The New Place

With the move, selling of the house, and the gruelling work schedule I have decided to rid my clutter.
My blog has been moved to http://pavementtoprairie.wordpress.com

Hope to see you there.

Spring Fever!

I can feel the rush begin as soon as the sun hits my face and I feel warmth on my cheeks instead of the bitter cold of winter.

Today was 15 degrees and I began to itch to get my hands dirty. The snow has almost all melted, and I was able to better asses the vole damage. what appeared as a maze of a million tunnels criss crossing the lawn and a small square inch of bark missing from my tree. I knew they were there, as I was greeted at the front door by one of these little vermits a few weeks ago. I could only cross my fingers and pray for the 200 or so bulbs that I planted in the garden. Thankfully, it appears as though there was not a piled of bulbs found as it was at my neighbours house, where the voles decided to make a pantry out of their bulb collection and keep them in one place.

I began the tomato and pepper plants indoors a few weeks ago, and while the tomato plants have flourished, I am still waiting on many peppers to poke.

We have more news, we are looking at moving, so my little garden might be passed to another novice or even an expert that will see my baby flourish.

First Snow in the Garden

200 bulbs

Wow what a long garden blogging break.. I can't believe many people still checked in on me. I want to thank everyone for the compliments on my photos over the year, I am currently taking my digital photography designation and have decided to incorporate my photos with this blog.

I am afraid that with my mother fighting breast cancer, 2 deaths in the family, the IVF that forced me into bedrest due to ovarian hyperstimulation the garden has been last on the agenda. Most of the plants fended for themselves and thrived, others did not fair so well. I fear my peonys might have gotten brown spot, pouted and are not speaking to me anymore. My roses surprisingly have thrived and love their home. There were soo many tomatoes, that the neighbours were over daily picking their fill.

It seems like the entire month of October has been raining and cold. What happened to our Ontario Indian summer? Finally Saturday morning brought a break in the clouds for the morning hours and I was able to clean out the garden of unwanted plants and get everything ready for winter. Then I looked at the amount of bulbs C had purchased for me.. 200, tulips, hyacinths, alliums.. I had 2 dilemmas, 1 where was I going to plant all of these, and how badly was my back going to hurt after planting all these bulbs. I managed to dig the last hole just as the skies opened and the rain returned.

I am confused about the lavender though, if anyone has ideas on how I am to overwinter lavender, then I will gladly follow it.

White Cosmo

Through a new lens

Some photos from my walk this evening I thought I would share.

Prince Charming

Yesterday we had some serious weather here in Ontario.. this cloud took over in less than 5 minutes everything went pitch black... seconds later we lost power, and the neighbours outdoor dining canopies flew around smacking into walls and I was not sticking around to see them smash into windows too.. we retreated to the basement.. Where we found....

Prince charming!!!! my little toad and tomato gaurd!!! He had saught shelter from the storm too in my basement window well. He looked so desperate to come in, but I couldn't risk letting in his friend the mouse too so we just made faces to one another and kissed through the glass while the storm went on..

Prior to the rain I took my new Nikon D70 out for a test spin in the field, actually in search of a butterfly, which I never seem to fidn when my cameras are cocked locked and loaded. (why is it that the second I put them down a Monarch appears, fluttering aimlessly and precariously close to me). I did find Thistle in fields of milk weed.

Blame it on the heat..

I have been flipping terrible at keeping up on here. Everything is moving soo fast right now.
I will catch up later this week but I got my new Nikon D70..
Here are the first pics taken with it.

Friend or Foe?

It was such a killer hot day today, I decided to let the plants suffer through the extreme heat and then give them a good drench this evening. I am glad I did, because had I wasted water and done the watering this morning I would have missed this. The catepillars must have just hatched for I caught them feeding on one rose leaf and the egg sacs are at the tip. You can actually see the eggs in the upper left hand corner (looks slightly shimmery) anyhow, I have no idea what they are, although I have a sneaking suspicion that they are fall web worms, and they can cause a lot of damage ( a lot more than what they already did to one single leaf in a few hours). I put them in a mason jar, then I clipped the stem around this leaf just in case one of them was fast to leap to another feed source.
Anyone know what they may be?

Edited to Add: I also found a few green aphids on my roses, I transferred the ladybugs over to the rose bush and I set out yellow sticky notes covered in vaseline. If this doesn't work tomorrow I will look at other options.