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How delightful and beautiful. Very different from our robins at least in Michigan, which I find charming, cheerful birds.
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If Dr. Seuss had a garden, he would have to include chives. I do nearly nothing to them, and they grow happily year after year. My kind of flowers.
For background music, I hear a grey tree frog trilling somewhere nearby.
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Do squirrels show any interest? I may need to grow this too.
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We donât have a lot of squirrels, because our land had been a farm, so not the kind of continuous tree cover they prefer. SO, I couldnât tell you.
However, we do get chipmunks, but they donât seem to care too much about the chives. sometimes they or a racoon will dig around in a newly arranged planter, but I think theyâre probably digging for bugs and worms. Still, theyâre rough on the plants.
You could just buy some chive seeds and sprinkle them on some dirt in a pot to see what happens. Theyâre perennials, so they just keep growing year after year! If they live, they live. If the squirrels eat them, they have been naturally deselected from the garden.
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Does the blue glass have any insular properties to protect the chives?
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We have a lot of squirrels and flourishing chives, from which I conclude that the former are not interested in the latter.
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Maybe from errant electrical currents.
My great uncle Floyd used to show my sister and me all kinds of neat old technologies. Because of him, I bought my first glass insulator, when I was about 8 at a flea market. I only have a few, and they live happily outside on the deck, in the weather they were made for.
I would like to turn a few of the blue ones into little solar lights that I can put in the flower beds like little fairy lights.
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Lots of water moccasins out right now. 1 out of 3 snakes I see are cottonmouths. But Iâm also hiking in wetlands and swamps. Constantly in muddy water that covers acres and acres of land and ranges from few inches deep to 1-2 feet.
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Also the broad headed skink was bitten before I showed up. It was there and acting odd. Then I watched the snake slither about 10 feet up to it and the Lao are barely moved. Even when the snake begin to lick it and move around it. So I knew the snake was already previously hunting it and had already bitten it and was tracking its venom to find it.
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Tilling in the garden this past weekend (see the wild mustard), our dog kept jumping and nosing at something. Suddenly, I heard shrill cheeps of alarm. It turns out he had uncovered a rabbit nest. My 14 year old son and I tried to save the babies and put them back in a nest. Two of four died, but the mom did come back and covered them with fur on Monday. However, they were gone today, so I fear something ate them. I did see one cheeky baby rabbit run from outside the garden in through the fence today, but I think he may have been from an older litter. The ones we had found still had their eyes closed. It was a learning experience.
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Theyâre so fragile, itâs amazing any of them survives. I think with rabbits itâs a matter of âshots on goal.â
Impressive garden plot. What are you planting this year?
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Thanks. It seems like weeds only, so far! My daughter Leah and I like to do some corn, giant sunflowers, a few beans, and butternut squashâŚthatâs our plan so far! What are your plans?
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If doing vegetable gardening you may like victory seeds or
Baker creek heirloom seeds. Baker creek has a giant selection and some really beautiful photos and seed catalog with fantastic stories in them. But many tells me victory seed has a lot to kick from as well and they tend have have healthier and better seeds. Both seems to focus primarily on heirloom seeds.
This is victory seeds.
This is Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds.
I really miss vegetable gardening. Ever since I got this new place , which is actually very old and in bad shape , but the price was really good. The property is already triple. But I donât want to sell really. I like being on the creek. But maybe Iâll end up selling and moving 45 minutes away to where property is still half as expensive and there are still some good plots along creeks with ponds and ectâŚ. But there is no real economy there. Everyone there still drives 45 minutes one way to work here and when they want to go grocery shopping , to the movies or whatever itâs also still here. When hurricanes mess up power lines those places can go almost a month without getting power back on and so they all have these $20k propane tanks that can run a house for a month or two. So there is a lot of drawbacks to moving even further out. So instead Iâm hoping in a few years to build that small house and once thatâs done I can finally dedicate all the time as resources to landscaping it and having a vegetable garden.
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I think my pots of chives are probably the extent of it. Iâve never tried real gardening. I know thatâs bad. We, too, would need fencing, or we would just be feeding the deer. Right now, I need to get the two enormously overgrown Chinese lilac bushes hacked back to almost 1/2 size. Theyâre done blooming, so I need to get to that this week. And when the Korean lilacs are done, Iâll get to them. Right now the one next to the deck is in full bloom, and the perfume of it is nearly overwhelming. Wow!
Buddleia also need attention, now that I can see where they are still alive and producing leaves. Got to finally clean up and trim a lot around the garden swing, too, so it actually looks like something.
Yesterday after company went home, I finally hacked back the potentillas in front of the front porch, so it doesnât look ratty.
Nothing very ambitious. Right now I need to train myself again to get outside at all. Iâve gotten used to being indoors way too much for my own good.
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Iâm curious now about the difference between the British and the American robins. I think I read once that the American robin is more of a thrush family. Iâm sure somebody else out there knows lots more than I do.
Quinoa (a grain) is a complete protein. Or try Natureâs Fynd,
a fungus-based protein. (very tasty.) There is also Quorn, which I donât use because it contains egg whites.
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Thanks! I will start with the quinoa in the pantry that I have for a specific recipe.
Interesting! Apparently, it has all the essential AA, though not enough of some of them for some age groups. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnut.2020.00126/full
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Iâm no twitcher but a quick look in a field guide lists both the European Robin (Erithacus rubecula) and the American Robin (Turdus migratorius) as part of the Thrush family (Turdidae) so they are related
But you can see from their scientific names that they are from completely different genus. Your âRobinâ is a much closer relative to our Blackbirds (Turdus merula) than the humble Euro Robin.
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