Mostly About Plants

Sometimes vignettes just appear before me, this being one of them. Red fence, mountain laurel, several shades of green--what's not to like?

So yes, I did come across this, but what my intention was on that afternoon was to find the source of the loud chirping I was hearing in the lane. Lo and behold, luck was with me that day. This is a pair of House Wrens, birds that I rarely see, but there they were, really almost out the back of our yard 

Loud as can be, it was not but a few days later that they went out on their own. I think they might be coming to our feeders now and if not, some look-alikes are. As in small brown birds.  It is astonishing how many birds we are attracting at the moment, including one of my favorites and definitely not a regular, but welcome nonetheless, a Eastern Towhee with a little sunflower seed in his mouth. 

Here's something that is a little bit amusing, or some might find it so. My bean harvest to date.

Green beans are said to be easy to grow, however I had a heck of a time getting them to sprout, thus one plant and four beans to date. Unlike my romaine lettuce that grew too big and with the constant wet weather of last week, that I wrote about here, began attracting slugs, thus I did a big clean up of the garden and pulled all of the lettuce leaves off.

Whether it was a good idea or not, for a different reason I also clipped off all the bottom leaves on the cabbage plants. And what would that reason be, you ask? They were so large and were shading the burgeoning cucumber plants. The four cucumber plants are now flowering, the broccoli is forming new little plants, and there are tomatoes on the vine. Aside from some "pest pressure", I am overall pleased with how things are progressing.

The rainfall since last I wrote has diminished somewhat, yet still the threat of rain has loomed meaning finding the right time for Bruce to paint the parking lot with a new directional sign using a giant stencil he made using a large cardboard box, was tricky. 

Buying a stencil that large was not in the budget, so he got creative.

Unfortunately, people are still coming in the wrong direction, but he did what he could. Note the looming clouds pictured above and about two hours later it looked like this!

Not a whole lot later, the clouds opened up wide.

As I have mentioned before, hard rain is not that common here; instead it is slow and steady, however on that day, it came down hard and fast!

That same day, while waiting on Bruce, I met the new pastor and his wife and son who were coming to Murphy for the first time. Porter, aged four, is as cute as a button. A catered lunch was held on Sunday following church for Pastor Wil, Lea, Nathaniel, and Norah. 

Nathanial, aged nine, was still just a baby when they came to Murphy, but now he is a budding preacher because he took the mic at the after event with no nerves at all.

Mayor Tim Radford spoke as well because Wil was such a presence in the community. Saying that they will all be missed is an understatement!

Weren't we supposed to be focusing on plants? The title says it so it must be true.

I was a little greedy, thinking I could separate the plant above (Paristemon), and by golly I seemed to have done it with success as two of the three are now in the ground. Whether they will make it is another story, but I'm thinking that if they were going to die, that would have already happened..

Lavender in pots on the front steps, 

and Autumn Sage, a very fragrant plant, adjacent to the front door. 

I keep buying more plants, in part because I can, and in part because so many are new to me I want to see if I can grow them successfully. 

So cute, right?

Hummingbird's Lunch Cigar Flower and Strawberry Fields Gomphrena are two newish plants in one pot near the hummingbird feeder because they are meant to attract the same.

Speaking of hummingbirds, sightings to date have been few and far between, but every now and again, a little gift of seeing one happens. One morning I was captivated by the antics of one on this plant below.

Keeping a garden notebook is helping me keep these new names straight! What in the world did I do in the winter because I sure was not tending to plants? 

One thing I have not done as much of lately is walk on the river walk, but yesterday afternoon I corrected that, in spite of the warm weather which we all know I am not a fan of. The depth of color, as well as the shades of green when I was at the park made me think of a book I once loved, How Green Was my Valley. No coal was mined around here, as far as I know, but talc was, as well as marble that still is  being mined.

Anyone else read that book and love it like I did? That was a long time ago for sure, but it just popped into my head. There was a small flock of Starlings that would all fly off at once, in a very mini-murmuration. It's fun to watch that sort of thing and try to catch it with your camera. I failed miserably, but I did get this one shot that if you look closely you will see them all lined up on the fence top.

Something else that caught my eye that was something entirely new to me.

I have no idea what happened, but the butterfly seemed to be trapped and never moved while I watched and waited. So strange.

According to my notebook, this garden experiment began on March 5, 2026, and I've learned more than I can imagine with a little help from our friends on YouTube, as well as friends who have gardened here for years.  It's very common here and you know what they say..."when in Rome" . Yup, that's me.

your friend,

Gail