Before and After 2011

This is photos of my garden in early April of this year and today.  I did some major rearranging of certain plants and just ripped out certain ones.  I was tired of all the Echinacea "cone flowers", so I pulled the front ones up.  I left one plant, but still may pull it up.  I added a Moss plant, Artemisia, which will quickly outgrow it's garden spot, but for this year, it will be OK where I planted it.  I added some marigolds for color and bug control, the rest of the plants you see are perennials.  Click on the photos to see up close.

East Boston Parrots

UPDATE ON JULY 2, 2011

The parrots have not been heard from or seen in probably 3 weeks.  Our area has 2 large hawks that have taken up residence near the park.  I fear the hawks may have caught the parrots.  Their nest is falling apart.  This saddens me!  If you are from East Boston and have seen or heard the parrots, please do reply to this post or email me.

Remember I told you last week about the Parrots in the Park. Diane managed to get some pictures of them at the Garden today.  The day was very overcast at the time, but here they are.  As far as we know, there are 3 of them now.  In case anyone doubts the story, just look at the last picture with all the Boston Higway signs.  :)  If you click on the pictures, either once or twice, the picture will enlarge and you can see the parrots much better.

Dwarf Asters

I had never heard about these flowers, but when we saw them at Home Depot, they were standing up and liking the cooler weather.  We read the stick in them and it says they bloom from early Spring until Late Fall.  They look like keepers to me.

More Daffodils at the Park

Today was a dreary, overcast day, but take a look at these pictures, will make you feel like smiling

Rain, Rain, Go Away

Nothing new to report from the Garden today, it rained earlier in the day and I spent my day relaxing and dreaming about what I'm going to plant this year.

Welcome to 2011

YES, I am backkkkkkkkkkkkkk.  Been a long Winter, my beloved Patriots fizzled in the end again, been in mourning that, time to get over it!!  OK, enough said about the Patriots.

Diane and I spent some time today at the Gardens.  Below you will see a host of pictures from our efforts.  Most of them won't mean anything to my blog readers, but they do help us memoralize our garden season from year to year.

Happy reading and please do come read as my blog will be updated regularly now.

Before and After in Lees Little Garden

 This is what faced me today when I went to the Community Garden for the purpose of working for the first time in 2011.  I thought I had cleaned up in the Fall, but I soon realized, I could have done better.

This is what the garden looked like after 3 HOURS of weeding and raking leaves.  Since my garden is the first one in from the Orchard, I tend to get a huge cover of leaves in the Winter to my garden.  I don't mind as the leaves help shield my perennials during the long Winter.  Click on pictures to get a close up view of before and after.

Candytuff

This Candytuff plant is getting ready to bloom.  It has hundreds of tiny, tiny white flowers that are Spring blooming only.  The plant grew a LOT over the Winter.

This Coral Bell may very well outgrow its garden spot

I could not believe how large this plant grew over the Winter.  This is also an established 5 year old plant, having bought it for my daughter the first year the Community Garden opened.  She did not want her garden and turned it over to her older sister, who is still there.  This plant is special as I call it Pamela's Plant.  A couple years ago, I had to move it in the garden, as it had heaved itself out of the ground over that Winter.  I decided to divide it, I thought for sure it would die.  The plant did not like it that year and barely held on.  This is the result the second year after moving it around.

Delphinium

This is the delphinium today.  Look at how tall it has gotten.  The fence behind it is 4 feet tall.  No support needed for this tall spike.  The plant has several spikes.

 Last year, I bought a few delphinium at our local supermarket, they were pretty.  This year will be their 3rd year (as they were 2 yr. old plants when purchased).  They should be spectacular.  One of them is a white one, a blue and a purple one.

My Beautiful Geranium

This is what my GIANT beautiful Geranium looks like in the Spring.  This is an established 5-year old plant that does not disappoint all Summer into Fall.  Looks like nothing, but OH so PRETTY soon.

Not sure what this is - perhaps Corn Flowers or Gallardia?

 Under all the leaves in the garden from the Winter, I found this cluster of plants.  They could be weeds, but I kinda suspect they may be Corn Flowers or Gallardia?  I will leave them here for a while to see what developes.

This is the white Rose bush from last year

Mini Rose Bushes

I now have a total of 5 different colored Rose bushes (all the mini potted ones, all purchased from the local supermarket) that are thriving in my garden.  Last year I added a red one and a white one.  These are the bare root photos of all of them.

Pink Rose Summer of 2010

Photo of Dan's Rose

This is the picture of the rose I planted in memory of my boyfriend when he passed away in 2007.  This was a beautiful mini potted rose bought at the grocery store.  The plant is now 5 years old and doing great.  It has grown so much, I had to prune it for the first time this year, and it has THORNS! now.  It is still a minature rose bush, but it has grown a lot.  The below photo is of the bush last Summer.

Before and After of Diane's Garden

 This is the picture of Diane's garden before she started doing anything.  If you click on the picture, you will see a lot of weeds and plant debris on and around her Lilies.

This is the picture of Diane's garden AFTER 3 hours of weeding and fussing.  Click on the picture to see the difference. The things that may look like weeds on the right side of the picture are her Dianthus, they will be blooming soon.

Right side of Diane's Garden

Top Photo is called the "Pink" Section

Middle picture is called the "Red & White" Section

This is called the "Pastel" section

Left side of Diane's Garden

 This is called the "Hot" Section of the Lilies.

This is called the "Cool" section for the Lilies.

This is called the "Bright" section.

Top is Dotties Rompers
Middle is Pink Jubilation
Bottom is Autumn Wood

These are pictures of lilies from Diane's garden, won't mean much to my blog readers, but for Diane, these are the 3 lilies she is worried about.  She did not lose any over the summer, but a few as pictured are questionable as to their survival.

The Quaker Parrots of East Boston

This year, I will be posting from time to time about the Parrots of East Boston.  The birds are called Quaker Parrots.  The first time I saw them I was so sure that someone had just opened their window and let pet birds fly out.  I was so mad, I called the local news people to come out and do a news story on them.  I was told to contact the local bird rescue people in RI, which I did.  I then got my first education about the Quaker Parrots.  They were not pet birds, but wild birds.  This is the nest our birds have built.  Last year, the pair had a successful hatch of two babies.  Over the past winter, I have only seen 3 of the birds surviving.  These birds first showed up in the Fall of 2009, and as you can imagine, have caused quite the stir.  Here is their nest.  In time, I will try to get a picture of the birds, but with the little hand held camera I have, not sure it will be possible.  They do not stay still for very long.

Scenes of the Daffodils at Breman Street Park

The Daffodils are just getting ready to bloom, I think they may have been a little late this year due to our cold winter.  These pictures are of the planted ones along my walk home from the Park today.

The Orchard at Breman Street Park

 The apple orchard outside the garden has been expaned this year.  In order to make room for the Community Garden expansion this year, there were some pear trees that had to be relocated.  This is the view of the orchard just before any leaves come.  If you look carefully, you can tell the newly moved trees, the ones with the stakes.

Fay, a/k/a Peggy

Well, now that the garden season is over, I am going to post about my involvement in what I call feral cat rescue.  I do not officially "cat rescue", but I've been feeding the feral cats in my neighboorhood for years now.  I have been lucky enough to have socialized a few of these ferals to the point of them being able to be rescued and placed with different rescue organizations around the area.   We have made 3 cat shelters for the cold winters for those cats that are lucky enough to discover them and actually want to live in them.

I am going to write today about our latest cat rescue.  The picture of her is from the end of June when she was first photographer in our yard.  She has been re-named "Fay".  Fay first came to our yard sometime last Spring.  I could tell right away that this was a cat who had been dumped.  She was super friendly and hung real close to our house at all times.  It soon became apparent that she was pregnant.  We were calling her Peggy, short for pregnant and that fact that she was a little pig at the food dish, highly food motivated.  Apparently Peggy was cruising the neighboorhood, and we found out that the little kids across the street were also feeding her from time to time.  She was friendly enough that they were able to pick her up and carry her to my youngest daughter's house and deposited her in the kitchen and said "here, we found you another kitty".  She already had 3.  The kids were told to take the cat back outside, which they did.  So, it was at this point that the thought of finding a rescue to officially take her in, especially since she was pregnant.  We located the Melrose Humane Society and they agreed immediately to take her.  She was too far pregnant for them to spay her so they agreed to take her and spay her after the kittens.  She ended up having 4 kittens, was spayed, vetted and put up for adoption.  Only problem was, she was one of those cats that does not thrive in the shelter invironment.  She became more unhappy and became not so nice with the shelter workers.  She was not friendly to people who came to look at her, and in general, was miserable.  My ex-husband agreed to take her and foster her.  He promptly renamed her Fay and she is now with him.  She came out of the cat carrier purring.  My daughter was able to cut her nails that were dagger long and were getting stuck in the rug as she would extend her nails as she purred, which was all the time.  I was visiting with her at his house and she put her paws up my legs and was purring, her dewclaws (both) became stuck in my jeans and my skin underneath.  OUCH!  She was unable to retract the dewclaw and became really scarred, her eye pupils got very big.  I did not know if she would bite out of fear.  My ex-hubby tried to help her release the dewclaw, with us all saying, watah out, she might bite you, but he did not care (and she did not bite).  What I had to do was drop my jeans (in front of him and my daughter) and take them off in order to let her release that dewclaw!  It worked and she walked away a little scared, but recovered right away.  I rushed to put my jeans back on, heeeeeeeeheeeeeee.  Anyways, my daughter insisted she would put on the vet collar so she would not bite and would have to cut those dagger nails.  The deed was done without any problem.  This is the cat that the shelter said was unadoptable and within hours of being home, all these events took place.  My ex seems to be attached to her so it remains uncertain if she is being fostered to be rehomed or if she has found her forever home.

Patriots come out playing hard

How happy I was to see Welker playing as if nothing ever happened to him last year.  Our new rookie Hernandez looking good.  I could not be happier with what I watched today.  The Bengals are a good team and on any other day, I would be rooting for them.  Not today.

On a side note, not doing so good in my football pool so far, oh well, at least the PATS won.