Just a little record keeping

Coyote by daylight, looking for his rib bone. I put it there to keep him in front of the camera longer. He eventually found it….see below

Seasonal garden occurrences: Monkshood is ‘leafing out’, as of last week. White Tritellia coming up. Both in the backyard, maybe I should transplant? The Cuseckii (light blue) Camas are coming up in the various places I transplanted , hopefully they’ll recover and bloom once again. I haven’t definitely seen the Howellii Camas which are similar color but different appearance, the other light blue Camas bulb patch I had to transplant due to failure to thrive. All the other blue and the white Camas are thriving, to the point where we considered cultivating it for eating. We have gathered and slow cooked it (see former post) a couple of times, but it is work. I can see how potatoes won out over Camas in the Native communities.

All seeds finally in the ground, although not all landscaping projects are complete. I hand finished some of the front yard where I wanted to plant, and where we had take out lots of Oregon grape, and various other non native plants as well as transplanting the large fern from there to the backyard (it already likes it better). Ten bags of top soil, potting soil, cactus soil sand and gravel filled in the fern divet and covered the areas for seed and plant/transplant. New Lewisia Cotyledons and Tweedyi for the front, a Castilleja Miniata Paintbrush, Penstemon Newbergii with crimson flowers, and the seeds of Irises Chrysophylla (white with purple and yellow stripes), Setosa (dark purple blue), and Siskou (yellow), and seeds of Buckwheats, bear grass, monardella and some other rock garden favorites.

Crittercam delivers

First wild critter to be caught on cam….infrared camera which is motion activated. Would like to get it to trigger a little earlier, so angled it more southfacing slightly. Had to change the camera position several times to a) keep from filming all the squirrels and b) keep from filming all the trucks that drive by. Coyotes here overnight (~4:30 am) for drinks at the pond, maybe a vole or mole? Probably also to stalk outdoor cats, though they’ve been pretty effective at keeping those out….no cat sightings for many moons now, thanks to them. Lots of “cat missing” signs for a while, they’re not missing, we know exactly where they went.

Also, a few bulbs coming up: mostly more Brodiaea, but also the Camas Cuseckii, or light blue Camas. I hope it recovers from whatever was making it fail in its former spot, and blessses us with blooms soon. Also hopefully deer won’t eat it. Few Trillium Chloropetalum coming up, including the deep maroon one (Kirabayashi).

January 2018 New Year’s greetings

Warning! This is a long post!

For our New Years entertainment, a screech owl box, which Dave put up in the pine trees in the back yard. About 12-14 feet up, with a view towards the north/ northwest, it is about 20″ tall and about 8″ deep and 11″ wide with a 3″ hole in the front, thick wood with sloped overhanging roof. It came with a bag of wood shavings. We also got a barred owl box which is really cool, but too big for our yard. Not to mention that would mean that two owls would have to find our boxes and then get along. Barred owls might even eat screech owls, I’ll have to look it up. Western Screech Owl, hopefully eventually I can get my own picture to post someday:

Pic of the Sceech Owl box we mounted in the backyard, on one of the bigger pines:

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