Various flowers that are blooming around the homestead at present.
Calla lily:
Bluebells and irises:
Bluebells:
Irises:
Peonies:
Irises:
Flowers
Converting the fountain into a garden, part 2
Last week I posted part one of a project to convert our fountain into a garden. Here’s the thrilling conclusion.
You may recall that I drilled a hole though the base of the fountain wall, and ran an irrigation tube across the bricks, at the back where it isn’t usually visible. To make that tidier and reduce the risk of tripping on the tube, I added a pipe cover:
I added more soil:
And scoria to the fountain bowl, to aid in drainage:
Scoria and soil in progress:
More soil:
A much smaller soil pile; the remainder will be used in the veggie garden, and possibly elsewhere:
Adding plants:
A hose valve for the tube to the top of the fountain (as seen on my What’s It Wednesday question and answer yesterday), to enable adjusting its pressure independently of the irrigation emitters for the bottom level:
Irrigation tubing; half inch tubing to the top of the fountain and down one side of the bottom level, with quarter inch tubing off the latter leading to emitters:
An irrigation emitter; this style has an adjustable spread, so can cover anything from inches to several feet:
Pulling back a bit to focus on the plants:
And back further to see more of the plants:
Another angle; Jenn chose the plants to be predominantly blue to evoke water, with some splashes of color representing fish. Plus taller plants at the back, shorter in front — and in the bowl, some that will trail off the edge nicely:
A last shot of the finished garden:
Aerial pictures of the gardens, pond, greenhouse, mountain
It has been nice and sunny this week, so I did a little drone flying, and captured some more aerial photos.
Here’s our fountain garden area, with the bird feeders on the left, cat house under the tree at the top-left, various paths, and the defunct fountain (likely to become a planter soonish):
A couple angles of the pond (with the ducks visible):
A bunch of new plants in one of our flowerbeds:
A shot from 400 feet (the legal height limit for drones) of the flowerbeds, pond, veggie garden, hoop house, shop, etc:
The berry cage, veggie garden, and chicken runs:
The greenhouse and environs:
Closer to the greenhouse, showing the bee water pool and recent excavations for greenhouse plumbing:
Looking more horizontally, some distant hills:
Mount Hood is visible:
Zoomed:
Zoomed more:
Aerial snow
We recently had a couple days of light snow… a bit unusual for March, but not unheard of.
I always enjoy taking pictures of snow, but now that I have a nice drone, I was able to take some aerial photos of it, too. The only downside was I needed to wait for the snow to stop falling, since the drone isn’t waterproof.
I’m looking forward to next winter if we get several inches of snow, for even better pics, but this is a nice start.
Let’s begin with an angled view of the snow on the flowerbeds, pond, back lawn, and chicken runs:
A top-down view of the field, flowerbeds, and pond:
A bunch of snowy trees in the mist:
Just below the cloud layer:
More snow-tipped trees:
Our tallest tree with the double trunk (as featured in a recent post):
From lower down:
Not from the drone, the gazebo and grove (I love that you can’t tell a difference in quality between the drone and iPhone cameras):
The next day, it snowed a bit more, about an inch, so I flew again to capture that:
Snowy trees:
Back on the ground, walking to the duck house:
The daffodils weren’t enjoying the snow:
I hope you enjoyed those snowy pics as much as I did.
A few pictures of our flowerbeds
Our flowerbeds are looking quite nice at present.
A bit of gardening: flowers & shrubs
Today we did some gardening. Firstly we cleared out one of the flowerbeds, moving things we wanted to keep to other beds, then spraying and hoeing the remainder (mostly weeds and dead flowers), then marked positions for planting with stakes, string, and spray paint:
We then planted some daylilies in triangle patterns, with each triangle the same color. We only have three colors for now, but will be adding another three later, for a nice rainbow sequence:
We also planted some shrubs around the back of the cat house, to give them a bit more privacy (and the back isn’t super attractive; it was originally going to be somewhere where the back wouldn’t be visible).
They are Oregon Grape & Red Flowering Currant shrubs:
Finally, we planted some Ivory Halo Dogwood shrubs out the front by the dogyard, to help fill in a previously useless corner of the field, and give more privacy for the swimming pool. I’ll closely mow and bark this area later:
A productive day!
A stroll around the garden
For a change of pace, a few photos from around the garden.
