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jillh
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Recent Entries to this Blog Spring has almost made it to Southern Ontario
Posted: 19 Apr 2011
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Spring has almost made it to Southern Ontario

Category: Vegetable and Flower Gardens | Posted: Tue Apr 19, 2011 12:01 am

After a lovely winter with just the right amount of snow and some lovely cold sunny days we've almost made it to spring! I neglected to tell you about my gourd growing last summer and unfortunately lost some of my summer photos of the garden due to the computer crashing and not backing up. Lesson learned...the hard way.
We did grow the bottle neck gourds from seeds given to us from the colonial garden in Virginia and they did very well. The squirrels loved them!! They ate all but 2 of this variety and even chewed through the only one of the original shape (the birdhouse gourd) that grew. I was quite upset by this but happy to have rescued 2 of the gourds before they were eaten. I had 13 in total last year, it was a good crop. This year I'll stick to the more useful birdhouse gourds and it's time to start the seeds indoors. I will do that this week-end.
Here is one of our winter bird visitors:



Carolina Wren on peanut feeder ( photo / image / picture from jillh's Garden )

This beautiful little bird showed up in late October and I had to look a few times at the light colored perky tailed visitor to make sure of what I was seeing. I thought it would just migrate through but it stayed all winter and as far as I can tell was alone. It ate a lot of peanuts, coming to this feeder many times a day, just outside of our kitchen window. In mid-March it disappeared and I haven't seen it since. It was well fed and did not look thin or sickly so I hope it just moved on with the better weather. I have never seen this type of wren before and we are the very top end of it's range.
The house wrens were heard this morning so it's time to get the houses back outside in their places, ready for occupancy.
We've also had this visitor:







Sharp shinned hawk ( photo / image / picture from jillh's Garden )

I believe that this is the Sharp-shinned hawk rather than the uncommon Cooper's hawk which looks similar. It has been in the yard quite a few times, perching on the gourd trellis, the fence right beside the shrub where the sparrows spend their winter days tweeting (they are silenced immediately when he swoops down!) or the kid's trampoline enclosure.

Here are a few more birds, the photos were taken while walking on a nearby nature trail.






Cardinal on a cold day! ( photo / image / picture from jillh's Garden )






My favorite, the chickadee ( photo / image / picture from jillh's Garden )






Another first sighting for me this winter, a red-bellied woodpecker. ( photo / image / picture from jillh's Garden )






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Comments

 

Jewell wrote on Tue Apr 19, 2011 3:51 am:


Fantastic photos :)




 

Frank wrote on Tue Apr 19, 2011 6:10 am:


Really enjoyed your photos Jill. Hope your wren friend is still flapping its wings elsewhere and having a good time.




 

glendann wrote on Tue Apr 19, 2011 11:24 pm:


Spring has not made it to Montana yet.We had about 6 to 8 inches of snow this morning.Its almost all melted now Its almost 50 gegrees now.





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