Yellow Bellied Sap Sucker - The One and Only

This is one of my very very first bird sightings in the yard. Actually, more like Kelly’s first bird sighting. We were out on the deck and he heard it tapping away at one of our trees. As you can see by the poor quality of this picture, I was not using my Canon 60D. I used what I had. This little guy is a Yellow Bellied Sap Sucker. The one and only! They are listed for this area in Missouri, but they are pretty rare, so I was quite excited when Kelly spotted him in the back yard. He is pretty spectacular. 

(Edit: 2014 - I never saw another one again. This was my one and only sighting. One day I hope to see one of these again and get a much better picture, but for now this will do). 

Halloween is here again

It's that time of year folks for our Halloween decorations to go up. Unfortunately this year I focused more indoors than I did out doors with my pictures. I do have a few outside shots so I am going to include them here. THEY ARE BEYOND TERRIBLE, and I'm a little embarrassed to put them out there, but it's all I got. They were taken at night, but an outside picture is still an outside picture, even if it's blurry and impossible to see :) 

One thing I know for sure is check out my Giant Marigolds coming down the side of the walk way on the right. Kelly added a bed to that side of the walk and did Giant Marigolds, and BAM those thing bloomed like wild fire. It's October and they are still going strong. Say hi to the creepy hanging skelton that kinda looks like he is staring at you, LOL!!! Are you curious what Kelly was for Halloween this year? CREEEEEPY is what he was with a Capitol 'C', lol. You can throw SCARY in that too.  Smile Boys!

Stay tuned for some wonderful new projects coming up for 2012!

Another Tree down, this one compliments of Mother Nature

A very strong storm ripped threw here last night. The haven't classified it a tornado, but straight line winds at about 70 -80 mph!!! I thought we got threw it okay, but at second glance we realized our Bartlett Pear Tree lost a whole side. It makes me sad because I really liked this tree and I'm hoping we do not have to take it down. The flowers that bloom on it in the Spring are incredible. 

This picture was NOT taken vertical. You are totally imagining that, lol. Look away, look away! 

Hummingbird Feeders

Today I added Humming Bird feeders to the new window garden area. This blog IS called BIRDEES and BLOOMS, so it's reasonable to say I need to start posting some bird stuff. Let's try and gets some birds in this yard. I figured Hummingbirds would be fairly easy to pull in, and my research says this area is loaded with them. I never seen one in my area of NY, so I'm quite excited at the possibility of seeing them here. Now that I have these awesome flowers every where I'm seriously starting to take a major interest in birds. I'm a novice, but with some research on the internet I have started a game plan for getting some birds to come hang out with us in our lovely new garden area. My cats should just LOVE that, lol. 

I am going to apologize for my bad photography skills here again. IX-NAY on the vertical pictures and the cheesey ball frame!!! Hopefully the Hummingbirds forgive me and come for some yummy food anyway.

Bring on the Hummingbirds...

Redoing the front window garden area

So the time has come for us to do some major overhauling to the front window garden area. It needs some well needed love and TLC.  Step one, strip everything from that area including the pines that had kine-rot on each side.  It's crazy how enormous this bed is now that it's completely cleared out. I think it makes the front of the house look bugger, and it's going to fun to plant up! 

Do you see it?...I'm not sure you can...I know you see it...I can see it. The gorgeous little girl fountain pouring water out of her watering can makes me so happy. I am so in love with fountain. I have always wanted a water feature in my yard before, and this was the perfect fit. The instant I saw her sitting in the garden shop I knew I had to have her. I have a feeling this lovely little girl is going to be gracing my window garden area for many years to come. We used sand to level her out prior to pouring in the mulch.

We both worked so hard, and this is the final result. We worked on it all day, as you can see by the picture, the sun started going down. This is the start of a good thing. I can only picture gorgeous gardens planted here year after year. Below is a picture of my fountain in action. So loving it! 

More pictures to come! 

Timbeeeeeeeeeeeeer - Tree Down

Today this beautiful tree must come down. It got some type of rot, I'm wanting to say pine-rot but not 100% that was the case.  It is spreading around a lot of the pines trees in this area. I even seen a few dead Pines in the neighbors yard as well. It's not pretty and quite sad. Here is the poor thing at the peak of it's destress. We had to put it out of it's misery and take it down.

BYE BYE ...TIMBEEEEEEEEEER!

Creating another new planting area

Today we decided to create a new planting area in a lonely spot in our yard. It faces the neighbors so we are thinking of doing some perimeter planting or bushes. My original thought for this area was Hydrangea bushes, but I think it's direct sunlight and too hot for that type of bush. We used our container garden pots to mark out 5 squares to dig up. 

We ended up planting butterfly bushes here that did well for a few years until I cut them back to the ground for winter. I killed those suckers real fast doing that, lol. I was pretty sure I read on the internet you were supposed to cut them down. Oh well, Kelly has called me a plant killer for ever and in this case I lived up to my nickname!