Posts Tagged ‘hostas’
Why Bother
Feel like making a guess? What the heck do you think is happening here?
If it wasn’t already obvious, here’s a clue:
Yes, we are trying to dissuade Asher from drinking out of the landscape pond. Unfortunately, he will move right past a clean bowl of water to the pond and ignore the blockade by stepping through the reeds to lap up anyway.
I don’t know if my perception is accurate or simply a figment of my imagination, but the fact that Asher tends to drink from any puddle he comes upon no matter how gross it looks might be echoes from the life he led as a stray before being rescued. One morning we came upon tall grass that bent over our path due to the weight of water droplets from dew. Asher began licking the water droplets off the blades.
He lived in a foster home for six months and I’m confident they provided as much water from a bowl as he would ever want. It strikes me as odd that he shows this tendency to act like he must drink any water he comes upon.
Our pond is probably attractive because there’s just SO MUCH water but Cyndie puts chemicals in it to control algae and enhance pond health so we’d prefer he not automatically resort to this option whenever we are romping around in the backyard and he is off leash.
The way he moved past the patio furniture as if it wasn’t even there has me thinking I may not bother trying that again. We’d really rather not put up a fence but it may come to that for a while during the retraining period. Right up until the time we give up trying and put our energy toward more achievable dog obedience goals.
I was trimming tall growth around the rocks in the labyrinth yesterday and discovered the deer had chomped all but a few leaves of the hosta down there. I don’t know why we bother expecting it won’t happen this year. It happens all the time.
I asked Cyndie if they’ve eaten the ones up behind the house yet. Nope. One year, she tried putting some nasty smelling repellent on the hostas. It was bear or coyote pee or something like that. She doesn’t remember. We don’t know if it worked because it smelled so bad we quit walking around back there and never saw whether the plants got chomped or not.
We are now more inclined to use Irish Spring bars of soap or any other variety of scents we can tolerate.
Too late for the hosta in the labyrinth again this year.
Maybe I should have stacked some patio furniture around them.
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Fawns Visit
Yesterday morning, first thing, Cyndie reported seeing a momma deer and two fawns out our bedroom window. I was just commenting the other day that there was no sign of any nibbling of our hostas back there this summer. I didn’t check yet to see if that still holds true.
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After work yesterday, I was busy mowing the opposite side of our property. After just one downpour of rain over the weekend, our grass responded with a burst of growth. There was nothing strategic about my mowing methods this time. I cut everything possible in the time before dinner was served.
I heard a meteorologist’s analysis that the one occasion of heavy rain on Saturday was not sufficient to break the overall drought our region is suffering. He said that would require getting rain in similar amounts at least once a week for multiple weeks. The long-range forecast doesn’t bode well for that happening.
I’m counting our blessings that we have so few areas where the stress of dryness is obvious. Most trees and shrubs are looking close to normal. Grassy areas that get some shade look downright healthy.
Maybe the deer don’t need the hostas if there are enough other choices for grazing. They were probably just visiting to be social.
Delilah failed to detect them, so they weren’t driven away by loud, ferocious barking. She is a little under the weather and threw up the full contents of her stomach yesterday. Cyndie said it appeared a couple of days-worth of food wasn’t getting processed and came back up.
When that happened other times, we immediately discarded the rest of whatever can of food she was being served and start a fresh one. Since it always did the trick the other times, we are returning to that solution for now.
Meanwhile, she is doing some grazing of her own, chomping on grass when she is out on a walk.
Good thing it got tall after the last blast of rain.
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Leave It
There are multiple meanings to the title, Leave It. There is always a little sadness in needing to leave the lake place, but today that is what we will be doing. There is also the old adage about poison ivy: Leaves of three, Let it be. Lastly, leaves are the theme of images for today’s post.
Starting with a sprout of poison ivy in a very inconvenient location.
A leaf shadow that seems about as perfect as the leaf itself.
There was an old oak leaf stuck to the side of this aging stand-up paddleboard.
Finally, a frame-filled immersion in the wonderful patterns of hosta leaves.
I’m going to leave it at that.
Happy Memorial Day to readers in the U.S. We will spend the day driving home and hopefully transplanting a few trilliums after we arrive.
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Small Projects
The weekend just passed consisted of many small tasks chipped off the ol’ to-do list, primarily addressing the first-impression appearance of the place. After getting the grass mowed and the landscape pond fixed my attention shifted to whatever miscellaneous project caught my eye, particularly if they had been staring me in the face for more than a year.
I finally got up on the roof to address the wind vane that came apart so long ago I’ve forgotten when. I ended up removing the base entirely to see if repairs on the ground are possible. I may, or may not, put it back up someday.
The kids stopped by on Saturday and Julian helped me quickly dispatch a dead pine tree located right in front of the approach to the house garage doors. Yesterday, I pulled out the chainsaw again and removed dead limbs from the next tree over, some version of a flowering decorative. I think that one is a form of lilac, but seems to have climbed to heights that exceed my perceptions of lilac.
While the chainsaw was out, I hoofed my way down to the woods behind the labyrinth to cut up a dead tree that fell across one of our small side trails. At the labyrinth, I removed the stakes that secured the transplanted maple now that it seems to have established itself. There, I discovered the deer have been feasting on the hostas by the peace pole.
I hope they had a very peaceful meal there while the angel’s back was turned.
The driveway got some attention in the form of lime screenings packed into a low dip that was becoming quite a bump in the road. The last time a UPS truck delivered a package, I heard everything bounce in his truck when passing over that spot a little too quickly.
Julian and I started removing anything attached to the side of the house in preparation for a resealing of the logs that will hopefully happen sooner than later. We have enlisted the services of professionals and they have teased us that we are next in line when they finish the current customer.
That’s another one of those weather-dependent projects that end up being hard to plan start and finish dates.
That brings to mind the hay fields. Things are growing so fast right now that our fields look ripe for the mowing. I don’t know what the farmer who is renting our fields this summer is planning, but I hope he is able to get enough dry days in a row to be successful this year.
The only thing I didn’t get to before time ran out last night was in fulfilling Cyndie’s wish to get the hammocks up.
That’s a good task to look forward to for starting my next spurt of knocking off small projects, whenever that moment comes.
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Relative Something 