Rent is past due, Fat Boy!

My new tenant...


...is not paying his rent on time.


You heard me, Fat Boy!

And, yeah, I do have a problem with that!

dandelions are chock full of vitamin C and lots of nutritious stuff. And I haven't sprayed them, either. (If I did, half the green int he lawn would disappear.)

At The Muck

Another stop on Saturday was The Muck and IBA (Important Bird Area) along Route 287. The Muck is a marsh in every sense of the word. The area I visited is overgrown with cattails and various other marsh reeds. It's home to muskrat and beaver who are constantly altering the water levels to meet their needs. Several species of rails, herons and ducks make the area their home while trying to avoid the ubiquitous and contentious Canada Geese!

Since birds were at a premium on Saturday, I looked around for other things to photograph. The muskrat I saw was too quick to duck under the reeds and the turtles were not out sunning themselves. That left the plants.

Along the side of the boardwalk heading out to the blind, there are several patches of alders. Line the pines, they produce a small cone--if the beaver lets them live long enough.

Alder cones.

There are also thick patches of wild roses (Multiflora Rosa). Surprisingly there were still some rose hips on the ends of the canes. Normally, these are eaten by the birds. I've seen flocks of grackles, robins and starlings strip the plants bare in an hour or two. I've also seen turkeys leaping into the air to snatch the last few hips on the tippy-top canes. Like most rose hips they are chock full of vitamin-C, but these are too small for me to go nibbling on. Only the size of a raisin, there's only a thin skin of "meat" surrounding a large, hard seed.

Wild Rose hips.

And, being a marsh, there are Cattails. These are a little further gone than the ones I photographed up at the Montezuma Wildlife Refuge earlier in the week. Perhaps, the birds have started to shred them fro nesting materials. They are also a bit plumper.
Cattails at The Muck

Another Aerie Project 2

I put Terry to work today also. We had ordered about 200 bulbs from Burpee and they came via UPS yesterday. I handed her a trowel and a shovel (short handle version, actually a spade cause at 4'11" that's about all she could handle) and told her to put them where she wanted in the flower beds. Some were checkered lilies and others were daffodils. She also had six mums that needed to be put in the soil.

The mums went in the bed where the zukes were and the checkered lilies went in the shaded area up by the front door.

The daffodils also went in the bed near the front door but further out where they will get more sun.

We still have two bags of mixed wild flower bulbs that will be planted among the trees behind the bird feeders. I've been slowly removing some of the pencil thin saplings that have been crowding that area so there's a bit more sun shining on it and more visibility too. With any luck, there won't be scads of stone just beneath the surface and these small bulbs will pop up in a multitude of color in the spring.

Goldenrod and Yellow Jackets

I mentioned that the goldenrod was about to burst into bloom a week or so ago. Well, some of it has.

This is one of the most undeservedly maligned plants out there. Everyone believes it is responsible for the hay fever (runny nose, itchy eyes, etc.) which really begins to affect people about the same time as these yellow flowers appear. In reality, it is not the goldenrod that is the cause. Another plant, one with non-descript green flower that blooms at the same time: ragweed.

I used to be terribly allergic to grass, tree and especially ragweed pollen. From mid-August to October I would be one messed up person. And then it would start all over in mid-April when the trees would start blooming. I have undergone desensitization shots to reduce the problem to almost nothing. Still, when it's time to pull ragweed from the garden up north, I don my long sleeve shirt and leather gloves because if any part of the plant touches bare skin....

I used to be allergic to bee and wasp stings, too, but a long series of shots fixed that problem and I no longer have to face the possibility of sudden death should I run into a yellow jacket (a type of wasp) or fifty.

The goldenrod flower blooms just when many flowers have faded and its many florets supply pollen and nectar for insects well into the fall. In fact, while milkweed plants and flowers may fuel the Monarch Butterfly's caterpillar and young adult, it is the goldenrod in one form or another that sees that it can migrate south in the fall.



These may not be my favorite insects (Yellow Jackets) but this is one of the busier fueling stations in the yard right now.

More farming at the Aerie

The sun came out around noon and the breeze picked up about that tie, too. between the two, the grass dried out nicely by 5 PM so I knew it was time to get the mower out and do the first cut of the season before it got out of hand. Growing on clay fill with virtually no topsoil or organic material, I like to see the clover and other pasture grasses mixed in with the "real" grass. It's still pretty sparse in places where erosion on the slope has washed even the clay away and left stone exposed or where water has flooded the smallest depression and killed the roots, but it seems to be progressing.

I noticed that the wild daisy population is a little thinner this year but there are still clumps of plants beginning to pop up along the margins of the "lawn." If I can find any along the road or on our second driveway, I'll consider moving them to areas where they can contribute to the landscape. The same goes for any daylilies or tigerlilies I might come across. I might even raid the beds up at the Bolt Hole for some. They transplant pretty easily. Come to think of it there are rugosa roses up there and black-eyed susans as well as daisies and raspberries. Might have to go plant hunting up there as soon as they grow enough to recognize.

Of course, all that will also have to wait until the blackflies dwindle in numbers. Only the breeze blowing this evening kept them manageable. There was more risk of inhaling one than being bitten. But I just know that the blackflies up in the Adirondacks are out for blood. They have certainly gotten enough of mine in the past. So I will bide my time. I will have to cut the grass up there in a week or so, but that's what the mesh bug suits are made for.

Farming at the Aerie

Today was a farming day. I even got Terry out to assist with some of the planting and we both got to bitch about the black flies.

We started with the area next to the main entrance to the house. The tiered beds that I built behind the retaining wall that are next to the driveway. There’s a bit of a challenge with these beds as there’s a wide range of sun light here. The bed next to the door gets very little light while the one at the bottom end gets quite a bit.


This photo, taken at 4 o’clock, gives you an idea of the difference. The top is still mostly in shade while the bottom has been in sun all day long. We could have put some shrubs here but this is where snow gets piled during the winter and anything growing too tall would be damaged by the weight of the snow.


The sunny bottom shelf got a day lily and several hosta and still there’s room for more.


The middle shelf, which gets a little shade during the day as the sun moves behind the chimney, got salvia, and mountain pinks in white and blue. The pinks will, hopefully spread to occupy much of this bed.


The top bed, the shadiest plot of all got some bleeding hearts, liriope and some caladium bulbs.

Terry did some of the planting of the pinks and the caladium bulbs (I can never tell which end is the pointy up end) in the three beds here. But she really went to work on the raised bed.


She planted a euymonius (a white and green variegated shrub), a pair of heather, chives, basil, oregano, and thyme. Dill seed too.

There were some strawberry sets too, but I put them in on the other end of the raised bed. There's still room for some lavender or more heather.


The left end of the raised bed has the 10 strawberry sets. The middle and right end have the heather, euymonius and herbs.

Terry also planted two deck boxes with pansies and geraniums. She has a couple of tomatoes to put in to deck pots and a six pack of pachysandra to put under the west end of the deck.

There’s still a sizable pile of soil in the yard that I have to move but after hauling ten or twelve wheelbarrow loads today, my back protested.

Aerie Farmer

Early tomorrow I'll be playing farmer while Terry hustles off to a morning doctor's appointment for some blood work. (I've asked her to get me an appointment so I can, hopefully, put an end to the coughing and hacking I've been doing lately. Some is undoubtedly allergy related but some is more bronchial.)

She picked up a bunch of perrenial plants today to go in the beds. Not nearly as many plants as I thought she would get but it's a start. There's some hosta and bleeding hearts; some heather and some eumonimus(?); some ornamental grasses and some mountain pinks. Many will go in the area next to the driveway where there is partial shade. But the salvia and a few others will go out in the raised beds where there's some more sun.

She got some tomato plants too but they will go into pots on the deck. I want to see if Wally-World or Agway have any strawberries and or blackberry plants I can put out. If they do, I'll fight the rabbits and squirrels tooth and nail for the fruits.