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Jun. 15th, 2008 07:12 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
which_chickI went for a walk yesterday.
I went looking for pink lady's slipper (Cypripedium acaule). It's a terrestrial orchid native to the area, blooms during late May/early June with pink flowers that stand about a foot tall. Mostly, you can spot these guys because they have two dorky leaves that lay opposite each other on the ground. The leaves are oval with parallel veins, not a strong central vein that branches out like most leaves.
I did find them in a clump of about twenty or so, not a bad walk from my house. However, I was a couple of days late for the blooming part.
Oops. My bad. I'll try harder next year, start checking a couple of weeks earlier.
I also got to see a woodcock (it's a kind of bird, people, not a biodegradable dildo) which I'd never seen before. I didn't get a picture of that, sorry. Spangled skimmers (a kind of dragonfly) are out and about, as well, and the water lilies in the lake are blooming.
Closer to home, my mock orange is covered in flowers (and they smell nice!). This is the first year it has looked like the pictures in the garden catalogs. I think I've had it about ten years.
My Charles de Mills has done a yeoman job of blooming attractively this year. I gave a root sprout of this to the wife of Brother the younger, so is a picture to show what it looks like. It doesn't smell much but the color and the petals are, I think, quite lovely. Charles de Mills is a gallica rose, once-blooming, and I don't much prune beyond "cut off the dead bits each spring". He doesn't get fertilized or watered or sprayed. What you see is how he grows when he is totally ignored. (Some years, the flowers ball up and don't open well. I do not know why this is. This year was a good year for the flowers.)
The plant swap rose bush is now taller than I am when it is not bent down under the weight of its blooms as is currently the case. The individual blooms aren't all that.
However, they smell gorgeous and there are a ton of them, so the fact that the thrips get a bloom or two, well, I can deal with that. There are enough blooms for the thrips and me both. The plant swap rose bush is approximately six feet tall, has absolutely clean foliage, does not need to be pruned, is appallingly healthy, suckers freely, and blooms once a year. If you've got the room for it, I would suggest having one. This thing is truly no more trouble than a forsythia (and mine makes free babies, so if you want one, I can certainly hook you up).
The (black) raspberries have set a ton of fruit. The reds also appear to be making a significant effort on the fruit front, though this is only year 2 for them. Brother the younger assures me that there will be an endless tsunami of red raspberries next year.
The peonies at 629, the two of them nearest the dumpster, are a vibrant and beautiful pink. They will have a home at the residence of Brother-the-younger as soon as it is time for the transplanting of peonies. My yard can also spare two bright pink peonies (maybe not the same bright pink) and possibly also two light pink peonies if any of those are wanted. So, four bright pink peonies for sure plus two light pink peonies (if desired) for the wife of Brother the younger. Bty, let me know.
This is the bright pink I have:
This is the light pink I have:
I didn't take any pictures of the 629 pink but rest assured that it is like the "bright pink" pictured above, maybe even more so.
The other four peonies at 629 are an uninspired white that may well fall to the mower's rotating blade of death if I have to mow around them for another year. Anybody near-ish want four free white peonies?
Oh, and the first baby of Pieraz-clone (he's a horse, one they cloned b/c he was a gelding and they wanted to make babies with him) hit the ground in May. There are pictures on the cloning company's website. The baby looks good, has four legs, chunky little body. (All ya'll are as interested in commercial horse cloning as I am, right? Right?)
I went looking for pink lady's slipper (Cypripedium acaule). It's a terrestrial orchid native to the area, blooms during late May/early June with pink flowers that stand about a foot tall. Mostly, you can spot these guys because they have two dorky leaves that lay opposite each other on the ground. The leaves are oval with parallel veins, not a strong central vein that branches out like most leaves.
I did find them in a clump of about twenty or so, not a bad walk from my house. However, I was a couple of days late for the blooming part.
Oops. My bad. I'll try harder next year, start checking a couple of weeks earlier.
I also got to see a woodcock (it's a kind of bird, people, not a biodegradable dildo) which I'd never seen before. I didn't get a picture of that, sorry. Spangled skimmers (a kind of dragonfly) are out and about, as well, and the water lilies in the lake are blooming.
Closer to home, my mock orange is covered in flowers (and they smell nice!). This is the first year it has looked like the pictures in the garden catalogs. I think I've had it about ten years.
My Charles de Mills has done a yeoman job of blooming attractively this year. I gave a root sprout of this to the wife of Brother the younger, so is a picture to show what it looks like. It doesn't smell much but the color and the petals are, I think, quite lovely. Charles de Mills is a gallica rose, once-blooming, and I don't much prune beyond "cut off the dead bits each spring". He doesn't get fertilized or watered or sprayed. What you see is how he grows when he is totally ignored. (Some years, the flowers ball up and don't open well. I do not know why this is. This year was a good year for the flowers.)
The plant swap rose bush is now taller than I am when it is not bent down under the weight of its blooms as is currently the case. The individual blooms aren't all that.
However, they smell gorgeous and there are a ton of them, so the fact that the thrips get a bloom or two, well, I can deal with that. There are enough blooms for the thrips and me both. The plant swap rose bush is approximately six feet tall, has absolutely clean foliage, does not need to be pruned, is appallingly healthy, suckers freely, and blooms once a year. If you've got the room for it, I would suggest having one. This thing is truly no more trouble than a forsythia (and mine makes free babies, so if you want one, I can certainly hook you up).
The (black) raspberries have set a ton of fruit. The reds also appear to be making a significant effort on the fruit front, though this is only year 2 for them. Brother the younger assures me that there will be an endless tsunami of red raspberries next year.
The peonies at 629, the two of them nearest the dumpster, are a vibrant and beautiful pink. They will have a home at the residence of Brother-the-younger as soon as it is time for the transplanting of peonies. My yard can also spare two bright pink peonies (maybe not the same bright pink) and possibly also two light pink peonies if any of those are wanted. So, four bright pink peonies for sure plus two light pink peonies (if desired) for the wife of Brother the younger. Bty, let me know.
This is the bright pink I have:
This is the light pink I have:
I didn't take any pictures of the 629 pink but rest assured that it is like the "bright pink" pictured above, maybe even more so.
The other four peonies at 629 are an uninspired white that may well fall to the mower's rotating blade of death if I have to mow around them for another year. Anybody near-ish want four free white peonies?
Oh, and the first baby of Pieraz-clone (he's a horse, one they cloned b/c he was a gelding and they wanted to make babies with him) hit the ground in May. There are pictures on the cloning company's website. The baby looks good, has four legs, chunky little body. (All ya'll are as interested in commercial horse cloning as I am, right? Right?)
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no subject
Date: 2008-06-15 03:16 pm (UTC)I have seen pictures of woodcocks, but never an actual one.
no subject
Date: 2008-06-16 11:50 am (UTC)I take it from your non-mention that Fulton county is south of the range of this year's cicada brood. It's pretty horrible up here. Every tree howls at the sun, and even the birds are flying around drunkenly, as if they're disoriented by the constant clamour. I'm pondering a move to somewhere quieter - like midtown Manhattan. Just walking down the street on some hills, you'll get pelted by wandering cicadas. Harmless, I suppose, but pretty damned annoying.
no subject
Date: 2008-06-16 10:32 pm (UTC)I don't know about premature aging -- what little I've read about that suggests that horses do better than sheep with the cloning issue and telomere length. We'll have to see. The interesting thing, though, is that because people don't much *eat* horses (so no FDA or food safety worries) and because there is money, sometimes significant money, on the line for things in which nonregistered horses can compete (like barrel racing, cutting, show jumping, endurance riding, dressage), there's funding behind horse cloning. I think it is definitely a good idea to see how horse cloning works before they try it on people.
And they *will* try it on people.
No, we have no cicadas this year. They have a short season -- enjoy it (if that's the word) while it lasts. Our 17-year cicadas came around last time when I was in high school, old enough to drive. This time, they hit when I was in my mid-thirties and they were like instant memory fuel...
I kind of like cicadas.
no subject
Date: 2008-06-17 05:04 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-18 12:13 pm (UTC)The gallica (Charles de Mills) gets about 4' wide by 4' high in my yard. He flops over a little when in flower b/c he's covered with more blooms than he can hold. I'm ok with that.
Banshee is currently taller than I am and would like to be wider than the 3' she's allotted. She flops over when in bloom or when wet due to heavy rains but stands back up again on her own. This rose would be well suited to being in the middle of the yard where you can mow around it and where it won't flop onto other things.
no subject
Date: 2008-06-18 05:26 pm (UTC)