Reminder that tomorrow the Great Backyard Bird Count begins. Be a good citizen and count your birds! Link is in the sidebar or read more about it here. I’ve also added a few more bird pictures to the Winter Birds slideshow or open it from the slideshow link in the sidebar. The little Carolina wren and the Red-bellied woodpecker are new and I’ll add more pictures periodically. And here are the results of the bird picture quiz: there are nine cardinals (5 papas, 4 mamas), three house sparrows, and one tufted titmouse. Did you find them all?
The plant and seed catalogs have been arriving almost daily since before Christmas with all their enticing pictures! Hard to get motivated to order anything when there is still snow on the ground, but looking at the catalogs and seeing what is new out there in the gardening world nudges one in the right direction.
I have been hearing reports from my sister in Texas that they are cleaning up from unusual frost damage and things are starting to pop out of the ground. She volunteers at the Fort Worth Botanic Gardens and according to their website, they have Alyssum, Camellias (Camellia sasanqua cultivars), Creeping phlox/thrift (Phlox subulata), Drummond red maple (Acer rubrum var. drummondii), Flowering quince (Chaenomeles spp.), Leatherleaf mahonia (Mahonia bealei), Narcissus, Pansies, Paperwhite Narcissus, Saucer magnolia (Magnolia x soulangiana), Winter daphne (Daphne odora), Winter honeysuckle (Lonicera fragrantissima), Winter jasmine (Jasminum nudiflorum), Witch hazel (Hamamelis vernalis) blooming in January and February.
We’re not even close to that, but pretty soon it will be time for GardenScape 2010. This is an excellent annual event featuring landscaping and nursery professionals in and around the Rochester area. In its 19th year, there are display gardens, a marketplace, seminars, and other special events that visitors can experience. Mark your calendars for March 11th to 14th!
And finally, a note on the creatures of the garden other than the birds. The snow is full of tracks now. The deer herd rambles around munching everything in sight and we have a fox that makes nightly forays looking for, I suspect, innocent bunnies. Seeing the always-maddening squirrels completely foiled from discovering the birdfeeder with our soda bottle device makes me gleeful! And my own boot prints and ski tracks as I wander around just enjoying the fresh air. I wish I could identify all the tracks, but there are so many now that we need a fresh covering of snow to erase the old ones. Or, maybe not.
Everybody needs fresh snow in February!
Comment by Sallie — February 11, 2010 @ 7:54 pm