Tag Archives: gardening

Blooming things and a close squirrel call.

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The hostas by our kitchen landing are having a good year.

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A really good year. Tall and full of pale purple blooms.

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The day lilies that were dug up by our neighbor’s tractor when our water line burst a few years ago have finally come back to life.

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Half are yellow, half are this interesting double ruffle peach and coral.

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Sadly these two by the road are full of weeds..

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But the colors are spectacular.

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In other news… His Lordship almost caught the dreaded red b*tch.

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That rotten red rodent was sitting on the stone wall chattering at him, taunting him … swishing her tail and daring him to lunge.

So he did.

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But sadly, he missed… and she disappeared into the wall.

Almost, Dudley.

Almost.

🥴

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What’s blooming?

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Let’s take a walk around the garden, shall we….

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Candy cane dianthus.

Almost good enough to eat.

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A tri color pot of begonias on the kitchen porch.

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A red astilbe, clashing with the barn red barn.

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Pink astible out back.

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I love the blooms on these flowers. They’re delightfully weird.

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I can’t remember what kind of daisies these are, but they’re doing well and no one is eating them… so I really don’t care.

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Purple bee balm.

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A fabulous magenta shade.

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Something purple.

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Something red.

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And something wonderful the woodchucks nibbled down to a nub shortly after I took the picture.

😩

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He’s a determined trimmer.

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As I feared, the shrubbery at the front of our house received an extreme haircut.

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I know my husband needs room to replace the porch…

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But it doesn’t mean I wasn’t cringing when he fired up the trimmer.

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And when he was finished with those?

He moved along to the bushes in front of our office, which are equally as large but harder to reach.

How hard you ask?

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Hard enough that he had to come inside, open the windows and trim from there.

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Where there’s a will, my husband will find a way.

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Peonies are popping.

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Peonies are the best.

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There, I said it.

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I’ll take a peony bouquet over roses any day of the week and twice on Sunday.

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They’re full and vibrant and smell heaven sent.

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We have two large bushes near our back deck and they never disappoint.

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They’re too high for woodchuck bubblers.

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For which I’m quite thankful.

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His Lordship enjoys them as well.

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Though that might just have been the sun.

😊

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Gardening woes.

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It’s bad enough I have to battle baby woodchucks stripping my flower gardens bare.

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They’re adorable, but it’s very hard to make them stop nibbling.

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I heard shredding Irish Spring around the plants helps, so I’m all in.

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My other problem this year?

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A mouse.

Who beheaded all my lovely marigolds and dragged the blooms under our shed.

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I didn’t even have a chance to photograph the pretty alternating yellow and orange combination before all I was left with was this…

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Because as soon as the mouse ripped off all the blooms?

The chucks ate 3/4’s of the leaves.

But I fixed them.

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I planted a row of taller crown daisies and no one likes those.

😉

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Rhodies

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Our rhododendrons finally popped.

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At least on the front side where my husband didn’t butcher them with the shears.

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For a sheer burst of color they’re hard to beat.

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And I’m not the only one who loves them.

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Giant bumblebees swarm ever them all day long…

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And it does my heart good to see their little legs covered in pollen.

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Long live the bees!

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🐝🐝🐝

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Up close baby chucker.

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My first baby chucker count was off by two. There are five baby chuckers and my flower gardens are doomed.

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I try to make friends by sitting on the barn porch and giving them apples.

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I do this so they’ll leave my carefully tended blooms alone.

Sometimes it works, other times I’m left with a bed of bare twigs.

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It seems there’s always one brave little fella in every litter… the one who edges closer and checks me out more thoroughly.

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Yes, they munch my flowers.

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But damn, they’re cute.

❤️

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I love my state.

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It’s a sad irony that the following post was scheduled for today. A mere 41 hours after a gunman murdered 18 of my fellow Mainers.

Our beloved state is still reeling from the shock and my area is still sheltering in place. Crazy times.

My neighbor posted this on FB today.

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Another child has lost another parent. It’s heartbreaking… and no state, no city, no town can ever be immune.

We thought we were.

We were wrong.

And now… my post.

Even with all the bad luck we’ve been having trying to renovate our house, there’s no place I’d rather make my home than Maine. It’s laid back, scenically beautiful, has abundant seafood and the most craft breweries per capita in the nation.

Here are a few other reasons I love it.

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That’s my kind of library.

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🤣

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Thanks mom.

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Someday I’m going to have to drive by this woman’s house and take a peek at her gardens. Judging from the amount of flowers she gives away, it must be amazing.

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Halloween is right around the corner and these are some pretty impressive arachnids.

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Yes sir.

That’s a spider.

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