This Week Was a Blur

Most of you have probably already figured out that I rarely sit still.  I generally have at least two projects going at once, so I'm used to skipping from thing to thing to thing.  This week, though, I had WAY too many things lined up to do. 

My rose propagation exhibit at yesterday's Culpeper flower show was a big hit.  There weren't enough people there at any given time for me to do any dedicated demonstrations, but I did answer a LOT of questions. 

 

 

What's that I see in the center of the table with the rest of the items in my display?  That would be the award given to the best educational exhibit, scoring 95 points or higher.  I was in total shock when I saw it.  I don't do these things for awards or recognition ... I get my reward when people go home and have success when they try what I teach them.  (It's still really cool to win, though.)

 

 

 

I have two new game camera photos to show you.  In its new spot overlooking part of the Rose Field, I captured two decent photos.  Night #1 had one photo of a deer ... look carefully on the right.

 

 

 

Night #2, the camera captured another image of a fox.

 

 

 

I mentioned that I was out of town from Saturday until Tuesday of last week, helping my brother.  He and his wife are renovating her mother's former house near Abingdon, Virginia. My brother is a VERY talented kitchen installer by trade, and he gets to put his considerable talents to work on his own project this time ... updating the place to make it into a comfortable second home.   My part of the renovation will be to paint the cabinets. I'm working on a custom color that I know you're going to love.

 

 

 

What am I doing today?  The weather is beautiful and it's a great day to work on the new rose bed that I'm putting in along the fence behind our garage.

 

 

 

I hope all of you have a great Sunday!!

 

Rose Propagation Display at the Culpeper Flower Show

Tomorrow is the annual Culpeper Garden Club Flower Show.  I was asked by the club to do an educational display ... hard to do something showy right now since it's early in the season and none of the roses have any flowers on them.  After thinking on it for a while, I decided to make a display to teach folks how to root roses from cuttings ... using baby roses from the greenhouse as the live material in the display.

The kitties always provide more help than I can handle when I'm working on something important like this.  (Here you see Alice trying to make me believe that she isn't interested in stealing the cap from my glue stick.)

 

 

As I began to dry fit the parts of the display board, Alice pitched in to add ballast so the board wouldn't tip over.

 

 

 

Being helpful like this is hard work and it makes a kitty sleepy.

 

 

 

Since helping was obviously wearing Alice out, Dorothy pitched in to give her a hand.  (and entertain herself by playing with Alice's tail.)

 

 

 

Here is the rough result ... I will do a more pleasing job of arranging the plants and photos once I'm at the show tomorrow.  I went old-school with this display, with hand-mounted photos and labels pinned to the backboard.

 

 

 

If you're near Culpeper, Virginia, and you want to learn to propagate roses, plan to visit the Culpeper Garden Club Flower Show tomorrow, Saturday, April 20.  I will be there from noon to 5:00 to answer questions.  If I can, I am planning to do live demonstrations throughout the day.  (that's what the bouquet of florist roses is for.)

The horticulture and education portion of the show is in the Hazel River Inn Armory at 197 E. Davis St, Culpeper, VA.   Designs will be displayed throughout the beautifully-restored Hill House at 501 South East Street.   Admission is free.

 

What Happens While the People Are Sleeping

I have been told by more than one person that it's important to be patient when trying to capture photos of wildlife with a game camera.  Just like I promised to do in my last post, I left my camera in place and didn't mess with it at all ... for four whole days!  (This wasn't too difficult to do, since I was out of town during that time ... from Saturday morning until Tuesday night.) 

This morning, I anxiously went to the barn to retrieve the memory card from the camera ... hoping that there had been some action for it to photograph.  I was not disappointed.

Here is a big fat groundhog.  (My camera takes color photos during the day, and infrared B&W photos at night.)

 

 

I got lots of photos of deer over the course of my absence.  Night #1 yielded these ...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Night #2 was very fruitful.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The camera only captured one photo on Night #3.  (Peek-a-boo!)

 

 

 

No deer on Night #4 ... but I got a pretty decent photo of a fox!

 

 

 

As I was walking to and from the camera, I noticed that some of the roses in one particular section of the Rose Field have been nibbled on by what I assume was deer.  I have the camera trained on that spot and the path that leads to it, so I hope to have evidence of the nibblers by the end of the week.  (Believe me, it's going to be really hard for me to leave the camera alone till then.)

 

Sunday Snapshot: Groundhog Photobomb

I have been finding deer tracks in the back part of my garden.   I grabbed my trusty game camera, and set it up to see if I could catch some photos of them.  After three days of patiently waiting, I checked the memory card to see what I had.  There was one photo ... this one:

I laughed out loud when I saw it, and I hope you do, too.

Happy Sunday, Everyone!

(I moved the camera to catch a slightly different angle of that part of our property, and I will patiently wait a little bit longer this time to check to see what I get.)

The First Rose of the Year

It's always fun every year to see which will be the first rose in the greenhouse to bloom.  This year, I am particularly excited to see the first flower on a rose that is new to me, that I have never seen flower in person.

I am pleased to introduce to you, 'Rosa acicularis'

I wish you could smell this ... it's Heavenly!

 

 

This flower was a bud two days ago, while I was releasing the ladybugs that I harvested from the inside the house.

 

 

 

My plant is tiny right now ... only about 6" tall.  I brought it home with me as a sucker, pinched from a flowerbed at the B&B where we stayed in Denali, Alaska, last summer.  At that time, I didn't know what rose it was ... I just knew that it was interesting and healthy and would make the perfect souvenir for my garden.

 

Photo of the rose at the B&B in Denali.

 

 

Thorny stems and lovely leaves.

 

 

I remember being amazed that this little rose could withstand the subzero temperatures of an Alaskan winter.  It's a fairly short grower, not quite two feet tall, and it had suckered quite profusely.

 

Thorny, thorny, thorny.

 

 

Beautiful red hips.

 

 

Using my foot for perspective.

 

 

It will be interesting to see if this plant behaves the same way here in Virginia.  I will have to be careful where I put it when I plant it in the garden ... placing it in a spot where it can sucker and spread without getting out of bounds.

Ladybugs

This old house of ours has cracks and crevices that are sufficient entry points in the fall for ladybugs seeking places for their winter hibernation.  Most of them end up dead on the floor or a windowsill, and the ones that survive are endlessly entertaining for the cats.

Some actually successfully hibernate.  They emerge from their hiding places when warm weather arrives (like it did on Wednesday) and we find them trying to figure out a way to get outside, usually crawling on or around the windows. 

 

 

 

The other day, I went around the house with a jar and gathered up all the ladybugs I saw ... and I took them out to the greenhouse to help rid the roses of their spring crop of aphids.  As I was putting each ladybug into the jar, I was promising them that I was taking them to a place where their children would always have enough to eat.

 

 

 

 

When I got to the greenhouse and opened the jar, the ladybugs quickly crawled to the rim and set off to find suitable places to set up housekeeping.

 

 

 

Caught an action shot of a ladybug taking flight in this photo!

 

 

There are plenty of aphids on the roses in the greenhouse to go around.  It's not the ladybugs themselves that are going to do the bulk of the eating, though.  The adult ladybugs mate and lay their eggs in locations with an ample food supply, and it's the larvae who are voracious little aphid eating machines.  (See what the larvae look like in THIS post from last year.)

 

 

 

I've done my part.  It's all up to the ladybugs now.

 

 

Silly Dorothy

I thought I would share a little micro-glimpse of my morning with you.  I have been sitting here with my laptop at the kitchen counter, thinking that I should sort and put away all of the things that have piled up on the other end of the counter.  Dorothy has now decided that this would be a great spot to hang out and chill.

 

 

Most of us have spots like this in our homes ... the places where items are put down (instead of put AWAY) and piles gradually accumulate. 

 

In this view, the most obvious thing (besides Dorothy, of course) is Daniel's stuffed chicken dog toy that I took away from Ruby.  The paper that Dorothy is laying on is my calendar.  Underneath that is the top of a pair of old jeans that I cut up for a project.  There's also the tape dispenser, two remote controls for the TV in the corner cupboard, a red gift bag with a tax receipt letter on top of it, and my DSLR camera (which is sitting on a pile of TWO of my genealogy notebooks).  To the left, and out of your view, is a pile that contains Miss Mustard Seed's book, a Christmas tour brochure, a small pile of more tax receipts, business cards, and a pad of graph paper.

 

I admit it, I make piles ... at least the rest of the room is tidy.

 

Dorothy has settled in even more now, so I will not be working on that pile this morning.  Sweet dreams, Dorothy.