bee keepers or bee havers, that is the question

this past week, darry and i attended the 2009 nashville area beekeepers association beginning beekeepers workshop.  what was once a one day workshop is now a 4 day event with classes given for three weeknights and an all day workshop on saturday.  talk about information overload!  there are so many things to consider with bees that just thinking about it is intimidating.  we hope to add bees to our yard and have joined the association and the mentor program.  look for future posts on our adventures in beekeeping.  

urban bluebirds

yesterday afternoon i was looking out the dining room window into the garden when i spied these two going in and out of the old birdhouse that hangs near the vegetable garden.  for the last two years, a persistent little wren has staked out the house and spent hours calling out for a perspective spouse to join him.  guess he's out of luck this year and in more ways than one-no house, no spouse!

the male spent most of his time keeping guard while the female went about the business of setting up the house.  at least this is what i am assuming, we could not get close to the garden to watch and i had to carefully circle around the house and watch from the back steps.

mr. met, as darry has named him since he is wearing the right colors, does a fine job of watching over his mrs.

this is a branch of one of the many hackberry trees in our yard, they seem to favor the hackberries.  if you look carefully, you can see that mr. met is on the left and mrs. met is on the right.

we have been seeing bluebirds in the neighborhood for quite some time now.  this year we noticed that they were flying through our yard and stopping to hang out in some of the trees, specifically the hackberries close to the house and our persimmon tree in the back.  it is wonderful to see them up close in the garden, hopefully they will hang out with us and eat lots of bugs for us!!!

for more info on bluebirds, check out this very informative website from cornell university.  it even has a recording of their songs and chatter to help you identify them.

http://www.birds.cornell.edu/AllAboutBirds/BirdGuide/Eastern_Bluebird_dtl.html#coolfacts

shiitake in the garden

at last weekend's lawn and garden show, darry found himself to be the only person in the audience for a log innoculation demonstration.  a man from "the farm", a middle tennessee   mushroom business, was going to show people how to cultivate shiitake mushrooms using pre-innoculated pegs and hardwood limbs in order to grow the tasty little mushrooms in your own back yard.  since darry was the only one who actually showed up, he got the advanced course as well as one on one instruction.

for those of you who happen to know my husband, you know that this was the equivalent of a superbowl trip to didneyland.  but don't be fooled by his enthusiasm, if you take a few minutes to actually talk to him about his beloved fungi friends, you will find that he is actually quite knowledgeable on the subject, right down to the latin names for many of the species both poisonous and edible.  after all, he gave a short lecture on mushrooms at the same show on sunday and it is up on my demo garden blog.

after saturday's private lesson, darry began gathering wood from a neighbor who had cut down a tree with the intention of cultivating a shiitake garden in the back yard.  the wood was free but came with a promise to share some of the shrooms with our neighbor.  we're keeping our fingers crossed that this will be successful, it will take about 9 months for the first flush.

here is darry drilling holes in the logs for the innoculated pegs.

these are what the pegs look like

darry tapping the pegs in with a hammer

sealing the pegs in with wax

our new garden, shiitake logs out back in the shade near the leaf corral

spring break

can you believe  it?  spring is not only on the horizon, it is all around us!  so many plants are breaking out and they are growing rapidly.  it won't be long before we are whining about the heat of summer.  we are waiting for the ground to warm up and for the danger of frost to pass before we put anything out in the garden.  the only thing to look at right now are all of the flowers that are preparing to put on a show.

our little clematis is growing by leaps and bounds.  it nearly doubled in size in just a few days.

this peony plant is much taller than the others and it is also as tall as the frame support around it.

so many daffodils

in this little bed at the end of the driveway, there are many hyacinths preparing to bloom and even more black eye susans sprouts.

our little peach tree is covered in blooms.

a close up of one of the peach blossoms, they are so pretty.