Growing Our Life in Northern Michigan
More of our cherries our getting ripe. Yesterday I put on a hoodie with the hood up and went out to pick them. I persevered as long as I could, but the mosquito hoard soon drove me back inside. I was only able… Continue Reading “On Mulberry Street”
The mosquitoes are still very, very bad. As soon as I step outside, a horde of mosquitoes engulf me. It makes it difficult to enjoy going out for more than a quick dash. I feel like a hostage. We have had storms every day… Continue Reading “Quick Dashes Outside…”
I love storms. I love observing radar on weather sites on the Internet, which lets me track storms coming our way. I think I could have easily been a meteorologist (or archaeologist or psychologist) if I didn’t already have the life that I love.… Continue Reading “Mosquito Ordeal”
This morning, not long after I took today’s Daily Robin photograph, I looked out the window and saw a baby Robin on the edge of the nest. I grabbed my camera and went out on the front porch to watch. I received the thrilling… Continue Reading “Bye, Bye, Birdie”
I think gardens are excellent places to think tidbits of thought. I thought that today I’d share the tidbits of thought that I thought while I went about my day and my garden. I am cleverly calling them “thought-bits.” Early this morning, EJ looked out… Continue Reading “Garden Thought-bits”
Over the last couple of years, EJ has planted several fruit trees throughout our yard. He has two dwarf Alberta Peach trees in his garden in the back yard, and five dwarf cherry trees of a couple different varieties throughout my part of… Continue Reading “Downstairs and Upstairs”
This is the hanging basket that I put the baby robins in after I unintentionally pulled down their nest. I wrote about it yesterday in my posts, Super Villain in the Garden and Baby Bird Rescue! I would prefer that the basket was in… Continue Reading “The Robins: The Morning After”
Earlier I thought I had killed a nest of baby robins. Read about it here: Super Villain in the Garden. But the story isn’t over. This evening I looked out the window where I had seen the “dead” babies, and I saw that one was… Continue Reading “Baby Bird Rescue!”
This morning I woke up eager to get outside. It is a beautiful morning: sunny, blue sky, and refreshingly cool. I made coffee, made breakfast, made potato salad so it would be cool for lunch, and got outside as quickly as I could. I decided… Continue Reading “Super Villain in the Garden”
Our driveway is wide, not long. We park our vehicles side-by-side, not one behind the other. About 2004, I decided to make another garden area by taking away some of the driveway. Since our yard has different levels separated by rock walls, I decided… Continue Reading “The Herb Garden…and the Angry Ants”
Call me incredibly naive, but whenever I thought of having bird feeders in my garden, I imagined a very gentle, peaceful, idyllic scene. Something like this: I didn’t know that the reality would be a heartbreaking turf war, filled with drama and death. I… Continue Reading “Bird Wars”
This afternoon I looked out my kitchen window and thought that the bird in the birdhouse looked rather different. As I watched, the bird came out and I saw that it was a sparrow. It was trying to steal the wrens’ house! The wrens… Continue Reading “Drama: Wrens vs. Sparrow”
Last year my husband made a new pen for our dog, Danny. The new pen is bigger and shadier and it is made up of cattle panels so the breeze can get through on hot summer days. Not that Danny spends much time in it–he’s… Continue Reading “New Neighbors”
My husband likes to do companion gardening. For anyone who might not know, companion gardening involves planting two or more plant species together in order to create a beneficial situation for both. A number of different goals can be accomplished with companion planting. Some plants, like… Continue Reading “Companion Gardening”
When my son was little, we had more grassy lawn, but there were some parts of the yard that he never played in, so we turned them into garden. Gradually, we turned more and more of our yard into garden and now we have… Continue Reading “His, Mine, and Ours”