Earlier I had posted some photos of amazing round spider webs. This is one of the guys responsible for the orbs. He was sitting by the entrance to my front door. Beautiful isn’t he?

I recently put up window flower boxes and some hummingbird feeders. The little guys love the cheap plastic ones, but I have a nice glass one that they ignore for the most part. I was seriously thinking of taking it down until the other morning.

I was standing by my window looking out and enjoying my first cup of coffee when I noticed something sitting on this larger feeder. The feeder is attached to the window frame, so I was able to get a close look through the glass. It was a hummingbird with it’s feathers all rumpled and wet looking. It sat there drinking for about 20 minutes. I didn’t know if the little guy could fly or not, but once he’d drank his fill, he flew off. I decided not to remove the feeder. It’s the only one that allows a bird to perch on it to feed and if it helped this little guy, maybe it will help future ones.

Winter of the Heart
by E. G. Parsons

A historical romantic novel, set in the USA of the post civil war era.

A young woman applies for a job as teacher on an estate in South Carolina, but gets more than she bargained for. Her employer is similarly affected, a grim mask soon falling off as romance blossoms. Both, however, have a past and it soon comes back to haunt them, and in one case claim them. Or will it?

A nicely written story, which captivates the reader right from the start. The scenes are described with great clarity in the historical backdrop of those years in the 19th century.

The story benefits greatly from a good characterisation, on both sides of the spectrum of good and bad. The parallels between the two central characters, which lie central to the story, are uncanny but appear by no means contrived. A momentum is always maintained in this story, even when there is little activity due to the conditions on the ground.

The eventual outcome provides closure for both the main personalities, and hope for a third – I am looking forward to the sequel in 2010.

E.G. Parsons has written a great story, one that shows a deepening and progression in her writing.

I wish Winter of the Heart well.

Guido Blokland

http://atlantic-lines.blogspot.com

I planted these on the side of my garage and the little bumble bees are lovin’ them. I left this picture large, so you’ll have to give it time to load.

We had heavy rains all day and all night Saturday. The sun came out Sunday morning and was sparkling on these damp webs. They were beautiful. Click the smaller images for larger views.

For a short period of time, I’m offering free PDF’s of my newest historical romantic suspense novel, Winter of the Heart. All you have to do is send me an email and ask for it. Send your email HERE

Elizabeth

Call me crazy, but some of the things we plant in our vegetable gardens are just too beautiful to be ignored, so sometimes I plant them in planters as a specimen ornamental. Of course that doesn’t mean I won’t also eat the veggies they produce. One of my favorite food plants to enjoy for beauty is squash. It’s hard to overlook the lovely green leaves and awesome deep yellow blooms.

I also like potted tomatoes. 

Charlie, my garden helper. And no, we didn’t do that to his ears. They were done sometime in his past before we adopted him five years ago. Isn’t he a handsome fella?

No veggies here. Although ornamental coleus does descend from coleus herb. I can’t think of any plant easier to grow, tolerates both shade and sun, and offers so much beauty in so many varieties. If you pinch the top little leaves from your coleus, they’ll bush up instead of being so leggy. And try the Kong Coleus. They are huge and the leaves are just like velvet. I don’t have any this year, but next year….

If you’ve read my previous post, you know I’ve been waging war on the slugs that have invaded my gardens last spring and again this year. I thought I’d heard everything, as far as remedies for getting rid of the voracious pests. But I guess not….I was watching a gardening show on TV the other day and the expert suggested the usual stuff that has very little effect on the slugs as a group. Yes, all these things work, but only on the individual slugs or small groups, but when you have literally millions, as I do, it’s an ongoing daily battle.

This expert gardener did suggest one thing I’d never heard before. Vinegar and water sprayed around the plants. I thought, why not? I’ve certainly tried everything else except the pesticide baits. I don’t want to use those because my neighbor has a cat that visits and I have a dog. I don’t want to poison them. And since I’m really tired of being out of salt for cooking because of using it every morning on the slugs, I figured I’d try this new method. I assume the gardener giving the advice was speaking of white vinegar, but all I had in the house this morning was the apple cider variety. I decided to try it until I could get to the store for the white.

When going after slugs, you have to go out early, before the sun warms things up too much. They are night feeders. If I get to my gardens by around seven or eight o’clock, they’re still feasting all over my plants and moving around on the ground. I went out this morning with my little spray bottle of vinegar and water and sprayed all around my plants and directly on all the slugs I could see. Well, I’ll have to wait and see what the results are as a preventative, but directly on the slugs, it seems to work almost as well as salt. I’ll get some white vinegar later today and spray around the plants again tomorrow morning. I’ll let you know if this works to help keep the slugs at bay.

If I could find a good deterrent for keeping slugs out of my gardens without having to kill so many, I’d be thrilled. Because believe it or not, slugs are a beneficial creature. They eat wood, lawn and garden debris. But I really don’t think my lawn and gardens need quite so many.

UPDATE: The vinegar and water DID NOT help with my slug problem. It did kill the slugs if put directly on them, but did nothing to keep them from eating my plants.

Has your garden ever been so infested with slugs that when you went out early in the morning not one inch of ground didn’t have one? That’s my garden nightmare….We had an incredibly wet spring last year and again this year. The slugs invaded, ranging in size from pin point to six or eight inches, and I’ve been waging war. I’m pretty much an organic gardener, so rarely resort to pesticides, but that doesn’t matter, as slugs seem resistent to most of those anyway. I’ve done everything else recommended for slugs–the egg shells, the beer, the asphalt shingles, the hot pepper, diatomaceous earth, and yes, I’ve even resorted to sprinkling salt on them every morning. I’ve reduced the population…or at least I don’t see as many as I had before. Thank goodness, this year I had enough sense to put in plants that are more slug resistent or I’d have no gardens at all. I hate the thought of digging and disgarding all my lovely hostas, and since the slugs have nibbled at my other plants–with the hostas gone, will they eat these others instead? They also shredded my Iris and Lily foliage. Below are some photos. I used thumbnails for faster loading–Click them for larger images.

Large green hosta with slug holes. Below this is one of the same variety and a varigated one that they almost ate to the ground and below that are photos of my gardens they haven’t bothered much.

Slugs don’t like like my wild daisies.

They nibble at my impatiens and begonias, but they’re doing okay so far.

A part of another garden the slugs haven’t bothered much.

Another part of the same garden. The hosta on the right of the blue festuca was damaged pretty badly by slugs, but they didn’t touch the coral bells on the left. See the strawberries in the back left. They eat the sides off the berries when about half ripe.

Although slugs eat some leaves off my larger sedums, they don’t touch this creeping variety, nor do they like geraniums.

Jason and Eric…of course Eric has changed some since this picture was taken fourteen years ago. Bottom picture is Eric now.