Veggie Garden

 My Majesty made for him a garden anew in order to present to him vegetables and all beautiful flowers.

-  Offerings of Thutmose III to Amon-Ra (1500 BCE)

Well, Thutmose III may have had   a great veggie garden. He would not be envious of mine.   I'm just not a veggie-growing person. Flowers are more my speed.  After the excitement of the hummingbird the other day, cabbages and  radishes needed to be dealt with. They just weren't pulling their weight.

 The whole veggie growing experience is basically an experiment .  

  I'm partial to trying out new flowers. And of course SWEET PEAS.....seen above. I can grow those. The broccoli I planted went to little yellow flowers and keeled over this week. So, I ripped them out. 
 
 Then I dug up the knee hi sweet peas I had buried at the back of the hill, and plopped them where the broccoli used to stand.  ( Oh and the fence. Remember  to remind me to never do a fence again. Just didn't work quite that well. Very claustrophobic inside the dirt patch. No room to dig. Was a good idea at the time, but the deer don't seem too interested in this hill garden, so decided it should go.) I took the sweet peas with a good chunk of dirt attached. Then watered them like crazy. So far, so good. they are doing fine. Much better than the broccoli.
                                     
 So now that the broccoli was gone. I decided to rip out the radishes. They were shaking in their little radish boots, going to seed, and weren't making any little radish balls. Instead of  radishes, I moved the oodles of marigolds I  planted down the edge of the fence ,now gone. They seem to like growing in groups, so I stuffed them all together in the dirt.  Up by the sunflowers. The slugs had been chewing on them. 


                                       The cabbages I pulled up from underneath the blueberry bushes. I I thought they should grow  by the sweet peas. So off they were  re-located.  The leaves have some slug holes in them . The beer bait seemed to work for a while, but I forgot to replenish it.  I think the slugs drank the beer then went looking for the marigolds.

 In the night the cabbages catch at the moon, the leaves drip silver, the rows of cabbages are a series of little silver waterfalls in the moon.
                                                                           -  Carl Sandburg
Lettuce thrives . SO maybe the cabbages will like living next to the lettuce for a while. They can encourage each other. I'll need more beer bait traps.
             

Just cabbages and lettuce left. Gives me more time to make up Bee drinking bowls. Take a bottom drainer of a small pot, fill with water, and the bees will drink out of it. Helps save them from drowning in larger containers.

 What vegetable did Noah not take on the ark? 
Leeks. -unknown

 The rejuvenated veggie patch looks more like this. Well, it looked better a couple of days after this.  The sweet peas  perked and the cabbages seemed happy with sunflowers growing above them.               

Sowe Carrets in you Gardens, and humbly praise God for them, as for a singular and great blessing.
-  Richard Gardiner
   Profitable Instructions for the Manuring, Sowing and Planting of Kitchen Gardens (1599)

 Oh, and I forgot about the carrots.  I left them where they were, by the sunflowers, hoping they will do better. If not, then they will suffer the same fate as the broccoli. For now  they are safe. And so the garden continues, broccoli-less and radish-less ( I don't think those are real words, but for now they will do).  I think the carrots  quiver in fear........

 I do not like broccoli. And I haven't liked it since I was a little kid and my mother made me eat it. And I'm President of the United States and I'm not going to eat any more broccoli.

-  George Bush, U.S. President, 1990

2017

Hummingbird Rescue.....

 "..when you are convinced that all the exits are blocked, either you take to believing in miracles or you stand still like the hummingbird. The miracle is that the honey is always there, right under your nose, only you were too busy searching elsewhere to realize it. The worst is  being blind, blind to the fact that everything about life is in the nature of the miraculous."  Henry Miller

 A hummingbird was brought home yesterday. An Anna's Hummer....a female....I think. Doesn't have the red flashy throat of the male. But still has the iridescent feathers that shine like  jewels.

 Banged into a window at work, I was told. Then toted home in a box.

    Beautiful. Little thing. Beak like a sharp needle.

 Dazed. Not hurt. Nothing broken. No feathers out of place.Perfect in every way.

 She cheeped and trilled  in the hand. Feathers felt like silk, or cobwebs. Either way, something magical and wonderful, and humbling . So small. So sweet.

 She watched us like a hawk. With the  personality of a hawk, of course. Hummingbirds are fearless. They will take on birds  or even animals much bigger than they are.  She let us check her out. And she checked us out. She was okay with us.

 Flop. Flop. Flop. She tried to fly. Her little claws clung like a vice to hands, fingers, anything stable.She liked Dale's hands the best. My daughter was ever so careful with the little hummer.

 "A flash of harmless lightning, A mist of rainbow dyes, The burnished sunbeams brightening From flower to flower he flies."    John B. Tabb

 I called MARS. Mountainaire Avian Rescue Society. Based out of Merville,B.C. On Vancouver Island, other side of Courtenay. They were incredibly helpful.  So friendly. Very knowledgeable and positive.  Their ideas were a great help. 

 Our little friend, as big as half an index finger, sat on fingers a lot. For hours.

 MARS said most hummingbirds get so dazed when they hit a window, that it can take up to two days for them to recuperate. They would take her the following day, if she didn't fly away. If she could survive the night.We would take her to Campbell River Vet Hospital in the morning.......

 So we fed her sugar water, on the ends of a finger. And she let us stroke her feathers.

 We showed her to Bunny. Safely behind a glass door. No Bunny. No flying snack for you.

 "I always loved those little creatures [hummingbird], always feel blessed when they appear nearby. There's a magical quality to them. I finally put one in a song." 
   Leonard Cohen

 We sat with the little hummer for quite a long time. But she didn't want to fly.She  cheeped. Then trilled. More sugar water. Glug Glug Glug.....her tongue, darting in out felt like fluttering eyelashes. So light, like a whisper.

  Made me realize she was a wild thing. Not a tame thing.

 Overnight, I placed her back in her box with a dish of sugar water. Left part of the top open, but taped the flaps shut. Then placed a plastic milk crate over top , weighted down by a flat pot of flowers. No neighbourhood cat, raccoon or dog could get in. And as long as she didn't peep or cheep, they shouldn't know she was in there.I begged her not to make a sound.....left her on the covered porch where it would be dry and protected.

 In the wee hours of the morning, just at dawn, I found Spencer dozing on his own flower pot . Right beside the crate. He never noticed. HE just yawned.

We took little hummer to Campbell River Vet Hospital at edge of town. These amazing professionals work with  MARS, accepting injured  birds. Little hummingbird wowed people at the Vet. She  even pooped in the box. Everyone went AWWWW.  We tipped the dish of sugar water so she could get a good drink. 

Once handed over to MARS  they said she could be rehabilitated. Most likely just needed some peace and quiet, away from cats. A Spa day or two for hummingbirds. She would make a full recovery and live to fly  and dart and whrr and peep and cheep  till her little heart would be full. Hurray to the people who make it their life's work to save injured and orphaned creatures. 

 "Most elegantly finished in all parts, [the hummingbird] is a miniature work of our Great Parent, who seems to have formed it the smallest, and at the same time the most beautiful of the winged species."    J. Hector St. John de Crevecoeur

With great thanks to Campbell River Vet Hospital and Mountainaire Avian Rescue Society.....

My Roses.....

 “

Do not watch the petals fall from the rose with sadness, know that, like life, things sometimes must fade, before they can bloom again.

unknown

 “

A rose must remain with the sun and the rain or its lovely promise won't come true.

Ray Evans

 “

The rose is a flower of love. The world has acclaimed it for centuries. Pink roses are for love hopeful and expectant. White roses are for love dead or forsaken, but the red roses, ah the red roses are for love triumphant.     

unknown

 “

Take time to smell the roses.

Proverb

 “

The red rose whispers of passion, And the white rose breathes of love; O, the red rose is a falcon, And the white rose is a dove.

John Boyle O'Reilly

 “

I'd rather have roses on my table than diamonds on my neck.

Emma Goldman

 “

It will never rain roses: when we want to have more roses we must plant more trees.

George Eliot

 “

You can complain because roses have thorns, or you can rejoice because thorns have roses.

Ziggy

 “

The rose is a rose from the time it is a seed to the time it dies. Within it, at all times, it contains its whole potential. It seems to be constantly in the process of change: Yet at each state, at each moment, it is perfectly all right as it is.     

Paulo Coelho

 “

There is simply the rose; it is perfect in every moment of its existence.     

Ralph Waldo Emerson