I have been making progress on the shade bed. It’s actually all along the fence on one side, but I am only concentrating on this one area of it right now. I have been clearing and planting as I go. I tackled the hardest part last weekend. This area was full of ground cover when we moved in. I cut all that growth down in the spring and I have now been ripping up all the root systems that were matted in.
It’s been a lot of work to get to this point. The roots were matted terribly:
This stuff was all throughout the bed.
This was the bed originally:
Tick country and so.much.work. It’s all pretty much ready for planting now. I am not sure how much I will be planting this fall other than a few plants and a ton of bulbs. I do have some Solomon seal for the shade bed coming, though.
But who am I kidding? I will be on the lookout for plants all fall! I did put in my baby Heuchera!
The big ash tree is dropping so many leaves already. It makes quite a mess, I have to say. Anyway, I love the foliage colors on these. I think this is going to be my new favorite shade plant!
My new camera arrived today, so here is me goofing around with it a little bit.
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I need to work on the bird pictures. They move too quick! This is either a downy or hairy woodpecker.
Female or juvenile cardinal.
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The shy bowling ball shocked at being caught on camera:
I have so much to learn about this camera. It’s pretty complex. Or, I guess it is really easy to use for a novice, but the opportunity is there to take control over all the functions and take even better pictures. Good thing that you don’t have to pay for film developing anymore! It would cost a fortune with the amount of pictures I take – and will be taking 😀
Nice shot of the cardinal(and the flowers of course), plus those bowling balls usually move FAST, so nice job there too. The woodpecker is a downy … I zoomed in on the white edges of the tail … D-ownys have D-ots, while H-airys H-ave not. That’s my ditty to remember.
I hope to be able to get a picture of the pileated woodpecker. He was around last week, but not this week. We have a family of cardinals. The parents would bring the babies to the yard – and they would not shut up LOL! Now the babies don’t make as much noise, but they don’t seem very bright. They are more likely to be at the feeders when I am sitting by them than the parents are.
I love the birds that you have at your feeders. Do you buy a certain type of bird food? I noticed that when I buy the cheap stuff, they just ignore the feeders!
Your ground cover diligence kind of made me laugh. I took out some violets and creeping jenny a couple of weeks ago, but I was not as thorough. They are already growing back. I’m okay with that, though. I just was tired of them taking up half the bed all to themselves.
You are going to have so much fun with your camera!
My 2 feeders are squirrel proof feeders, so I get more expensive seed without the ‘fillers’. I have one that is a blend of nyger and sunflower hearts, which is super popular. The other is a ‘no-mess’ blend, which is great because it all gets eaten. The squirrels have actually learned they can’t get food out of these feeders so they just sit on the ground underneath and catch the bits thrown out by birds. I will put up some suet feeders when the squirrels go into hibernation.
I thought about you while I was ripping out the ground cover 😀 I just don’t care for it and it’s too hard to plant with it there, let alone set bulbs.
For landscapes and garden shots I leave my camera on AF setting, then bracket some different aperture shots. Shutter speed isn’t too important too worry about with flowers! I predict your next wish will be for a bigger telephoto lens, if you want to get the wildlife shots–I took a nature photography class this summer, and was amazed at the shots my classmates with those lenses got.
I have a 2x telephoto and a zoom lens, but I know in the future I will want an uber zoom for birding 😀
Your flower pictures are making me want to dig out my 35mm camera and try some shots like that…just beautiful!
It’s funny, I have an old Canon 35 mm camera and this new digital looks so much like it and has all those same features on it. I need to remember how to use all those setting and stuff.
Wow your new camera makes beautiful photo’s.