These tiny little wildflowers (fleabane) are popping up all over the place. I usually let wildflowers live wherever they decide to show themselves. I don’t yank them until they’ve gone to seed. Of course, going to seed means that even more of them will pop up next year. I have SO many forget-me-nots, more than ever. They are in the memorial garden bed, in between the cracks of the funky patio pavers, by the birdbath, next to and in all the flower beds. They sort of drive me buggy and all of them are the result of a few seeds that were sent to me several years ago, which I planted in the corner of one bed. If I’d only known!
So on one hand, the messiness of them popping up everywhere drives me crazy. But on the other hand, this will never be a neat and pristine property. We’re too close to the woods and to the wildness of nature. We do not have a suburban lawn. And we do not have neat little garden beds. It’s impossible. It doesn’t suit where we live. I also love a slightly overgrown garden, so there’s that, too.
Right now the funky patio is covered with wildflowers. Same for the birdbath area and the memorial garden. If some wildflower is going to get in the way of something I purposely planted, then I’ll pull it. But only then.
Oh, we had some insane storms over the past two days. One on Sunday and two yesterday. The craziest was late in the day yesterday and I was alone here at the time. Don had run into the neighboring town to get his hair trimmed. While he was gone, the storm rolled- ‘roared’ would be a better word – in. The rain was coming in EVERY window in the house. When the storm hit, I heard a big bang and I wondered if a transformer had been hit. The winds were frighteningly strong, and the thunder and lightning was nonstop. We briefly lost power again, but it came back on almost immediately. The sump pump was on overdrive. I could hear the sirens of emergency vehicles.
Needless to say I was nervous, but all is well. Our trees are intact. The house is safe. I don’t think we had any hail, but I know neighboring communities did. It’s much cooler today and the oppressive humidity has left. The front lawn needs mowing but it’s still too wet, so we’ll wait until tomorrow.
I made a shelf for the interior of the mini fridge. As I said on IG, the egg nog is past its expiration date, and the leftovers in that container are probably funky. Time for a shopping trip.
Stay safe.
Happy Tuesday.
Egg nog is ALWAYS past its expiration date!
I’m glad you survived the storms with no property damage. When they hit, they hit hard, don’t they? Sounds scary but that all’s well.
I’m with you on the wildflowers. They’re like a little present and I don’t like to pull them either. Maybe pluck them for inside, but not pull them! Have a lovely day. Sun is shining in Michigan.
Glad to hear the sun is shining there, Jeanie.
Take care of yourself.
Stay safe.
glad you had no damage from those storms and now have cooler weather.
i feel the same way about wildflowers … let them grow wherever they show up. and fleabane is very pretty, rather like tiny shaggy daisies.
your mini work looks good. and reminds me to clean out my refrigerator this week. not today … am at the doctor’s office right now, waiting to get some lab work and bone-building shots. then will go home, clean my car, take a shower and (best of all) spend time with some members of my family. still sorting through papers and organizing files too (last free paper-shredding event in town for the year is this saturday and i don’t want to miss it!). also am still feeling like i am on vacation rather than being retired. :)
hope everyone has a good, safe day!
kathy
It will take a while until you feel retired. You’ve barely started!
Stay safe, Kathy.
We have decided we no longer want a huge front yard and instead have cut it down. We now have rose bushes perennials and wildflowers. We are trying to achieve an English country garden look. The back yard has lots of trees and bushes for the birds.
Everyone has their own style as it should be.
If I did that, I’d have even more gardening chores than I already have!
Enjoy your rose bushes, wildflowers, Linda!
Stay safe.
The memorial garden is such an appropriate place for the forget-me-nots. Now that you mentioned fleabane, it has me wondering…does it repel fleas? I’ll have to look that up.
I’m way behind on yard/garden work. We have had a soccer game or track meet almost every day the last couple weeks. 3 granddaughters keep us busy.
That sounds like a wild storm…thankful you had no damage.
Take care
I think that’s why I planted them initially. The gift that keeps on giving!
Stay safe, Marilyn!
So glad you weathered the recent storms well and your trees & house are undamaged! Love it when cooler temperatures and less humidity follow a thunderstorm or two.
I once loved mowing grass and did so with a zest for myself as well as family & friends. Nothing like freshly mown grass for a variety of reasons, and the physical exercise was great!
A change in jobs necessitated a move to a different state 17 years ago, and a smaller home with smaller front & back yards as I downsized. I removed the grass from my “new” sunny front lawn 10 years ago, and now that area is filled with roses, irises, phlox, peonies, coneflowers, black-eyed Susans, butterfly weed, day lilies, rose campion, queen Anne’s lace. Biennials and annuals are sown wherever a bare spot appears (primarily forget-me-nots and zinnias). All volunteer wildflowers are allowed to grow as long as they don’t “bully” the older, more established plants. I remove overly “enthusiastic” plants from time to time and share with family & neighbors. Hostas, hellebores & ferns are near the house in shaded areas. In the backyard I have a bit of lawn/grass that needs mowing from time to time, edged by shrubs and trees down to the margin of the wetlands that border my property.
Lots of bees, birds and bunnies share the yard and visit, as well as skinks, tree frogs, and the occasional black snake. Thankfully, the wetlands provide more than adequate food for the deer.
My little home is perfectly imperfect, and I’m grateful for all that I have and am.
Stay safe & well.
Amy your yard sounds beautiful!
Sounds lovely, Amy! We have the same visitors, including groundhogs and snakes and peepers and deer, plus the ones you mentioned. We love that. You grow many of the same flowers that I do; what I consider country garden flowers. Those perennials keep on coming back and they self seed. Wonderful.
Stay safe!
Wow, what a storm! I can’t imagine rain … period … as I’m in drought-stricken and rain-sparse Southern California, but to have it seep through windows? THAT certainly takes some vigilance.
Drama around here last night, too (of a diff sort). An aside: I’ve decided I have ‘way too much drama in my life.
But the next-door neighbor, who I NEVER hear from and do not WANT to hear from as I do not like him (when we ever had exchanged phone numbers ..?.. must have been a thousand years ago), called at 8:30pm (I couldn’t get to the phone before he hung up) to say THERE WAS A MOUNTAIN LION IN HIS BACKYARD.
We of course live near a barranca coming down out of the mountains and a mostly-impassable canyon; we have thirsty and hungry wildlife needing water, looking for any trickle of ‘wet’ in that barranca which, at present, is a drywash; plus, some kind of ‘authorities’ have been thinning the eucalyptus trees out of the part of this aforesaid barranca which IS passable/closer to civilization and ‘town’, so it’s a disturbed habitat. It flushes the animals out of their dens and burrows.
Anyway, for hundreds of years, with no rain and severe drought, the wildlife comes down out of the hills, searching for water and food, eventually making their way to the river bottom at the base of the mountains on the other end of the valley; and we are in their path. I live against a dense hillside that spreads out over four mostly-undisturbed acres although I am indeed in a suburban tract of some nearly 70 years; a well-established neighborhood, nearer to the river than not. So, we do get the possums, raccoons, skunks; in rare times COYOTES and, in even rarer times, these mountain lions.
What we began to glean is that this neighbor wasn’t even home and must have seen his property exterior with some kind of app on his phone; his voice had 100 percent certainty it was a mountain lion; we’ve also been thru this before, in 2009; we’ve all seen a mountain lion and know what they look like. So, we turned on our back lights, my husband called 911, three police vehicles and as many/more police officers arrived (unfortunately one with a rifle, but there can be no choice because people have to be protected first), went up our back hillside ‘stairs’ to the top of the hill, looked around with big flashlights; listened. Nothing.
But it’s a warning; a flag. It’s only going to get worse as this drought continues and we’re on asked-for/voluntary water restriction already. I’m immediately changing my outdoor/feral-cat feeding schedule; can’t be any leftover food out there after dark. We’ll all be more careful about going out after dark. The problem with this is that the wild animals who get down this far are more often than not SICK, with disease and starvation; if they have rabies, they’re aggressive. It’s what I get for not living in a bigger city I guess; I’m surrounded by mountains and hills, creek, river, agricultural fields; vegetation. Sort of like you, Claudia, at the cottage; more in the country than not; of course you’re also quite woodsy. Then again, if I was in an urban jungle, I might be dealing with city rats, like what’s so infamous in Manhattan, true?!
The rain came in through the screens. So what I meant by that was that it was coming from all directions, not that it was seeping through the windows.
We deal with bears, but we just leave them alone. They aren’t aggressive unless provoked.
Mountain lions are scary, for sure.
Stay safe.
I found out more info and also alerted a lot of the neighbors who live on the ‘hill’ side of the 50-house circle, like me. The next-door neighbor’s wife actually WAS home and it was she who saw the mountain lion first, about ten feet from her French doors that look out over the rear yard/hillside. He was under the kids’ jolly jump/trampoline apparatus. She got a good look at him because of the moonlight (big, bright, full moon after the eclipse the night before [which we viewed; it was so cool; the blood moon]), and the sky was still light at 8pm from the sun which had just set. This woman is not prone to hysterics and she’s intelligent; a calm person; was able to give a very accurate description to the police officers in terms of weight, coloring and length of the cat. Once she turned on her back lights and rapped on the glass of the bedroom door, he slinked in a hurry up her back hillside, but the thought is that he’s got a lot of brush to hang out in; he’s still there; I have water in birdbaths, so he’s got a water source; but, man, at dusk and before it got dark-dark, I picked up the cat food bowl and just pray my elderly feral cat can stay safe til the authorities get to the bottom of this.
My neighbor said he knows he needs to immediately get up on his hillside in daylight, bring in a team of people (I think tomorrow in fact), and totally denude that hillside of all the brush and thick foliage he’s let get overgrown; take away the mountain lion’s temporary habitat. (This guy has three little kids from age 4 to 7; it’s unsafe for them to now be in the backyard til this is resolved. When we all went thru this 13 years ago, with a mountain lion ‘invasion’ in our neck ‘o the woods, we had a mountain lion on the school ground near us, in broad daylight; poor disoriented thing.)
As they (the cops) cautioned, and I already knew this, for a mountain lion to come down this far, he’s likely starving or sick; if it’s rabies, even if it’s a youth and not too huge yet, although the neighbor’s wife said he was very l-o-n-g and lean, they can turn aggressive fast, and are very, very dangerous. In that state and a crazed mind from disease, they’ll not go after just a dog or a domestic cat, but they’ll just as likely take down a toddler or human adult; it’s nothing to fool around with or be casual about; people around here who hike the trails have to be cautious of both rattlers and these ‘cougars’.
I find the whole thing very sad. It’s awful that the wildlife is suffering with scarce food in their natural habitat away from the human population; having to search for water. How they must suffer. If our Calif wildfires haven’t been enough to wipe them out.
That jolly jump that my neighbor saw the mountain lion under? We’re in close quarters as neighbors in this part of our yards. It means the mountain lion was a mere 15 feet from my BBQ grill on the patio, over a not-tall block wall. ‘Way too close for comfort. We were very careful with the big foster dog today (he currently has a part-outdoor/part-indoor life by choice [his choice] but he’s never out back at night); remembering to LOOK AROUND and also scan the hill before taking him outside! I probably checked on him 20 times, my eyes darting everywhere. He relaxes outside and sleeps so soundly that it worries me he wouldn’t sense or hear the mountain lion. Yet he was supposedly an outdoor ranch dog in his earlier life, so he might be more sharp about it than I think he is!
xoxo
Very sad for all wildlife. My heart breaks.
While we do have a suburban lawn, our gardens are anything but manicured. And that’s the way I like it. Pop up wildflowers are always welcome, unless they decide to make a flower pot their home….lol. I do have an affinity for the wild violets that grace my front flower bed. I am always expanding my gardens with more perennials….course that just makes more work for myself.
I did manage to get all my containers planted….and my veggies on the deck. So, I am tired, and hurting. Bad back. So I’m done for the day. Still have some hostas to rearrange…hopeful.y by Thursday I’ll finish it all.
Enjoy the rest of your day! ;)
We have wild violets in the beds on the far side of the house. Some white, some purple. I love them!
I think I’m done with expanding my gardens. I have a lot of beds and the thought of having to maintain any more area than I already have is daunting!
Rest your back, Donnamae!
Stay safe.