Skeletons in the garden

North side tulips: white, purple & black

What a busy few days! The weather has been playing nice allowing us time to go outside and roll around in the dirt. New flowers and bushes are in their new homes while the existing beds got an update with new mulch. All of the tulips are up and blooming. But it's too bad that the tulips on the south side of the walk up to the house aren't as strong as the ones on the north side. Makes me wonder if our cocker spaniel, Jake and his winter habit of peeing right there, had something to do with it...ponders...

We keep our skeletons outside in the garden

A few days ago on Facebook, I made a post about zombie gnomes and how they'd go well with our skeleton flamingos. A friend commented and I had to take a photo of our skeletons that just chill with the orange tulips and (normally) mums. The flamingos aren't for a Halloween display, instead, we keep them outside year around. Kind of like the wall decals in the house of spiderwebs and spiders.

Doing my part to help

This weekend we also decided on a stain for our cedar fence. If you've been reading the blog then you remember the fence the boy and I built last year. After letting it weather for a bit, we decided to stain it. Using a semi-transparent, oil based stain we chose 'Burnt Hickory.' The picture doesn't do it justice, but the stain gives it a nice old, spooky vibe. We joked that we'd finally get to a project that we started but haven't finished. Now if we can get a ladder long enough to get to the peaks of the house to finish painting that.

On my own today, I decided to entertain myself by pulling dandelions from the yard. Filling two buckets that little side project took me almost two hours. I didn't get them all but I got 99% of them. I really don't like using chemicals on my lawn. Instead, I don't mind the manual labor of using a dandelion digger and bucket doing a quasi-duck waddle. I'm sure it's a hilarious sight for the neighbors, but I like the feeling of accomplishment.

Final Thoughts

Birds are great entertainment, not only for yourself but if you own cats. I know mine like to hang out in the enclosed back porch and watch their version of TV  Try to keep a variety of feeders and water/bath dishes throughout your yard. Most birds are territorial and don't like sharing, while different feeders accommodate the different feeding requirements of larger vs. smaller birds. And while you surely don't have to feed them everyday try to keep to a routine. Right now we have mourning doves, cardinals, golden finches, chickadees, house sparrows, and black birds that frequent our yard, sometimes we even get a blue jay. We're still holding out for hummingbirds and keep trying year after year.

Zone 5: Tomatoes, peppers, and eggplants should be already hardened to the outside temperature, but make sure to keep on eye on the small plants. Keep sowing lettuce, carrot, and sweet corn for a rotation of harvest times.