Deadheading and Watering

Deadheading = snipping the dead blossoms off of your blooming plants. After your plants have blossomed, they think their work is done. They have created their seed pods. 

You need to trick them by cutting off the dead blossoms. A scissors will do the trick or you can pinch them off with your fingernails. If you use the latter method, you will see what they mean by having a "green thumb."

You will be rewarded with continuously blooming plants. 

Be sure to use fertilizer too or your nutrients will be drained out of the soil and your plant will get spindly and the green will fade out. And water them, lots and lots. It's been hot and dry here, so they need all the help they can get. They like the hot, but not so much the dry.

Recent visitors shown below. 

Mama Turkey and her three adorable little pipsqueaks. They made their appearance a few weeks ago. I haven't seen them in the last few days so I hope they are ok.

Mr. Toad, living by my chives. He's cute, warts and all.

We have been blessed with many a gorgeous sunset recently. 

Never two alike, as you can see by the photos below.

Exact same piece of my sky, at different times.

Stay cool and enjoy your summer!

Signs of Spring

In my neck of the woods, we get very excited to see these signs of rebirth.  Every year they look pretty much the same, but it never gets boring.

Crocus, crocuses, or croci. Yes, all three are correct.

What are these? I think I asked last year, but I forgot.

Rhubarb. Yum!

I have never before checked out the rhubarb this early. I can see it from my kitchen window and when it is tall enough to cook with, that's when I notice it. I love how ripply the new leaves are. 

Grape hyacinths. Sorry this one is a bit blurry but they are just so adorable I couldn't leave them out.

Chives. Grow some. Really, you should. They grow like weeds, or even better than weeds. And they are really delicious chopped and mixed in with cottage cheese.

Yarrow. Cut the flowers, hang them upside down for a while and you have some beautiful golden-colored dried flowers to use in wreaths or vases.

Bee balm. Good thing I left the identifying stick near it or I would have never remembered what it was.

A bed of tulips.

That will soon look like this!

Sprouts of hope

A few brave plants are poking their heads out into our still chilly air. 

Hey, in Wisconsin, this is a reason to party!

Hardy mums (with a few remaining clumps of snow!)

Tulips

Iris

Don't judge my mess. I leave last year's dead stuff as a cover and so far, so good. Helps to protect the plants during the winter.

I'm working on these. A table center mat and four matching mug rugs. Something to bring my kitchen out of winter and into spring. I'll share the finished project, hopefully within the next few days. Where do those days go so quickly? 

I hope your week is going fabulously!

A Bloomin' Good Year

Quite a few blooms on my Christmas Cactus this year. The secret is 12 hours of light and 12 hours of darkness. I don't put any effort into that schedule, but the location where this plant sits provides just about the right amount of light and dark.

This gorgeous specimen is a century old, give or take a few decades. 

An elderly gentleman gave it to my dad, probably 30-40 years ago. This man was 90-something at that time and this plant belonged to his mother. My dad gave it to me about 20 or so years ago.

The center stalks are sturdy, like tree trunks, and covered with bark.

It sits upon a blue, drop-leaf table that my grandfather made for me when I was very young. That makes the table 45-50 years old. It is painted blue and has cute little decals applied to the surface. Remember those decals on furniture? The matching chairs are buried under the plant. This little table and chairs lived for too many years in a pole shed, but now exist cozily in our living room. 

A place of honor for a geriatric plant. Perfect.

Feed the Birds

The view from our kitchen window.

We feed our birds three types of food: black oiled sunflower seeds, niger (thistle) seed, and suet. Left to right above: a suet feeder, two sunflower feeders (one wood, one red metal), and then a mesh sack and two cylinder feeders, the latter three holding thistle seed. 

This set-up brings a nice variety of pretty birds, while at the same time is not attractive to other birds. These "other" birds might be hungry and in need of food but they tend to scare away some of the more skittish birds. Our regulars include four types of woodpeckers, cardinals, purple house finches, goldfinches, juncos, chickadees, white-crowned sparrows, red-breasted nuthatches, mourning doves. . . and these are just our winter birds.

Here's one of our frequent flyers. So fun to watch!

Fall is in the air

A dilemma. Fresh air through the open windows (and I do mean "country fresh") or closed windows and stuffy house but minus those certain scents that go with country living.

Easy! Open windows! It's worth it, really, this time of year.

This year's pumpkin count: 57

Pumpkins just glow with fun. No matter what their age, kids LOVE pumpkins. We enjoy this time of year and having family and friends come out to pick out their own special pumpkin. 

Some choose a big pumpkin and some like little ones.

 Milkweed pods fully open, spreading their seeds on the wind. Yay butterflies!

I hope you find a pumpkin that makes you smile as you celebrate fall in your corner of the world.

Make a Garland of Indian Corn

This is the third year we have displayed these garlands of Indian Corn.  For most of the year, they hang from the rafters in the garage. We hang them in the center of the garage and somehow they have remained safe from mice. 

This was an easy project, but might be cost-prohibitive unless you grow your own corn. But, as I said, it will last for years if stored properly. And I really love the look of it on our house.

Bundle three ears of corn and bind tightly around the husks with florist's wire. Use the ends of the same wire to attach each bunch securely to heavy jute twine, leaving some space between bunches. Make loops on the end of each swag and hang from hooks or nails. We leave the nails there and use them to hang our Christmas greenery.

Below is my absolutely favorite perennial: Gaillardia aristata. As you see below, all stages of blooms are attractive: buds, full blooms, and spent blooms. It blooms for most of the summer. I have never deadheaded it, but an online search recommends it. It also recommends dividing every 2-3 years, but I've never done so. I do notice that it spreads up and down my flower bed, which I love (nothing better than free plants!).

Enjoy your week!

Another "Quilt for Kids"

Look at the adorable fabric for my next Quilt for Kids! Just arrived in my mailbox today. So fun! Robert Kaufman offers this collection, designed by Amy Schimler, specially for Quilts for Kids.

The panel will actually be the backing, so how cute will that be? I'm really excited to get started on it.

In other news -- deadheading is your friend. 

I am always hesitant to be too aggressive in snipping off the spent blossoms from my annuals. 

This year, I put pansies in my window box because they will withstand our Wisconsin frosts that occur this time of year. I love them because you can plant them very early with no worries. 

Just a week or so ago, they were not much more than greenery since I had deadheaded a bunch of expired blossoms. I could see lots of buds coming, but only one or two blooms. 

And now look at them! They are solid blooms and the colors are so very bright! 

I wish I had taken a picture of my window box full of greenery so you could see the progress.

As soon as the danger of frost has passed, 

I will repot the window box with an assortment of other annuals.

Shown above is a viola hanging basket that I bought at the same time. 

They don't seem to need any pruning. 

I plan to plant them directly in the ground eventually, but I'm not sure how long they will continue blooming. They love the cool temps right now, but can't stand the heat. 

Signs of Spring

I have been working on this table runner, which hasn't taken much work at all. It was part of a huge bag of partially completed projects that I bought at Goodwill. In this case, the entire top was already pieced, so I just made a sandwich and quilted it. Next comes the binding and it will be done!

Do you see that dark object in the background? It's a knitted scarf of mine that my cat made into a nest. I just leave it like that because it concentrates all the cat hair into one area. A great tip that I thought I'd pass on to you all. It isn't easy to trick a cat.

The woman (or man) that pieced this top really had some talent. Her corners are perfect. 

Here is the bag of scraps. Only after I purchased it ($6.99!) and got it home did I discover that all the scraps are either cut into shapes or sewn into blocks. They aren't true (messy) scraps like I have that are all random sized pieces.

Whoah, what's this? Looks like somebody is anxious to plant his onion sets! 

He will also plant radishes (I'm not a huge fan, but he is) and this year we are trying spinach. Last year we grew leaf lettuce and just kept cutting it and cutting it and it kept coming back for a long time. We ate it for quite a while until it started getting bitter.

Crocus. Is the plural crocuses, croci, crocus? Googling produces differing opinions on this matter. I'll go with crocus. 

Nice shadow; somebody needs photography lessons.

Don't know what these are (below). 

They bloom early with the crocus and they are much tinier than they look in this photo. 

That's all for now. 

Wisconsinites get pretty excited about springtime, hence the post full of signs of spring!