wordless wednesday

wordless wednesday

Cleveland Garden Walk

This past weekend was Cleveland’s Garden Walk.  Pat and I walked two of the neighborhoods last year and had a blast so this year the only decision we had to make was which neighborhoods we were going to visit.  It’s always fun to visit gardens. I always see something new and marvelous. One of the coolest places to visit was the Ohio City Farm. We’ve been buying produce from its farm stand for the last couple of years. It is a wonder, fresh produce grown almost in the shadow of the Cleveland skyline.  I was going to take pics of the produce we bought, but we ate it all. 
Probably the most out of the way place to visit was Vintage Alpaca Farms.  It is just over the Cleveland border from the Old Brooklyn neighborhood, tucked in an industrial park. What a hoot when we found the place and met up with a bunch of garden walkers, all with “I found the place” grins on their faces

 Ready made straight rows, who would have thought?

 Come to see alpacas and you get chickens too, smack dab in the middle of urbanated Cleveland.

wordless wednesday

A couple of years ago, Pat and I went to a native plant sale and seminar. The speaker introduced us to swamp milkweed, that’s asclepias incarnata to you Latin speakers. I would have guessed swampus milkweekicus, but what do I know. Back to the story. The speaker promised pretty flowers, bees, and butterflies. So we bought couple of these thin little plants, hoping for the best. I’m always excited and nervous about new plants. Hope always spring eternal in gardening. I’ll move a plant as often as it needs to find the right spot, but it has to survive that first planting.
I shouldn’t have worried about these guys. They attracted bees and butterflies from the first bloom.  Two little sticks have turned into the patch we have now. The milkweed patch literally buzzes with non-stop activity. All right, all right, I know that’s a pun, but what other word should I have used? There are so many bees hanging out in the milkweed that you can hear their wings buzzing.

what's blooming

These are some random pictures of what’s blooming in the yard. It’s been hot and dry since it quit being cold and rainy. I think that has thrown bloom cycles off. Luckily, we don’t have a watering ban so we have been able to keep our hosta, ligularia, marsh marigold and all our other water hungry plants from biting the dust.

  

 This is the first ligularia flower. We shouldn't see these for another 3 weeks.

thanks for lunch

We fill the bird feeders once a day, sometimes twice, depending who is dining. I had just filled them when I noticed that one was empty. Maybe I missed it, maybe it was a squirrel. I kind of doubted that a squirrel was the culprit. Since the hawks took up residence, the squirrels have kept a low profile. So off I went to get more bird seed. When I walked into the sun room, I saw the reason. Middle of the day for crying out loud, I got a deer in the back yard. I look at the deer, the deer looks at me, and I swear it was thinking: “what do you want?” It was still hanging out in the yard when I got back with my camera. It is really cool having all our dinner guests in the yard.

wordless wednesday

wordless wednesday