Saint Patrick's Day

 

Happy Saint Patrick's Day! I hope your day is off to a wonderful start. Can you believe how fast March is racing by. I feel like once March hits we begin racing to get all of our major work accomplished before the heat comes on.

Even in drought years weeds still grow. Maybe not as fast but they still grow. We were able to get our berry vines trimmed. Last years canes cut out and the new vines put up on wires. I was very nicely surprised to find that the berry vines did very well from last year. I am happily anticipating
a nice crop of boysenberries.

 

We also got the artichoke plants cleaned up and I was very happy to see how wonderful they had done through the winter. The thing about artichoke plants is never be nice to them. Just ignore them and they go crazy, but if you pay attention to them they will just up and die. This was originally two plants that I think has morphed into about eight. There are babies coming up every where.

The end that is planted at was about five feet long and it has now filled in all of the space. Fresh artichokes are wonderful.

I wanted to show you this little Japanese Maple. I wish I had taken pictures when she was first coming out and her tiny leaves were so red and perfect. I love her name. It is Red Haired Dancing Girl. That is one thing I have liked learning about Japanese Maples is all of the cute names they have. That whole table that you can see in the background is different kinds of Japanese Maples.

I was finally able to get a picture of Mr. Pointy head. Those of you who know your birds do you think you could tell me what kind he is, I am terrible with bird books. He normally never sits still this long so I was glad to get these couple of shots. His breast is snow white.

That is a tiny bit better you can see how black he is so that now the black and white make a very sharp contrast. He eats all of the bugs around the lights on the porch and his favorite place is the swimming pool where he gets bugs there too.

 

I was able to get this little finch eating these weird blossoms in the cottonwood trees. This is the first time I have ever seen these blossoms and at first I thought it was bats hanging in the trees. The finch and Mr. Pointy Head fly from tree to tree when I am out there walking. Today they let me get their pictures.

Finally I have iris blooming. Spring will be here officially this week. I have tomato and gourd seeds coming up. I have lots of weeding to get done this week. I need to get some kind of planting plan drawn up this week too.

I hope you have a lovely Monday.
~Kim~

  "Like all magnificent things, it's very simple."
---Tuck Everlasting, Natalie Babbitt, 1975