the mock orange and quite.
It is nippy today and the garden has just about gone dormant. I plucked off the spent flower head of the marigolds and put them up for seed next year.
One of my reblooming iris is blooming....in November?
The mother of a thousand plant that my mom kidnapped one of her tiny children had managed to grow 7 feet tall and is now blooming clusters of bell-shaped flowers.
Thursday, August 28, 2003
Black winged dragon flies showed up in the garden. About 8-10 of them.
Bought seed potatoes (Red) and onion slips at Warehouse Mkt today. The weather hasn't let up...still frozen outside. This has been the longest cold spell in years.
It snows 10" today. We fixed some suet cakes for the birds and hung them to the railing of the truck.....our bird feeder. Whenever it get icey or snows I throw about a pint of birdseed into the bed of the truck which is parked outside our kitchen window. And so each time we sit down to eat we can watch the birds. Of the birds that visit our feeder are junkos, cardinals, sparrows, pigeons, blue jays, and finches will pick through the honeysuckle vines on the fence next to the truck.
The Flowering Quince was getting ready to bloom...hope the snow doesn't hurt it.
Planted the apple trees and blackberry vines we purchased earlier. Every apple tree we have planted before failed. We did plant some cuttings from Nanny's plum tree out in Worelyville and they took. I've always wanted store-bought blackberry plants and now I've got my chance. Linda and I layered the 7 Sisters rose for starts next year. I made a little cut on a good cane, stuck a toothpick in it and covered it with soil and a rock.
I built some shelves in downstairs bedroom window for starting plants. I made the upper shelf wider than the bottom so that grandmad could close the blinds without disturbing the plants.
I made a birdhouse for her. She sent me a nice thank you card. They put it on the side of a huge tree out in the country. ("They" being Hugh and Mandy)
Went to Biscotti's Coffee Shop in Sand Springs and the food was very good. Across the street is a vacant lot that the community had converted into a garden. There were benches to sit on and enjoy the place. Sand Springs has always caught my interest.