Gardening, Pets & Cooking Blog

Check out this video – this squirrel is AMAZING! It’s hard to believe how daring and fun this squirrel is, with lots of personality. As you will see in the film clip, this squirrel LOVES a challenge – rather than eat the food that’s easy to get, she decides to hang upside down, fend off birds bigger than she is, and eat… and eat… and eat… One truly amazing squirrel! Enjoy!

Here are some stills taken from the video:

In the video below you will see Contented Peace, Bliss and Happiness at our magical bird feeder! If only the whole world got along this well! Our bird feeder is so busy, pretty soon we are going to need an air traffic tower! We sometimes have 10 black-headed grosbeaks at a time – most of them males (only about 3 females), but we have so many other birds too! This video shows many birds – all of them but one are black-headed grosbeaks – note that there is a feeder on a table that actually has 2 grosbeaks at it – one you can see clearly but one you can only see through the plastic of the feeder because that second grosbeak is on the far side of the feeder, so you need to look closely.   There is also one large dove in this video, eating on a feeding tray -and as you will see, they all get along fine!

 

In the photo below, you will see a FEMALE black-headed grosbeak – unlike the males which have the coloring of monarch butterflies, the females have browns and whites on their heads (striking stripes) and peachy colored breasts – they look ethereal! Like the males, they have large thick beaks. No mistaking these lovely ladies for anything but a grosbeak!

We are thrilled that so many black-headed grosbeaks have returned with the warmer weather, to keep our injured black-headed grosbeak company. Sometimes our little guy has as many as three fellow grosbeaks around him – all males. Once I saw a different male grosbeak with a gorgeous ethereal female, but that was the only female I’ve seen recently. I asked the kind folks at Cornell Ornithology about how long these male grosbeak friendships will last, and apparently they will last as long as there is no lady grosbeak around! I don’t know what to wish for now! Here is the video – ENJOY!

Thanks to my amazing friend Carol, we went with the Ventura County Garden Club on a SPECTACULAR tour of Santa Babara’s Ever-Bloom nursery – and all I can say is… LOOK AT THESE PICTURES! I am so inspired! Imagine acres and acres of gorgeous gerbera daisies, seemingly dancing a colorful ballet as far as the eye can see. These gerberas are all from imported plants from Holland (The Netherlands). MANY THANKS to Louise and Janet and the Ventura County Garden Club for making me feel so welcome and arranging this tour, and to my talented friend Carol, and to the lovely Ever-Bloom nursery. What an inspiring treat for an Impressionist artist!

Here are just a few examples of the lovely gerbera daisies we saw:

The above is a video to show how huge just ONE greenhouse is – and Ever-Bloom has several greenhouses like this, and other greenhouses serving younger plants at various stages of growth – a full 15 acres under glass, as they say! -And the technology behind it all is IMPRESSIVE

It won’t surprise anybody when these lovely gerbera daisies pop up in my garden AND in my paintings!

This is such a miraculous time of the year. The garden boxes transform from barren to full of hope; the yard is all a-twitter with birds – even our blue bird houses have residents (but not blue birds!). As last year, we have four raised vegetable boxes total – one is our “berry box” (not shown, going on its 4th year) that has blueberries, black berries, strawberries and raspberries (and now one tomato that we just didn’t have room for anywhere else); one vegetable box has some sweet yellow corn, sweet bell peppers, tomatoes, cucumber, broccoli, eggplant, kale, and romaine, as well as colorful Swiss Chard remaining from last season; a third box has newly planted tomatoes, peppers, and red and green romaine, and also has the previously planted “Methuselah” artichoke plant that has been there for four years now, as well as Swiss chard and spinach and even one brave miraculously-made-it-through-Winter tomato, each respectively planted from seed last season, and some remaining leek and brussel sprouts also from last season; and the final (fourth) box, fairly small in size, has a red flame seedless grape (3rd season) and a tomato. I still need to squeeze some fresh basil in there somewhere! Also what we hope to start this season: COMPOSTING! Oh my!!!!

A fun quip from my husband: Whenever we go to the garden to harvest some veggies for dinner (such as when we snip some Swiss Chard that has graced our dinners all winter long), we call our harvesting trips to the veggie garden “going grocery chopping” – I so love his sense of humor!

Here are some before and after photos, that show the transformation from barren beds to sunny gardening bliss:

 

 

 

My husband has been hard at work – harvesting today’s crop, making me smile, and putting up two blue bird houses, and being all around wonderful! I have seen a few bluebirds – beautiful red-breasted Western Bluebirds – in our neighborhood, so I decided to try to set up a few blue bird houses for them – which actually means my kind husband set up the houses! Here is what we did:
We purchased two houses – each with a hole towards the top, a hinge AT THE BOTTOM (so you can check for nests) and absolutely NO PERCH outside (that protects from predators and egg thieves). We also purchased two 7.5 foot lengths of 1″ copper plumbing pipe (will get a beautiful patina as it ages, at least that’s the plan!), 4 brass brackets (2 per house to bracket the pipe to the back of the house), and two 1.5 foot lengths of 1″pvc (test to make sure the copper pipe fits INTO the pvc and can turn a bit). The idea is dig a hole and put the pvc pipe into it, and then bolt the birdhouse to the copper pipe (using the brass brackets) so the house will be at least 5 feet off the ground (again to ward off predators), and then slip the birdhouse-copper-pipe combo into the pvc that you already put into the ground and – PRESTO- you’ve set the first house in your blue bird trail. It’s especially easy when your husband does all the work! Here are some photos:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Because I have a bit of a cold, my sweet husband also did today’s harvest from our garden – rainbow Swiss chard and fresh tomatoes. Made for a great dinner! My husband came up with a great line – he called harvesting the fresh veggies from our garden going “Grocery Chopping!” I love his sense of humor – no one makes me laugh like he does!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

-And a few photos of our rare black-headed grosbeak – he’s still here!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
 

A fun HAPPY update to this post: On February 23 at 8:30am I looked out my window and saw… a beautiful, perfect FEMALE black-headed grosbeak! HURRAY! Our little fellow isn’t alone anymore! I hope to have an opportunity to photograph her soon. It’s wonderful when things end RIGHT!

For those of you that have been following my postings, you will know that at our birdfeeders we have seen a black-headed grosbeak wihich has a broken wing. He has wintered here with us, when instead he is supposed to have migrated to Latin America with his flock, so Cornell Ornithology tells us this is quite rare, and asked me to record the sightings in their database, which I have. Separately, we also have a squirrel with a broken leg, who visits our feeder, and at first it was really sad to see, but now that squirrel is doing much better. The fun thing is, in these videos below, the two of them are chowing down their breakfast together, and I am so happy each of them has made it through the winter. This seems like a fairy tale ending for two struggling creatures who now have turned the corner to better, sunnier days. HURRAY! It’s nice to see a story end right! As an aside, I had named the squirrel “Molly” – but now I can clearly see it’s a boy, so the new name for this Squirrel is “Malty”! Fyi, several earlier videos of Molly (now Malty) are posted so you can see how far the recovery of this inspirational squirrel has beem, and I think our grosbeak bird is doing much better too!
Here are some videos of our happy, busy bird feeder:

VIDEO 1: As shown below, this video starts with Malty the Squirrel eating and then he is, to his (and my) surprise, joined by our broken-winged black-headed grosbeak. You can see Malty give the bird a quick scolding for scaring him, but then they get down to the business of eating…and eating…and eating! What is GREAT to see in this first video is how well our broken legged squirrel can jump again, when he is surpised by the visit by the broken-winged bird:

VIDEO 2: A happy, contented continuation of the first video. All’s well that ends well! I’m so happy to see them doing so well, and to be so friendly together:

My husband took this great photo of our sweet Bourke nesting on her eggs – and I wanted to share it with you. When he took the photo, he obviously didn’t want to use the camera’s flash, so the lighting of the photo might not be ideal, but the photo is still amazing in its gentle sweetness. Even though we have a male bird, we keep them separated except for chaperoned playtimes, so these eggs aren’t fertilized, and eventually she will tire of them. It is a bit sad to think of her so steadfastly roosting on these eggs for no realized end, but in a way I think she enjoys the process (at least I hope so, as it seems to be nature’s call for her). She is roosting in a tissue box (the vet’s recommendation – it works very well and is disposable which is nice and tidy) – my husband cuts the windows so that she can see us and her best bird friend. In any event, there is something so peaceful and warm about this photo of our little girl and her eggs – ENJOY!

Our squirrel Mort will eat and eat and eat. He just reaches into the bird feeder and chows down. He’s awesomely cute, and it’s fun to watch him hold the goodies in his paws and nibble away. It’s no great challenge to find that moment to film our Mort either – in the time it took me to take the video below AND put it on my computer AND upload the video to the internet AND create this post, Mort is STILL there eating…and eating,…and eating! Bon Appetit Mort!

As our Leonberger dog watched with his usual gentle fascination, we had two visitors to our bird feeder today – our inspirational Molly squirrel, whose broken leg happily still seems to be improving, and adorable Mort, who has the cutest tummy in squirreldom! You can see by watching both these videos the difference between brave Molly’s technique, because she needs to balance on one leg, and the ever confident feasting style of Mort who just sits on his rump and eats…and eats…and eats! Here are the two videos of these two enchanting visitors – I think it’s time I put a squirrel in a painting!

Mort:

Molly: