Goose Family Photographs

I photographed this goose family with their precious goslings at Kenilworth Park and Aquatic Gardens yesterday.

The parent geese didn't seem to mind me taking photographs but they did maintain a fair distance from me. I loved the protectiveness shown here with both parents flanking their young goslings.

 Geese swimming across a small section of the aquatic garden.

This gosling's from a different goose family and appears to be a single offspring. Its parents were far more protective than the other set of goose parents but I couldn't resist getting at least one picture of the cute little gosling, especially because it seemed to want to come over and meet me (it's parents prevented that but it was still cute to see). Hope you enjoyed my goose family photographs. May God bless you!

Kenilworth Park & Aquatic Gardens Photos

Kenilworth Park & Aquatic Gardens Visitor center: Photo by Phyllis Wheeler

Kenilworth Park & Aquatic Gardens Nature Trail: Photo by Phyllis Wheeler

My husband pleasantly surprised me today by taking leave and making a day trip to Kenilworth Park and Aquatic Gardens. This was our first visit to the park and we took the nature trail first. When we visit in the future we'll spend less time on the nature trail and more time in the aquatic gardens section. I'm planning follow up posts featuring photos of a) flowers b) an adorable goose family c) other wildlife so be sure to check back again soon if any of those topics interest you.

Kenilworth Park & Aquatic Gardens Trail: Photo by Phyllis Wheeler

Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens: Photo by Ben Wheeler

Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens Irises: Photo by Phyllis Wheeler

Hope you enjoyed this overview slideshow. May God bless you!

Columbines, Widow's Tears, Irises & More: This Week in My Maryland Garden

Happy May dear readers! Here is our first columbine bloom of the year. I think it's a McKanna's Giant Columbine that reseeded from one of our original plants.

The Widow's Tears are in full bloom. We used to have both white and blue flowers but so far just white are blooming this year.

Last week I posted our first dark and light blue iris blooms of the year and now you can see we have a whole lot of irises blooming (and we still have a whole lot sitting in pots and buckets to be replanted from the excavation too).

This is our first rose off of our bicolor big rose. I don't remember the real name so I think of it as my strawberries and cream rose.

I think this is the same tulip I posted about last week and it's still quite lovely.

Some of the birds have been poking at our seedling pots but these cosmos seedlings that Ben started back in March are still looking good. I really should divide them or thin them soon. There's so much to do in the garden and only so much time to do it all. My plan for the cosmos was to put them in big pots so when they get tall they'll block an unsightly view from one of our windows but the county has a contractor who's had a bunch of equipment parked near our house for months now and we might just plant them on the street side to block the equipment view instead. Of course if enough of the seedlings survive we could do both.

What's growing in your neck of the woods? May God bless you!

Fish Grabbing Bird Photos

Photograph by Ben Wheeler

Celebrating my first Unplugged Sunday, my husband and I went to the National Zoo and were treated to the sight of these medium sized birds (they looked about 12-18" tall) sneakily grabbing the fish that the Zoo's keepers had strewn across the front lawn of an empty exhibit.

Photograph by Ben Wheeler

The birds would try to wait until no humans were around to grab their fish but this one was eager for its fish. It stood peering at us from on one side of the tree and then stealthily walked around the back and peered at us from the other side. It would start to approach the fish and then scurry back behind the tree when other zoo visitors approached. This continued for a while. 

Photograph by Ben Wheeler

Then suddenly it ran up, grabbed a fish and flew away. Do you happen to know what kind of bird this is? There weren't any keepers around to ask (they must have tossed the fish in just before we arrived) and the exhibit was unmarked. I guess the birds are allowed to be wild as they were flying in and out of the exhibit at will. Whatever kind of bird it is, it was fun to watch. May God bless you!

Unplugged Sundays

Inspired by Minimalist Mom's the Big Unplug and a desire to devote Sundays to worship and rest, I'm doing an unplugged experiment of my own. Starting tomorrow and for the month of May I'm committing to unplugged Sundays. For me this means (as you can figure out from the above paint image I created for this post) no internet, email, Facebook, text, cell phone or news.

Internet (including missing the interaction with my fabulous Facebook friends) will likely be the biggest challenge. I don't think I've had a while day without getting online for something in years. Even when our home internet has been down or I've been in the hospital I found a way to get my online fix. 

Disconnecting from text, cell phone and news is less of an issue as I almost never text or watch the news anyway and the last time I checked my monthly cell phone usage for talk time the total was 12 minutes (yes, for the entire month). It's email, Facebook and even blogging (those I follow in addition to those I write) that will be the challenge. I'm claiming Philippians 4:13 as I believe this is God's will for me at this time and will strengthen my walk with Him. If all goes well I may do a whole week of technology fasting / unplugged living this summer.

Have you ever done a technology fast? How did it go? Please comment below as I'd love to hear about it! Of course, I won't be logging on tomorrow but I'll gladly check for your responses on Monday.

May God bless you!

First Blue Irises of 2012

I guess you can tell from my recent posts that I have gardening on my mind a lot lately. What a joyous time of the year spring is! I just couldn't wait until Tuesday for my regular "This Week in My Maryland Garden" post to share my first blue iris blooms of the year. I've been wondering whether we'd have a light or dark blue iris bloom first this year and it turns out they both had their first blooms today! The light blue photographed better but the dark is just as lovely.

In the background of this dark blue iris photo you can see some healthy looking day lilies on the left and some struggling day lilies on the right. I think they're all Stella d'Oro reblooming day lilies but with all the craziness from the excavation I won't know for sure until they start blooming. The struggling day lilies on the right were not just dug up, thrown into pots for a few weeks and then replanted but had also sat potless (with roots exposed) for a few days because we ran out of pots and buckets. And as if that wasn't enough torture for the poor plants I decided to divide them before replanting them (they needed it). Hopefully they'll recover and in a year or two look fantastic again.

Seeing that I'm posting about the garden I'll share about my echinacea (coneflower) experiment.We have a nice butterfly/hummingbird garden which started out with one big purple coneflower. It dropped seeds and then we had three. And then my beloved husband bought a white coneflower and a yellow coneflower bringing our echinacea count to five plants.

Unfortunately for us neither the white nor yellow coneflower plants appeared to make it through the winter but fortunately for us we had a few more seedlings reappear this year. Now, odds are strong that they will all be purple coneflowers but we might get extra blessed and have one or two turn up white or yellow. We won't likely know until mid to late summer because I moved five of them over to the main front yard garden area (which got expanded after the backhoe excavation ordeal) and transplanting tends to delay blooming (at least in my experience). Here's what the little transplants look like now.

This is an overview and there are actually 6 echinacea plants in the above photo but two of the holes (on the right) have seedlings that are hard to see. One of the holes has two seedlings. If they both survive they might be a bit crowded in a year or two but if either one even survives I'll be happy.

Here's a close up of one of the seedlings and here's a lesson learned. I'd never transplanted echinacea before. It turns out that they have a big center tap root in addition to the normal little roots and that tap root is tenacious. I was doing the transplanting after some heavy rain and the plants just didn't want to come out of the ground. Had I known about the tap roots I'd have dug twice as deep as I thought I needed to. That would have made the job a lot easier.

Hope you enjoyed my iris photos and echinacea story. What's going on in your garden?

If you have any tips on growing echinacea or replanting roses (they're next on my put-back-after-the-excavation list) I'd love to hear them! May God bless you!

Tulips, Fire Poker Lilies, Japanese Maple & More: This Week in My Maryland Garden

In between rainstorms yesterday I popped out to take these photos for you. Here is what is likely our last tulip of the year and it's a beauty. I think it's a parrot tulip and like the red and white contrast.

Here is one of our first rhododendron blooms of the year. We only have one rhododendron bush but it's a big one. The azaleas are still blooming too.

I suspect that these are fire poker lilies. They're in the shade (imagine we should move them but we still have hundreds of plants in clumps in pots waiting to be replanted since the yard excavation so moving things is taking a back burner to getting our front yard put back together).

 Looking forward to seeing blue iris blooms before next week's post.

When our windows are open the Josee lilacs fill our rooms with their sweet scent. Our old fashioned lilacs aren't likely to bloom this year but I'm just happy they survived the overzealous pruning they received last fall. We still need to dig out the dead wood (which is more obvious now that the tree like bushes now have leaves) so that air will circulate better and hopefully the lilacs will get even healthier.

The Japanese maple seedling I posted about last week and had transplanted directly into the ground wasn't looking so good so I got three more (in hopes that at least one will survive). One is pictured above. They're all in pots and seem to really like the potting soil more than the regular garden soil.  Of course, they'll be more likely to survive if I weed around them so I think I'll go do that after this post.

Every time I view the amazing variety of plants and flowers in my garden or anywhere out in the world I'm amazed at God's creativity and thankful for the beauty on this side of heaven. Imagine how much more vibrant and amazing it will be in paradise! May God bless you and may you enjoy the beauty around you.