I put my hummingbird feeder out a couple of days ago and yesterday, at Hamwild's suggestion, added an ant moat to it. This morning, one of the first things I wanted to do was check and see if a hummingbird was at the feeder. When I checked it, lo and behold there was a little hummingbird sitting on my new feeder having breakfast! Unfortunately, by the time I grabbed my phone to take a picture he was gone. But, at least he found the feeder! That makes me think he will probably be back! Hopefully, he will bring his friends. Maybe I'll put out our other feeder too!
My long term plan was to plant two America climbing roses to cover the patio surround and go up and cover the arbor. Since the sun is to the east and south of this arbor, I expected the canes would grow up the arbor and the roses would poke through the arbor to grow toward the sun. This morning I went out and saw the first bloom on the rose planted against the arbor. And the little rose did exactly what I expected! Yea!
We've lived here for 21 years and only seen the occasional hummingbird fly through the yard. When we moved here we put our feeders out because we had all kinds of Hummingbirds in Colorado. But we no sooner had them out about 2 days and the ants found them in droves! So we took them down and didn't put them back up.
However, one of my friends and neighbors inspired me!
I saw a humming bird perched on a tiny branch outside my kitchen window the other day. I thought about hanging my feeder, but didn't. Then I saw a video he posted on Facebook of a humming bird at his feeder. Yvonne saw it too and told me about it. So we decided that if we have that much humming bird activity in our neighborhood we need to put out our feeders too! So this afternoon I put up a bird feeder hanger I had laying around, and hung my first humming bird feeder from it. Yvonne prepared the sugar solution. Now we wait and see what happens. Next we just have to figure out where to hang the second feeder we have.
Well, I learned something today! Plants that look alike, almost identical, are often very hard to tell apart and identify!
With help from 'Calif_Sue' and 'frankrichards16' I was able to identify the Clematis I've had for 14 years. I didn't keep the tag, and never really cared what it was called. But after joining the National Gardening Association I started caring about what plants I actually had in my garden. I went to the plant data base and thought from the pictures and description, I had Clematis 'Rhapsody'. However, the more I read on the Clematis forums and saw people talk about Clematis 'H.F. Young' I got confused. I went to the plant data base and that Clematis looked like mine too! They looked identical to me.
So I asked how I could tell them apart in the Plant ID forum. Sue and Frank both posted quickly and showed me the differences. I really do think now that my Clematis is 'H.F. Young' and not 'Rhapsody'. I never knew there were so many plants that looked almost identical to the casual observer! So if you're new here, and new to identifying plants, this is the place for you to come for help!
Thanks guys!
I am so pleased with the transplanted Acanthus and the way it's growing! The leaves are getting huge! I should ahve put my hand in the picture for some perspective. But the biggest leaf is about 10" from top to bottom.
