My Garden and Other Animals

[Roland Deschain]

Seeing as my posts are all over the place, i've decided to have my own thread (yes, i'm that greedy!). I'll split things into different posts so it doesn't get too confusing for everyone. This thread will see me posting pictures of my parents' garden, showcasing the work i've done over the past year, plus anything else from my garden I feel you all need to see.

I've logged into my Photobucket account for the second time ever, and made a few albums. I still have many photos to sift through and sort, as there are some pants ones mixed in, not to mention duplicates made when attempting to get just the right photo.

OPSA WARNING - There may be contained within this thread many many pictures of poopies, so view at your own risk!

January 2010 - Snow

I took these 2 1/2 years ago when we had a lot of snow come down. I'm starting here as it will give you a good idea of how the garden used to look before I took to it like the wrath of Odin. I never did like the black plastic surrounds to the raised beds, and you can see them partially in these pictures. I'd also never seen a Eucalyptus tree covered in snow, but an Aussie tells me that it is not uncommon to see in certain parts of Australia. Enjoy.

Album - Snow Garden 2010

My favourite picture

[Roland Deschain]

The Cat and the Starling

Last month I was outside stroking my cat when I heard a loud thud as if something had whacked the French doors. To my surprise, as well as my cat's, it appeared that a newly-fledged Starling had flown into them, and startled itself. I immediately picked the bird up carefully, and took a look at it to see if it had damaged its wings. Luckily it was only dazed and confused.

I decided to take a few pictures of it for future reference, including one naughty one (at no point was the bird harmed by either myself or the cat). Once these pictures were safely taken, I put it on the bird table to recuperate, and kept an eye on my cat, as she would have loved to "play" with it. Sure enough, my cat eventually found it, so it had to be rescued yet again, but after the cat lost interest in the bird table, I put it back. After a couple of hours from its accident, it flew off into the bushes, never to be seen again.

Album - Cat and Bird

My favourite picture

[Opsa]

Ack- I just sent a post and it was eaten.

Love the photos so far!

[pieces o nine]

Very nice.   

[Roland Deschain]

Thank you, ladies. I'm glad you like it so far. Onwards and upwards, now.

The Herb Garden

You're probably wondering what my herb garden looks like now, as it must have grown. Well, you're right, and there is so much going on at the moment. So much has already flowered, some of it profusely, and everything has definitely grown an awful lot since the beginning. I now have a few albums up showing the herbs in various states of growth, from when they first went in to more recently.

Albums
The Beginning - 6th May
In Progress - 9th July
In Progress - 15th July
Growing Large - 13th August

You should be able to easily see the difference in size between the herbs when they originally went in, to what they are now. The Salad Burnett has even seeded itself, and was the first to flower. The mints are starting to flower now, although I don't yet have any pictures (they'll come eventually).

The Lavender Thyme, that little ball of green right at the front, flowered for quite a while, being covered in little white specs. The Feverfew Golden has been profusely flowering for a while now, being covered in daisy-like flowers. It's quite striking to see. Now the Savory Winter is flowering, having a fairly unusual petal arrangement, similar to a dead nettle.

The light isn't always the best to take pictures by, and my camera is a relatively cheap one, but i'm sure the above will show you roughly how it's looking.

[Roland Deschain]

OPSA POOPIE WARNING - DANGER! JEALOUSY!

The Herb Garden

I sewed the two packets of seed for this around the time I planted the herb garden, so it's been around since the very beginning of May. I've had quite a successful haul of flowers come up in the intervening three and a half months, with flower colours including white, blue, red, pink, yellow, and purple. It's been quite striking, actually.

The only issue I had was with the sow thistle that ingratiated itself throughout the patch. When I originally started pulling it up, I noticed some eggs on a few of the leaves. Not knowing what they were from (moth, butterfly, other insect), I let them be, quite excited that maybe a Painted Lady had laid its eggs in my garden! Unfortunately nothing came of them, and nothing seemed to appear, so after a month of religiously dead-heading the thistles so their seeds wouldn't blow over the entire garden, they all came out. It looks a little empty now, and I now have to stake up several of the plants (the thistles appeared to be a crutch for most of the other stuff), but when I do my duties as seed spreader later in the year, it should set the scene for an amazingly colourful second year.

Albums
9th July
15th July
21st July
8th August
13th August
15th August
16th Aufust
19th August

This is one of my favourite photos, showcasing the variety of colour:-

[Opsa]

The only poopies I gots is in me knickers, confound it!

Pretty pictures. I think your Scabiosa(?) is actually a bachelor's button. I love those too!

[pieces o nine]

Mom always picked out assortments of Bachelors Buttons for "my' garden when I was a kid...

Quite the garden, Roland!

[Roland Deschain]

Er, Opsa. Thanks for that. I think.

I was going to say that it's a cornflower, and I called them that for 2 months, but for some reason I labelled them as scabious. Doh! I'll change the labels soon.

Thanks PoN. Just wait until you see the rest. I now need to sort through the photos and pick the nicest ones.