Is It Time to start the Ark?

7-1-15 VERMONT: Rain, rain, rain, rain. Yesterday started as sunny, after days of cold, cloudy, rainy weather, but by mid-afternoon the rain began again and has continued to mid-day today, which is another overcast day in the low sixties. Actually the whole year has been cold with a lot of precip.

I started installing a solar powered electric fence for the veggie garden. Of course, if it doesn’t warm up, there won’t be veggies to guard. The corn seeds won’t germinate in the cold, and tomatoes flowers won’t set fruit with cold nights, but there’s always next year, or next month is it gets warmer.

Anyway, I extended the black plastic mulch in the veggie beds to reach about a foot or so outside the new fence to prevent weed intrusion, put insulators on the posts for the electric wires. The solar fence charger needs four days of full sun to charge its battery for night time use, but now that doesn’t seem likely happen for weeks. I need to install grounding rods and wire it up.

I also did a bit more planting, adding another blanket flower, Gaillardia ‘Arizona Apricot’, to the pond side, a Phlox paniculata ‘Red Magic’ to the bed by the new French doors, and six monkshood, Aconitum naptellus, to the shaded bed on the terrace to replace ferns that had taken over that spot. I pulled the ferns first. I also planted three more Primula by the pond. They were a gift from neighbor Melissa, whose garden is magnificent.

New blooms: hosta.


Looks like a sparrow, but I think it's a female house finch. Anyone?

A slightly better pic of the Indigo Bunting.