Gardening in open prairie land.......

April 3rd, 2013

Aren't I the biggest twit?

Here I am, a dead enthusiastic blogger, and a very, very enthusiastic, but very amateur, gardener, learning to live with the huge challenges of creating and maintaining a big area around my home that I want to have as a garden. Not 'garden' in the English sense of the word, of course,,,,,,,,no way, after all, this is a semi-desert area in Colorado, a place of ice cold winters and dead hot summers, miserable soil, and a place experiencing long-term drought conditions. Oh, yes, and the increasing populations of deer eat almost anything/everything they can get their teeth into.........even the so -called 'deer resistant' plants (cos they can't read, of course). Good for them. There is a movement, though, to shoot them............can you imagine? Executing a large mammal, in its ancestral home, because it's hungry? Give me a break.

Writing, reflecting, blogging and gardening, that is, what I can do with the environment I have, fills 9/10s of my brain.......I think a lot, write a lot of notes, I draw pictures........and, here I am, just realizing, I can combine those things and blog words and pictures about MY garden!!

Yes, question answered: I am the biggest twit!!!! Why didn't I think of this before?
Well, perhaps it's because this morning, the remaining 1% of my brain clicked into gear. Must be the heart meds I'm taking.........

So, today, April 3rd, as spring begins, at 7. 01 am exactly, I'm starting to blog about my garden exploits, challenges, frustrations, and delights. YEAH!!

Here goes:

My home is in The Pinery, an area south of Denver, elevation around 6000' (I'll check on this and see what the exact measurement is) . The terrain is prairie-like, by which I mean, semi-desert, covered with grasses, yucca and cacti.

Winters are very, very cold and often snowy.

Snowblowers clear the drive..

In the winter, the redwing blackbirds pick up the birdseed discarded by other birds, squirrels and deer

Hardly ever rains here.
Late spring, summer and autumn, are hotter and drier than hell. And the winds in the spring aren't for sissies.

But, I'm so lucky: mule-eared deer, squirrels, rabbits, voles, mice, foxes, coyotes, snakes (rattlesnakes, too, although I've yet to see one), spiders, beetles of all shapes and sizes, and over 60 different kinds of birds, are common and always delightful sights.

(Oh, on the evening of April 10th, two females, one male, Aberdeen Angus, no less, that had wandered away from a nearby ranch)!

The deer come for brekkie every day

A fabulous wolf spider

One of our bunnies. His family lives under one of  my bushes

One of our garage mice.
His family of four house mice live in my garage, tucking away nightly at the birdseed

and I often see Radjel!
He comes early morning and late afternoon, and doesn't stop.Just trots through the front garden.

And sometimes one black fox

Plenty of snakes slither around in the deep grass at the back of the house........
and one, a bull snake, took a liking to my garage

Coyote saying 'Hello, John..'

Great Horned Owl...........who loves to come and sit at the top of one of our dead trees! 

Seen this twice now......the hawk catching and carrying the snake....quite magical.

Rufus the Hummingbird.....

The bird life here blows my mind.....

Redwinged blackbirds flock here every morning  - my, they talk SO much!

The bossy maggies

Hummingbirds, such beautiful, incredible, tiny things, beating their wings as fast as a bumble bee, come in the early summer and leave around late August.

The colorful yet  microscopic hummingbird

Ponderosa pine is the dominant tree. Picking up its cones is a full time early spring chore.

Bark beetles are prevalent, though, and are killing many of the drought-stressed trees.

Scrub oak is common, too, and its leaves provides much-needed food for the rummaging deer.

Sunrise and sunset are always eye catching........

I've been here a couple of years and restored, added to, and developed separate garden areas around the house.

Sooooooo........from today on I'll note what has to be done and what I do in each of my garden plots. And I'll keep a photographic record of the changes.
As soon as the sun comes up, I'll go outside and photograph each of the areas, number them, and blog everything I do over the next few months.
Oh, what joy!!

Nice day to start, too, because the ground is damp from overnight light, wet snow.........and, much to my delight, I found three earthworms crawling on the drive. I collected them and put them in the garden next to the front door......I needed to do that because they will soon dehydrate and die when the sun comes up.

First things first, as I gulp the third cup of Brooke Bond tea this morning, here are some photos of my home:

The front

The back

The east side at sunset

North facing decks

View of the back, gardens on both sides, early sunset

The view from the back, looking north

Looking west - open prairie land

Some of the redwinged blackbirds that greet me almost every morning.
My, they can talk and talk and talk....
I talk, too, but they are not interested in my conversation.
Matilda sits and listens ........

 OK, so, first things first. As soon as the sun rises, I will photograph all of my gardening plots, number them, and, in future, refer to each plot as a number. Here they are:

GARDEN PLOTS:

Number ONE
Just outside the front door.......April 3

Things are beginning to poke their noses through the damp earth

Oh, yes, things are beginning to happen

Number TWO
The lawn to the front right of the house....where I have planted a tree a year ago and a bush yesterday, April 2:

Number THREE
April 3 Pebbled strip next to the house, where I transplanted grasses from my garden in Denver:

Number FOUR
April 3 Two small strips I created last spring, filled with bulbs:

Number FIVE
Three composters, filled with kitchen scraps and last autumn's tree leaves

Number SIX
April 3  Three strips created last spring.......now with rocks collected from my walks in the nearby plains and
 hills:

Number SEVEN

Plot 7, picture taken when first made

Ponderosa sapling

Looks pretty dead, doesn't it? The deer gather here every afternoon, and chomp, and chomp,
and...............you've guessed it, chomp!

Number EIGHT
April 3 Thirsty, dry lawn

Number NINE
April 3    Two strips outside Jeannine's studio, created last spring:

Number TEN
April 3  Strip under the dead aspen trees, created last spring, and has a sprinkling of wild flower seeds

Number ELEVEN
April 3    Desert garden, on the east side, created two years ago:

Number TWELVE
April 3 Small patch of dead grass, now covered with rocks and cacti, created last summer

Number THIRTEEN
April 3  Side garden, facing east, created two years ago:

Number FOURTEEN
April 3 Large open area, one ponderosa and scrub oak, cleared two years ago

Number FIFTEEN
April 3 Front lawn and cherry tree

Number SIXTEEN
April 3 Rockery, cleared two years ago, running parallel with the street.
There's plenty to do, would you agree? :)
Just laid a rock boundary between it and the lawn.

April 9th
After all my preliminary garden work, it snowed, heavily, today.............so I turned my attention to other things, including making a wormery, the first time I've ever given any serious thought to what that entails.

April 10th
After researching the wormery project on a variety of websites, I made a small wormery motel in a clear plastic box that recently held two pounds plus of grapes. I shredded paper and patted it down at the base of the box and dampened it with cold tea left over from breakfast.

Later, I will place some left-over food, already cut into small pieces and stored in a plastic bag, on the newspaper.

When able, I will collect worms (one way to do that is to place a sheet of cardboard on the outside earth.........worms will be drawn to that), I read, and place them on the damp, shredded paper, add food, and cover with dampened cardboard. They'll eat, mooch around, digest the food, convert it to dead rich earth, and mate........we'll see.

They should enjoy their new hotel, breed like crazy and eventually be returned to either one of my compost heaps or some recently turned soil........in the hope that they will do what nature intended and make my earth better for plants.

As I say, we'll see. I'll keep you posted. Oh, I also bought a commercial wormery - and it has arrived, much earlier than I anticipated.
IT'S great - as are the thousand wrigglies that came as well.


April 11th

Still very cold, but getting warmer through the day, I'm told.

Going to Pioneer to get some rocks and place at the front, separating the grass from the pebbles at the top of the drive.

April 15th

I'm frustrated with the weather..........itching to start in the gardens but it's windy and cold.......and I'm tired of moving plants back and forth from the deck. Hey, hey, patience, John Paull.

April 16th

Snowing.................

April 18th

I'm the Chairman of my district's Community Service Ctte........at tonight's meeting there was a discussion about culling the deer................before we went too far, another meeting was arranged, a meeting that will discuss the deer and their impact on the area, led by a new member who is recently retired from the Parker/Douglas County Wildlife Dept.

OK, May 15th........garden pictures!!! I'll add the captions this evening. Big difference, though, due to much needed rain and more warm sunshine. Things are really beginning to happen.

6:30 in the morning, 27th May

June 15        Look at what Mother Nature nurtures at the beginning of summer......

Prickly Pear

Yucca

Indian Paintbrush