One of the many sunflowers on our property.
We feed the birds, which means that they and the squirrels deposit sunflower seeds throughout the yard. The seeds sprout. Sunflowers grow. Seed eating birds glean the flower heads. The seeds they miss fall to the ground. The cycle renews, year after year.
My sister-in-law has and tends an amazing flower garden. See for yourself.
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Bounty from our berry patch – two plus cups of strawberries and one of haskap, our third harvest of each. Very tasty and enough to freeze for later.
It’s a flower though it may not look like one.
As our garden transformed last fall from actively growing into dormant and dying, we left many stems and other material in place instead of tidying up all of the dead stuff.
A few days ago this Baltimore Oriole was a benefactor of our decision, peeling fibers off of this Butterfly Bush stem for its mates’ nest.
I believe we will continue gardening in this wildlife friendly way.
We have a healthy crop of lettuce – on December 27th! It is partly because the hoop tunnel moderates night time low temperatures. I cannot help thinking that it is largely because night time temperatures have been fairly mild compared to the historical average – generally -5C or warmer. Daytime highs have been 5C, give or take a few degrees.
Are these temperatures the new normal? Hard to say. We will find out as the years roll out.
The goldfinches have gleaned many of the seeds out of this sunflower head in our front yard.
This brilliant spiderwort happily lives in our yard adjacent to a tree stump.
From the few examples planted in a flower front bed a few years ago, the Purple Coneflowers have needed no care at all and multiplied in a way very pleasing to us, and to pollinators both resident and passing through. There’s a honeybee on a flower in the lower right quadrant.
Our garlic is in, forty five bulbs worth. That is enough to plant this fall and have plenty to use in cooking well into, if not all the way through, winter. While probably not enough to be completely self sufficient, it is enough to reduce our dependence on store bought garlic.
previouslytexan 