I'm pink and a little fried, but still smell good.

Some lovely and some fried pics of pink and fragrant Oleander flowers. Shots taken one or two seasons ago from our personal pots. I was a little late on taking their pics at the time. Maybe I was lazy that day or just really busy. Still couldn't resist taking pics of them even if they were in an imperfect state.

The lovely Gourds

 Just some lovely gourds growing beautifully in the garden, taken a season or two ago. Its still winter here after all. One of my dad's hobby projects I guess. I had taken some lovely shots years ago of some similar gourds growing the garden too that featured Meetso also. The were some of the most beautiful pics of him sitting on his favorite perch surrounded by the grapes and of course those gourds. Unfortunately somehow I miss placed or totally deleted the pics. A real shame. I guess I had thought I already had saved them to CD or something. This time, not taking chances. Too late for Meetso though.......💔

 

 

 

Alternate grape protection.

 I know its not even spring yet and yet I'm already thinking of the growing season yet to come. Nothing wrong with that. Really! I wonder if I should at least plant a tomato seed in a small pot and at least have one plant a head of schedule? Normally I don't have to do that since for what ever reason the seedlings usually come out on their own during the winter months in the pots I have stored little spider plants planted in little pots with compost soil. This time around there was none. Hence the thought. 

Anyways A few seasons ago I took a few pics of how I managed to protect our green/yellow seedless grapes. We used to place a net on the whole vine but as you know that's a bit labor intensive and when you sometimes remove the net, it knocks over some of the grapes. Plus for some of the birds, the net is no problem to circumvent. Looking at you starlings!  So I came up with some solutions using and recycling used water bottles, old, used and sometimes fragments of cheaply packaged aluminum foil. Yes that annoying stuff from some dollar store or the no name house brand where and when you get close to the end of the roll they annoyingly don't tear properly and leave you with useless slivers of what's suppose to be sheets to wrap things with. But you really have no choice these days with everything so expensive. Plus I had an old collection of discarded CD's to use too. In case you're thinking it, no I am not a hoarder. I have a junk box for those odds and ends. I at least try to be tidy and use things creatively instead of throwing things away and it ends up in some land fill.  So yeah, here we go. Some pics of how I use those things to selectively protect the best bunches of grapes or at least hopefully deter squirrels long enough for us to at least enjoy fully ripe grapes. Yeah apparently squirrels love eating grapes too. 😒 And apparently so do the local insect population. sigh.... You can also use cheep dollar store panty hose or some small netting that comes with your produce to cover up the bottom of the bottle so they can't get in. But the day I took the pics I never bothered to. Oh yeah I guess I also used pie plates as well. More squirrel deterrents.

 

 Here we have some pics of how my bottle protectors look like covering and protecting the selected bunches of grapes. Its a pretty long vine that stretches from our very small garden near the shed that wraps around the garage, the side of the house where a fire place chimney is and around our outdoor doves cages. Since then, some of the vine has died back because of its age. We had to clip it severely and hopefully it might possibly come back to its former glory? 

I cut just the bottom of the bottle. I use to cut it much shorter but I found that if you keep its original length, it makes it more harder for birds to reach into the bottle and eat the grapes. I then cut a line all the way down the length of the bottle so I can envelope and place the bunch in there. At the mouth of the bottle I make sure I cut a "V" on the lips so  that I can really open up those bottles and let the bunch be enveloped so that it doesn't cut the stem at the top. I find that if you damage the stem even with just a scratch, this can make the bunch go bad fast and the bunch will not have a chance to ripen.

 Notice I don't need to cover up all the grapes. Just the ones you really like. Let the animals be distracted with the inferior bunches.

Here's a close up of one of the bottles. You can see I cut the bottom off and cut length wise on the side so that the bunch can sit inside but still be able to hang off the bunch. I also placed some foil and a pie plate to make it annoying and distracting for squirrels. I also placed some foil on the vines that lead to the saved bunches for the same reason. To keep the squirrels from biting the vines that hold the bunches in order for them to get to the bunches. You can see where you can place a small fine netting material to keep out the bugs. Again I was too lazy that day to do so. 

 More pics of protected grapes. You can also use this technique for protecting selected fruit on fruit trees such as peaches, nectarines, apricots if you have a small tree and probably pears too if you have them. I don't so I wouldn't know. You just have to place the bottles on carefully for obvious reasons so that you don't accidentally knock the fruit off.

Close up of how I place the aluminum foil and the pie plates on the stem. Again, make sure you don't scratch or cut though the stem for obvious reasons. 

I've also used a similar technique for protecting sunflowers from squirrels. I place a pie plate shield on the underside of the flower. I then place the same type of cut bottle onto the stem leading up to the flower followed up with foil. Usually this does the trick of protection unless the plant is too close to another plant or thing that the squirrel can use as a jumping point. Make sure there are none of those and you get to have seeds for eating and sharing with your wild bird friends. But fyI only place those just before the plant goes to seed or the bees and butterflies won't have a chance to enjoy them. They really don't like shiny things such as pie plates and plastic bottles. Also plus, if you still wanna share with squirrels, you can always plant a few extra plants just for them and let the little greedy buggers go to town. Believe me they will go to town and actually steal the whole head from plants thus ruining them for other animals. But its up to you.

Till next time......

A metapod was spotted.....

Like something out of a Pokemon show or game, I spotted this little guy in our bean poll patch located in our garden one summer day. So I caught it with my camera. No poke-ball required. Its supposedly the cocoon of a swallow tailed butterfly. Sadly I wasn't around to actually see the little guy emerge out of his little temporary home. But I did manage to collect the empty container of its former home for my reference collection.

 

 If you're wondering, all the kitties are doing fine. Not seeing them as much these days except for Felix since its cold. He usually tucked away in his cat box outside. I have been encouraging Felix to come indoors. The rest of my family has been encouraging him too. But sadly he still has a mistrust of humans no matter how nice our house hold is. Still not giving up thought. 

Hope you enjoy my latest pics. Bugs after all are not every one's cup of tea.😊

The invasion of the tomato snatchers.

Behold, the creepy squishy and oh so big green tomato caterpillar. Creepy for some. Not really for me. Found the little buggers crawling all over our tomatoes naturally over the summer, turning our plants and the fruit into Swiss cheese. Since then, I found alternatives for them to munch on instead of our tomatoes. Not to mention I like to live and let live if you know what I mean? Of course at the time I let them munch on some extra leaves and stems of our tomato plants to their hearts content. Till they of course turned into moths. I guess not all caterpillars turn into beautiful butterflies.  Surprising the tomato cuttings started to grow into their own plants. Something I didn't know earlier but interesting to know none the less. Another name for the little pests is Tobacco worm. But I prefer the latter.  I found out that they also enjoy our night shade weeds so since then I've been feeding that to them. They're welcome to them any day cause you know, they're weeds. 

In the pics it looks like they're munching on our geraniums. But because the tomato plants were so long in the half cut water bottles and I kept them close to the flowers, it made them look like they were enjoying them too.  Not true. Its the tomato plans they were after. None the less they really look pretty among the geraniums even if they're not eating them.

Anyways an update on the mama cat. Our timing was finally right and we caught her a few weeks ago. Surprisingly, its much easier to catch a stray cat then it is to catch a person. Afterwords I tried to contact our local humane society. I couldn't even get a person on a phone as to the regards of our kitty catch. Yeah our HS sucks! But I guess it might have to do with our many institutions that are grossly underfunded. Shame! I guess its another sign of the times. So for plan B I made contact with our former vet that I used for our late kitty Meetso. Thomasina got all "fixed" up and no more potential kitten explosion. Which is a good thing since we have a lot of bad neighbours that would love to do something vile to those poor kittens not to mention all those poor cats. That's not how we treat life. We respect it. All life deserves to have a life and not just dogs. Even the vilest such as some of my neighbours. Anyways yeah we had to keep her in the cage/trap for another 24 hours after her surgery and she was free to go. Before her surgery she had to be in there for a day and night till her appointment. Couldn't have been pleasant being in her own mess all night. Luckily she just peed a little and it was easy to clean up. At least the closet downstairs  where we kept her was pleasantly warm despite it being in the basement. I guess she saved the pooping for later. 😵😁 After she was freed, she did come back a few days later but has a bit of a long road for things to be back to normal. It was after all traumatizing. But soon enough she'll be back to her old self maybe even closer to our little family. 

Hope you enjoyed the latest offering of pics. Hoped you enjoyed the story too. Later!.......

Scary Garden Buddies

Alright a little late but still appropriate I guess.  A pic or two of what happened to the sunflower at night. Posted in the previous postings.

Yeah long time no see. I was really busy during the spring and summer season.Not to mention was going though loads of emotional stress via my stupid and cruel neighbors. Plus other emotional stresses I won't bore you with. Anyways they have no empathy towards living things other then dogs, their over zealous owners and the people who fight battles for them, all is game to whom they despise. Cowards! Can't even fight their own battles. They butt kiss and make nice but battle all by them selves, too much of a coward.😝Met up with "evil Curious George"  one time after church at the local dollar store. I was with my mom and the little douche nearly jumped out of his shoes seeing the two of us there in the isles. He quickly scurried away like the little roach he is. I guess two old ladies were too much of a fight on his own. 😛😀😆😒

Then there was the the big kitten fiasco that happened in September. Ugh.. Luckily no one got rabies after catching them and bringing the to the humane society. 😉 Also very lucky, after the two week quarantine they got to know good humans of the world a little better and I'm assuming they went to good homes. After all, I think I spotted their cute little mugs in the adoption section of the website. Good luck kitties! Now all I have to do is catch their stray mom whom I call Thomasina. Not an easy task when even the humane society is hard to deal with. Catching her in a trap not as hard. Or at least I think. She has gotten use to the fact that she now has to get her free meal at the risk of getting caught. Trade off worth dealing with when you're desperately hungry and dealing with the cold. 😉 Don't worry, I'm only trying to catch her to get her fixed so that we don't have another kitten explosion. 

Anyways enjoy the pics! 

 

 

Garden Buddies

This time around we have these two lovely garden buddies for feature presentation. Of course my latest sunflower plants have yet to get to maturity so in case you guessed, these are from two years ago. Thought the pics of my sunflower and its buddy the pea plant looked pretty cool. The lighting that day was really dramatic so I took several pics at different angles. Plus it kind of makes you feel like a little busy bee from that close up view. Over all I was inspired by the folk tale of "the three sisters". So, every year I plant my version in my share of the garden pots. In the pots I first plant a sunflower seed, then I put in a small amount of carrot and dill weed. Evenly distributing them in the pot so that the carrots will grow big and not piddly. Last but not least I plant a couple of pea seeds when the sunflower is at least 5 inches tall or maybe taller, but sometimes only one comes out. By the end of the year, in Sept or Oct I'll have these lovely colourful and sweet crunchy carrots to enjoy and share not featured here. YUM!😋