Happy Birthday Pat!!!!
Your Neck of the Woods Chat Summer # 2 Count Down to Fall
Many thanks for all the good wishes and visions of flowers. Latvia seems to abound in blooms. How lovely.
David and I enjoyed an Indian lunch buffet yesterday. Very little time on DG last night as I was on the phone with various folks, among them my parents, who celebrated their 70th anniversary last month.
Looking forward to Saturday and seeing so many of you and Sally's gardens.
70th? OMG....now THAT'S worthy of celebration!!!!
Definitely celebration worthy!!!! Congrats to them
Pat sounds like your BD was a great day. Belated Happiness. Wonderful for your parents!! Mine celebrated their 60th just a couple of years ago and I sure hope they will have a 70th.
My wintersown foxgloves are flowering now! This is very strange, but the flowers are even more pretty because they were unexpected!
But all of my caladiums and coleus are starting to look rather sad.
SS--
Hurry and take some Coleus cuttings while you can. They root easily.
I keep them under my light set-up. Don't use it for anything else in the winter!
Give the cuttings good light and keep just slightly watered until they have rooted.
Will save you a lot of money next year...
A note of caution for all you bargain-hunters:
I've been to 2 different Lowes in 2 weeks to buy plants on sale/clearance. Each time, they tried to charge me full price for everything. Lowes has great sales (50-75% off for succulents right now), but they really need to take care of this problem.
We need rain....water!!! Everything is cracking.
ssgardener---
I stopped at my local Lowes and went back to the Clearance racks...
I could have bought 10"petunia HB's--but knew I had nowhere to hang them.
I DID buy 4" tall pots (like proven Winners has) of Pentas for .25 cents each. One of my favorite flowers.
I have a few "holes" here and there and will plant them there....Liberate them from those tight, little pots.
They had a lot of racks-full of clearance plants...Most--not worth buying...
Getting close to bed-time.....will play one game of Mah Jong to tax my brain to sleep.
Gita
Gita,
The brazilian plume flower that you gave me in the spring is doing great. It is about the only thing still blooming in my garden now. My friend Cheryl swung by to pick me up this afternoon, and she was admiring it. She would love to have one to take to Florida with her. You know I don't know much about this kind of thing. How do I get something from my plant to start growing from her? Cutting? How? Don't even know where to cut, how to root, etc....
teri--
I would not cut a new seedling plant. There just won't be enough left to grow.
Someone had one att he swap--I don't know who?
Mine has grown huger and huger as the summer went on. Have you seebn the pictures I posted?
The leaves, especially, have grown BIG! Sturdy looking!
I will not take cuttings this fall from it. I want to let it grow to its fullest extent for next year.
You could go to PF--put in Barzilian Plume flower ans, as the 1st page comes up,
there is usually---"4 members has this plant for sale....". Then you click on that line--
and it will take you to the site that is selling it.
I got mine, originally, at Rawlings Conservatory as a rooted, small plant.
Good luck! Gita
I need help identifying a rodent (??) I saw in my neighbor's yard today.
It was too big to be a mouse.
Too round in shape (and tail too short) to be a rat.
Too big to be a vole.
Tail too skinny to be a squirrel.
I've never seen a mole before. I guess it *could* have been a mole, but it didn't have those obvious paws/snout. Maybe it was just going too fast for me to notice? Also, do moles get as big as a city rat? Do we have moles in the Mid-Atlantic? Would they be traveling on the ground in broad daylight like this? I've never seen that telltale sign of mole damage around here.
It was dark in color -- dark grey, maybe?
It ran across my neighbor's yard and then hid under her field of hostas.
I think I'm just a little bit freaked out after all the stories of rabid wildlife that I've been reading.
Possum?
Happy, we have possums in our area??
I think that's a possibility.
And ew...
A neighbor 1/2 mile away caught one (unintentionally) in his trash can many years ago....
SSG - I guarantee you have possums in your neighborhood, as well as raccoons, foxes, flying squirrels, probably skunks and possibly coyotes. If the creature was hiding it was unlikely rabid.
How about a weasel ,a ferret escaped from someone(or let run loose) or maybe a Nutria
Sorry i forgot the too round in in shape could mean a ground hog ,this is the time of year they are still small as young. They are and would be about that size and color. As are Nutria...
Certainly not a Nutria in her neighborhood, wrong environment. (I just happen to be familar with where she lives.) Ground hogs almost certainly as well as rabbits, weasels and mink within a few blocks, probable. Maybe even a bobcat in the nearby woods.
I agree a young groundhog would be roundish, fast, daytime, and dark. Possums seems to be a light grey.
greenthumb99 ; from what I understand about Nutria(and that as much as some in warmer climates) they can and will live wherever minks could or do.
Although admittingly I have only seen one here,( if there is such a thing as one).
I hope hers is only the passing ground hog, they tend to move away from people if at all possible.
The only thing about a groundhog that doesn't fit is that it didn't have a bushy tail.
Thank you all for the suggestions! I had no idea there could be so much wildlife in my neighborhood.
hm, did you see a naked tail? or just "not a bushy squirrel like tail". I would say a groundhog tail is not that noticeable..
The tail looked skinny, but I couldn't tell if it had any fur on it at all.
As for the mystery mammal, the local first year ground hogs are much bigger than rats by now. Moles are pretty slow and about the same size as voles, thus too small, shrews even smaller. Possums are slow, plus the young ones are as least as big as rats by late June. Juhur7 makes a good point, that neighborhood is too high and dry for either mink or nutria. Rabbits are too distinctive, as are feral kittens.
Well, no offense , but rats are possilble. We found two dead young rats last fall- we think they got flooded out from the woods after all that rain, and then ? what killed them. But kind of surprised to find rats.
8 ^/
You all realize that leaves us with dry land Muskrats or Prairie dogs LOL.
There are both native and naturalized rat species in the area but ssgardener spoke of "city rats" for size comparison, indicating that she is familar rats and prone to recognize them.
While I am getting to talkative and hairy animal to the extreme, you don;t suppose her neighbors have been raising guinea pigs or chinchilla do you? O f course if I ever saw a gray guinea pig that size I'D WORRY!!!
Truly I had no Idea you all had Prairie dogs! really?My how things have changed
I personally think it is a possum based on Terris description. You definitely have them in your neighborhood.
I have trapped and release a few and "disposed" of others. Generally they are harmless. They look awful yes. If you have a compost they enjoy that at my house, I had one sneaking in to the garage to clean up my recycling bin. I've also seen smaller ones underneath the bird feeder.
"Looked skinny" sounds like a naked (enough ) tail, to be either possum or rat. Or kangaroo. Or kangaroo rat.
lol sally I agree with both of you though and started to say earlier rats vary so much in their look so that or the possum with dark fur is far more likely than any of the others.
Someone at yesterday's swap spoke of a wallaby having been caught somewhere in Maryland in the past. Was that you Terp? :-)
Yeaaaaaaa something like that...
Sally--
That link does not open. I c/p and put it in my URL--and it said: "page not found"....
Care to try again? G.
BTW---There are dark brown rats. I had one once in my yard.
Ran so fast along my shed bottom, I could hardly make out what it was.
Of course, having a County sewer Drain right behind my shed --rats could easily come up for daylight.
No one has mentioned Chipmunks.....The can run fast!
Gita
My yard is overrun with chipmunks. But they don't have skinny tails, and that was one of ssgardener's criteria.
Also, chipmunks are quite distinctive and easily identified, even on the run.
Try ''the trash can opossum"-- It's a story of a baby possum that was taken to a vet/ wildlife center for care.