Whoah! Will ya look at that? Who knew all those poppy seeds would take over the garden?
When the garden’s full of weeds,
We give thanks for poppy seeds,
Once they grow they cover up
Every weed that’s coming up.
Tag Archives: garden
Bonnie and Benny Bunny
A new load of firewood waits for someone to move it into the shed. Doesn’t seem like a big job unless you consider that each piece of firewood must be picked up and set down again. If there are 300 pieces of firewood that means I have to bend down to pick up or put down wood 600 times. My back hurts already!
If I thought this prospect was daunting, how do you think young Benny Bunny felt when his hiding place was discovered after only a short time and he came bouncing out from under the firewood? Now he will have to find another place to hide.
“Don’t fret, Benny,” said Bonnie Bunny. “As long as we have each other, we can snuggle up together tonight. But for now, let’s get out of here. Quick like a bunny!”
You can see how tiny Bonnie is compared to the piece of firewood she’s sitting beside.
“Bonnie, see these sunflower seeds?
These are all a bunny needs.
I know we prefer the lettuce,
And the carrots I will get us.
“Even though the garden’s poor,
What I’ve noticed on my tour,
Is that still the weeds can grow,
Found some good ones that I know.
“All these seeds are empty shells,
They’re the ones the squirrel repels,
Leave those sunflower seeds alone,
Better eat the greens I’ve known.
“No more hiding in the wood,
There’s a place I know we could,
Enter in the veggie patch,
All new sprouts go down the hatch.”
Hipping, hopping, off they go,
To the place that Ben will show,
Ducking through the garden fence,
Once inside they’re not so tense.
“One important thing,” says Ben,
“Don’t eat more than eight or ten,
If we put on too much weight,
Can’t squeeze through the garden gate.”
Though they barely made it through,
They were thrilled to chew and chew.
Bonnie says, “I’ll just eat seven,
And I’ll come back to this heaven.”
Weeding Words
Here is my garden, looking a little bit neglected as I spend more time copy-editing than I do gardening. I suppose you could say I’m weeding, but it’s words I’m weeding out, not “weed” weeds.
A western flycatcher flew over to the fence and gave me a condescending look.
Ooooooh! Anneli! That doesn’t look good. You’ve got to get out there and clean up that mess you call a garden.
So I asked if he’d like to help me weed.
“Tell me you’re joking!” he said.
“I don’t think so!” he said. “… Awww … don’t look like that. You should have gotten on top of the job right at the start!”
Call me when the work is done.
“Weeding words,” she calls her job,
Didn’t know she’s such a snob.
Doesn’t get her hands too dirty
Asks for help from this lil birdie.
I’m no weeder, I must say,
Must learn that another day,
Weeding plants is bad enough,
Weading books is way too tough.
The Treasury Board
Today I put dry chopped up leaves into my garden to keep the winter weeds down and add organic matter to my sandy soil in the spring. I noticed that some of my strawberries had leapt overboard from the raised bed and were looking for a new home. To dig them up I moved the long board that lay alongside the raised bed (this board once helped to anchor the netting I had over the strawberries).
I pulled the board forward and found hazelnut shells, all empty, and all opened from the top (not cracked and left in two halves).
The stash of hazelnuts went down the whole length of the raised bed.
Each one was empty. Each one opened the same way, with the top eaten out, presumably by something with a small jaw and sharp teeth.
Not my Lincoln then. That squirrel would have hidden and stashed the nuts, possibly buried some near the trees where he sleeps, and the shells would have been cracked lengthwise.
Some weeks back I had seen a mouse in the strawberry bed, but this was a huge stash for a little mouse.
“It wasn’t me. Really, it wasn’t.”
My main suspect is Templeton (E.B.White’s rat). Since Charlotte’s Web, every rat in the world is named Templeton.
He is very brazen, but he’s cute, don’t you think? Once he tried to build a nest in our old truck. That was not so cute. He even went for a ride in it and came back without falling out. We had known he was in there but couldn’t get him out (until much later). After the Captain drove to the wharf to check the boat and came back home, Templeton was still hidden in a space in front of the door hinge.
“How do you like my new digs?”
So tomorrow I’ll go out to the strawberry bed and see if there is a tunnel dug through my newly added leaves that I put over the entrance at the side of the treasury board.
And then … we’ll see.
Help Yourself
This spring, a friend gave me some started sunflowers to plant in my garden. I had never had success with them, mainly because the wind often knocked them down as soon as they got more than a couple of feet tall. This time I planted them by the fence and tied the young plants to it as they grew.
Now they are taller than I am and besides making me happy whenever I look at them, they are making the birds in my yard happy.
I had been feeling guilty about not refilling the feeder this summer, but I hadn’t wanted to attract hawks (as I’ve done other years) and inadvertently killing the very birds I wanted to feed. I decided I could always fill the feeders when the weather got cooler and food became scarce.
But the nuthatches had other ideas. They’re used to helping themselves and somehow they knew that the sunflower seeds were ready to eat.
I had a very hard time getting any pictures of them because they are so fast, but here are a couple of photos that are not as blurry as the 40+ others that I deleted.
You may have to search for the little guys. They blend right in with the greens and grays of the garden.
It gives me a headache just looking at them hanging onto the stems upside down. When was the last time you sat upside down to eat?
I guess the Captain will have to do without his toasted, salted sunflower seeds, unless he buys them in the store.
wordsfromanneli 