Posts Tagged: birds

Success with Holly Trees

I've always loved holly especially around Christmas time. I once hand carried a holly wreath home on an airplane after a trip to Seattle. Not wanting to do that too often, I decided I would have to get a holly tree.  I found I would need two trees a male and a female if I wanted berries. My local nursery kindly ordered them for me. (Note this was at least a decade ago). 
     These being my pre- Master Gardener days, I am not sure what variety of holly I have. I suspect it is either Ilex aquifolium, English Holly, or an English Holly cross breed.  I put them promptly into containers where they languished for the next several years.  I finally decided I had to do something so I transplanted them into the ground in my side yard.
     Both trees perked up immediately.  The male tree which got put in the shadier spot is about three feet tall. The female who ended up in the sunnier spot shot up to five feet.  Over the past year or two I was able to pick some sprigs to put into arrangements, but I was afraid to cut too much and didn't have many berries.
     This year the female tree  has exploded with berries.  I even cut enough branches to make my own small holly wreath.  (I now realize why we don't use holly at the wreath workshop, you need major protection for dealing with those spines.)
     I've been trying to watch the berries, but I haven't seen any birds eating them yet. One Internet source suggested that the berries needed a few freezes to soften.  I am going to continue to watch and will see what happens. Robins and mockingbirds are supposed to like them.

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photos by Karen Metz

Sunflower Seeds are for the Birds!

Each fall I delay pulling my summer vegetables and annual flowers, reluctant to acknowledge the ever-shortening days while we are still enjoying our warm summer-like weather.  I am usually optimistic that just a few more days in late September will yield the most perfectly ripe tomato or tender summer squash of the season.  But those extra days never do, and especially not this year.  My tomatoes were a flop and my squash was nonexistent.  Even my usually reliable basil failed to flourish like usual.  What a disastrous summer for my vegetable garden! 

 

I happily pulled these remnants of my summer failure, optimistically looking forward to better success with my winter vegetable garden.  But I stopped at pulling out my sunflowers and zinnias.  As terrible as the faded sunflowers look, with their petals dropped and green stalks turned to yellow and brown, I knew that the birds would appreciate their ripened seeds.  And the zinnias?  Well, they still bloomed and, for some reason, the birds seem to like them.  (It turns out that they eat zinnia seeds too.) 

 

I cut the sunflower stalks to about 3-4 feet long and wound them through the wire fencing that once supported my attempt at growing miniature pumpkins.  It wasn’t the prettiest sight, but the wildlife more than made up for it—for the next 8 weeks or so, finches, sparrows, little brown jobbers, and scrub jays flocked to the spent flowers, enthusiastically picking at the seeds.  It was great fun to watch!

 

Since then I did a little research and learned that birds especially like a few types of sunflowers that can be planted in one’s yard, including large sunflowers like ‘Mammoth’ and ‘Kong’ to smaller sunflowers like ‘Black Peredovik.’  I haven’t planted anything fancy, however, just whatever pretty multi-branched cutting mix catches my eye each summer, and the birds have liked them just fine. 

 

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Third Time Is A Charm

Just this week, the Master Gardeners pulled off an amazing feat. They worked on 3 gardens at the Solano County Fair: an entry way garden, a competition garden, and then a last-minute garden.  It was quite the undertaking, but very rewarding in many ways.  The gardeners are by no means professional landscapers or designers. They just love plants and putting them together in a landscape.  In three days they made the gardens beautiful for the public to enjoy! 

The competition garden we entered for the Amateur Gardens was called “Home Tweet Home”.  The focus was on the houses of birds, insects, and bats that might be enticed to your yard.  There were plants that attract certain insects, a water feature and a small lawn area.

I want to back up a little and tell you how the Master Gardeners got involved at the fair.  About 4 years ago, the Master Gardeners were asked to design an entry way garden for the Twilight Theater, the location of the gardens competition.  The following year, they decided to enter the Amateur Gardens competition for kicks.  Apparently the judges liked their gardens because they have won for the past three years including the 2012 fair. 

Every year, the Master Gardeners put forth design ideas, one is selected, and then, with help from the membership, implement of that design.  This year, Carolyn Allen created the design themed “Home Tweet Home” (the fair’s theme was “Home Sweet Home”) .The ‘box’ they have to plant in has dimensions of 8’ wide by 16’ long.  You might think this is a lot of room to work with, but once you’re there working in the box, it seems much smaller. 

There is a lot of planning involved and the Master Gardeners seek help from one another and also look outside the organization to get the materials they need.  It is a hectic, but fun event that they love doing year after year.  Congratulations to the UC Master Gardeners of Solano County on their first prize at the fair!

Side-view of the entry way garden in the Twilight Theater. (photo by Jennifer Baumbach)

Home Tweet Home almost finished. (photo by Carolyn Allen)

The last-minute garden installation.

Fountain Time

Sometimes I sit in my garden and enjoy listening to the quiet. I spend the better part of my day listening to kids, and I wouldn't have it any other way, but every now and then I just love to hear the quiet. However, lately I have been sitting out there and thinking it would be really nice to have some sort of fountain. I've had a birdbath for a number of years, and I keep it full of fresh water because so many birds stop by it every day. They love to take a short "dip" in the water and then fly off. I figure that the little sounds of water I hear when they are bathing would be that much nicer to hear coming from the sound of a small fountain, right?

Most of us have heard that the sound of water can be very soothing and even help lower our stress level. It can actually help cool you down to hear the sound of water on a hot day, and with the intense heat we are prone to in the summer, that could be a very good thing.  The area around the fountain, having a higher level of humidity, is great for the plants in the garden. Also, the addition of any water feature in a landscape is beneficial to the birds and insects we want in our gardens. It gives them a place to rehydrate and cool off.

I think I have convinced myself that it's time for a fountain!

Picture Perfect?

Lots of them, but what are they? Vacaville residents Mark and Julie Vasquez began finding little flies in Birds Landing, near Rio Vista, in late...

These picture-winged flies were captured in Birds Landing in mid-February and popped into a jar for identification. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)

Side view of picture-winged fly.(Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)

Up close--This macro shot shows the head of a picture-winged fly. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)

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