Flora and Fauna

May 09, 2015 19:36

Saw many birds in Schenley Park today, including one that is new for us (since we're rank amateurs at birding, our Life Lists are pretty skimpy). The new one was a red-eyed vireo, which you *hear* all the time but who is drab and likes to stay up in the leaves. (Last week, we saw another new bird - a spotted sandpiper, on the bank of Panther Hollow Lake.) Other notables included male and female rose-breasted grosbeaks, a Baltimore oriole, a yellow warbler, and a hummingbird. Heard but not seen today were the red-winged blackbird and a larger woodpecker, probably red-bellied or northern flicker.

We went to the May Market outside of Phipps, although I didn't buy much because we'd walked and didn't have a wagon. Just a division of centaurea, and an ornamental purple millet grass. Was hoping for greater selection of perennials - I want to get some lady's mantle this year - but mostly the market was dominated by herbs and veggies.

At home the flora is doing well. Everything in the vegetable beds is coming up nicely, although given the realities of Pittsburgh's "spring" climate I despair of ever getting a really good showing out of cool-weather-loving sugar snap peas. Sunflowers, carrots, spinach and arugula are coming up nicely; pepper seedlings are fine and my lone, containerized cherry tomato looks really good and is about to start flowering. After meaning to grow nasturtiums for about a decade, I have finally planted some and they are getting their second and third sets of leaves. Blueberry bushes are also pushing out a few early flowers, although this is only their second year and last year they were heavily shaded/crowded out by some out-of-control tomato plants, so they haven't gained much size yet.

My exciting (OK, exciting-to-me) success is that, at Wal-Mart, I found cheap bare roots of rhubarb - I have had a lot of really dim luck with big-box-store packaged bare roots and corms, but they felt pretty firm like they might have some life in them and they were so cheap I decided to take a chance. Three per package, for six, although one package also had a tiny shrimpy extra root - broken off a larger one, or thrown in as a lagniappe, I couldn't say, but it had a tiny growing crown. Much to my shock, all seven have sprouted up! Even the tiny runty cast-off! :-D Guess I had better prep an actual planting location for them now, huh? (I had just planted them up in a few small pots, until I saw if I was going to have any actual growth or not.)

flora, fauna

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