Tillys acer part 2

This was getting a little to long. I hope this worked
We came from here.
http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/t/926806/#new

The cubs in thier new home. This was last year.

They are cuties!

I didn't think the link worked, Yey it did LOL

Hi Judi, are you the one that has the Orchids?

My gold heart.

More color, 'Mahogany Sunrise'

A little pink one, Love the color

Tilly-- It is so strange to hear someone else talk about the wild "taking the garden back". Boy is it true..if you don't stay on top of the weeding and pruning with the woods as a backdrop, they will soon overwhelm your gardens! I love all growing things, and although I have no problem cutting back blackberries, the ferns, salal, and the trees with the white flowers and beautiful red berries are all so wonderful I just let them run wild the first couple of years. Then they started crowding/shading things that I paid a lot of $$ for and I learned to be somewhat ruthless. They remain a backdrop, but don't dare encroach on the gardens or they will feel the cut of the shears!!

I would love to see your pics at the roundup. Next best to getting a walking tour! Looking very much forward to comparing notes!

Love your primroses! At least some things are thinking spring might be here...

Trees with white flowers and red berrys ????? are they small trees???? if so they are ElderBerrys.

Do they look like this and have a funny smell ????

Yup, that's them. I just love them, and so do the birds. And they just love to shade my gardens! It is a love hate relationship...as long as I prune them now when they have nothing, I can do it...when they start to flower, I still don't have the heart!

Tills I'm not the one with the orchids, though I wish I was!

I don't know what it is about the faces of animal sculptures that freaks me out but the eyes always look scary. Maybe I was attacked by stone creatures when I was little. It tool me a while just to adopt a gnome. Real animals I love and none of them are scary - well, except for rattle snakes. When I lived in southern Cal, out in the country, every spring Nicko the snake man would empty our yard of baby rattlers. He would find nests under rocks and steps and pull out balls of babies would around each other. Eeeeekkkk.

Love the gold heart.

Tills.......I love that face under your tree!!! I may have mentioned that I grow orchids, I think I posted a pic or two.

RJ, I so love them to, But the smell gets me so bad I want to run away. LOL

So Sorry Judi, I guess I am strange, LOL I grew up on the desert and my best friend was a horney toad. and we had all kinds of fun ketching all kinds of things from snakes to big spiders. we even raced them, what do kids know we had fun LOL.

Sally, you are the one LOL I knew one of you had them. I need help, I have never had one before. But now I got one, its a long story on how I got it (from work).
But the flowers where broke off. And I need to know how to take care of it.

This is the plant, its healthy. but what do I do now??????????

This is what the flower looks like. Its so my color LOL

Get back to you, I need to go to bed soon. 4:30 is wakeup call, for a long week.

I haven't thought of horny toads in so long. I used to catch them all the time when I was a kid in Texas. They are the coolest lizards. I think they are endangered now, which makes me sad. I used to pet them on their bellies. I remember running through my uncle's watermelon patch catching baby ones. They looked like little dinosaurs and were completely adorable.
I was never afraid of snakes, or much of anything else. But then, as an adult, I took my young son to see the 'reptile man', a guy who goes around to schools and libraries giving talks on reptiles and letting kids pet them. He had a cottonmouth water moccasin and had it demonstrate how it strikes its victim by waving a balloon in front of it. The snake struck so fast it startled me and then it just made me shudder to my very toes. It was so wierd. I've not really liked snakes as much since then, and this after a lifetime of fascination with them. So strange.

Tills you take care of yourself - it sounds like your work schedule is very demanding. :)

That is one beautiful Phalaenopsis Tills. Beautiful color flowers, so sorry they got knocked off. And it looks healthy. For now don't cut the stalks, it might re-bloom. The biggest problem people have with orchids is over watering. I water mine once a week, feed them a weak fertilizer (quarter strength) after a good drenching. That one needs bright indirect light, if you grow African Violets, it's about the same for both. Too much sun will burn it. The next thing would be to check the medium it's potted in, it should be bark and not spongy. Broken down bark holds too much water and rots the roots. But you want to wait if the roots are good and firm, just to see if it will bloom again. Hope that helps. Don't hesitate to ask if you want to know more.

Pix...do horny toads go limp when you pet their bellies? We used to do that to lizards, it was like they were hypnotized. I've always been fascinated by snakes, but cottonmouths make me shiver too!! Along with rattlers, Mojave greens, corals, etc. LOL

OH Pix Love it, I can see you doing it LOL Now snakes are cool, at lest most of them the moccasin's and the rattlers and the others I can do without. I love ketching the little garden snakes out here, they are fun. DH hates all snakes.

Judi, thats my Sun God, I'm coping Thanks.

Sally, I have done nothing to it ( but a little water), till I learn more about them. I do not have any Violets. How do I know when to repot it? Its funny I have the bark and Fert. for them, as I was trying to help a friend save hers and bought all the stuff. But it was to far gone, or I didn't do it right. Thanks

Tills, I'd wait awhile to see if it's going to rebloom, unless the bark is spongy (it should be hard). If you can see roots that are drying out or rotting, that's another indication it should be done now. Hope that doesn't confuse you. LOL

Now thats funny, "not to confuse me" I've been confused all my life LOL
But anyway, the bark is OK. Its in a plastic see thru container that is set inside a clay pot. I can see the roots, they look good. But shouldn't it be in something else?

Could you take some pics of yours, so I know what I'm looking at.

Well here you go, Tills! I took this photo of this beautiful snake, the name of which escapes me so just call him Fred, down in Utah when we went tromping around the desert looking for cool stuff. He was one of the cool things we found. Isn't he a beauty? I do know he is not poisonous, but he took me a little aback as I recall because I was squatting down looking at plants and didn't see him at first. That vacation was just terrific. I hope to go back.

I do not recall if horny toads 'sleep' when you rub their tummies, but I think they do. It's been a long time since I did that!

So here is a story to give you the creeps: My dh is from Tennessee and when we visit we go to Reelfoot lake, which is a man made lake that is actually more of a swamp. It is shallow with many cypress trees and lots of bass, apparently, and catfish. There is a boardwalk out into the swampy area. The last time we were there, while we were visiting, there was a tornado. A couple of days after the storm we went to Reelfoot Lake for the day and walked on the boardwalk. As we were walking I began to realize that everywhere I looked there were snakes. I mean LITERALLY! There were hundreds of snakes everywhere: some in the water, some coiled up on logs . They were mostly big water snakes and water moccasins. I was simply too amazed to be creeped out, but then later, when I thought of it, I was totally creeped out! It was like something out of a horror movie. Also, I had reached down into the water to pick up a baby turtle and had not realized at that point how many snakes there were. Probably a good thing. I guess the snakes had been disturbed by the storm and were hanging out together until everything settled down again.

That's a pretty one Pix!! That snake thing would have creeped me out too. Reminds me of Alfred Hitchcock.LOL

Tills...the pot is fine, they grow best in plastic as long as there are alot of holes to let the air in. You probably need the clay pot or another pretty pot to keep it from falling over. I've been switching over to the clear ones so I can see the roots. The roots actually like to be crowded, that one is a good sized plant so it might go up a size when you do repot it, but not too big. I don't have any pics of plants, I always do the flowers.

There's lots of stuff out there on the Internet (go to Google and type in "orchid roots"), Mary, about how to care for orchids.

http://www.orchids.org/culture/culture.html

http://www.nhm.org/guana/tz-webpg/roots.html

http://myorchidcare.com/orchid-care/Orchid-Roots.html

Thats a cool pic, Pix. I think that many in one spot, I think I would have done the same "Wow......Oh My, get me outta here" LOL That would have been so really neat pic's.

Thanks Judi, It dosen't look root bound, so I think it will be Okay for awhile. Where do you find the clear pots? or do I have to buy a big tub of tater salad. LOL

Thanks Kathy. You are a help, I have no time to hunt. Last time I tried to find something I spent 3 hours looking and came up with nothing. Well I won't say nothing, long story. Funny but dum on my part.

It's easy to get side-tracked out there . . .

^_^ No doubt

Oh Pix those snakes in the water would have done me in. I would have died on the spot. Snakes are really my one and only major fear. I grew-up on a ranch in SD, lots of rattlesnakes. Looking for a new batch of kittens under the grainery I came face to face with one shedding it's skin, I've never been the same since! LOL Banged my head up really good trying to get out from under there as quickly as possible.

Pixy your story reminded me of an experience I had back in Arkansas after a major flood came through the camp grounds I had planned to camp at. There were water moccasins on every stone and log. Hundreds in every direction along the creek bank. I can still see that image in my head! Needless to say, I did not stay at that camp ground!

Eww, Eww, and Eww!!! I have no problem with non-poisonus reptiles..caught garter snakes as a girl and still love them in the garden (minus the surprise factor), but bitey ones are a whole different story! I would absolutely freak if I was around that many poisenous snakes at one time!

My dad brought me up as a bird hunter, and we would always hunt in Eastern Washington. One evening, we went out on a walk and the weather had gotten unexpectedly cold after a warm afternoon. We were walking across a sand dune that we crossed often, and there were all of these little sticks laying out on the ground, which was kind of weird as there were no trees there. Upon closer inspection, we discovered that the "sticks" were baby rattlers that had apparently been sunning themselves when the weather changed. Didn't stick around to inspect any closer...I didn't even have to pretend to be tough because my Dad was more freaked out than I was! Snakes hade always been his achilles heel since he was drafted, and picked up his helmet in basic training and found it full of a copperhead!

Again, EWW!

I agree - EEWWW!!!
When my brother moved from OK. to NY near Buffalo. He bought an old farm house without his wife. Well in the spring there were little black snakes ALLL over the house. They had an old stone foundation and the snakes had overwintered and then, come spring out crawled all these snakes. Needless to say, my SIL was not a happy camper. But, that's something you wouldn't know about when buying the house.

I hate snakes. All snakes. Good, bad, ugly, cute - hate them all. And spiders. Yuk.

Do snails and slugs contribute anything positive to the world?

Slugs certainly do. They clean up and digest things in the woods. To bad they don't stay there. Come to think of it, I moved to the woods so my bad.

I was riding horses out in the Mojave one day down this sandy road. There was a snake track in the middle, just like a stripe in the road. It was about 4" wide and the "S's" were about 4' long. I'm glad we never found it. I like snakes even if I always jump when I see one.

This message was edited Apr 3, 2009 1:58 PM

"Slugs certainly do. They clean up and digest things in the woods. To bad they don't stay there. Come to think of it, I moved to the woods so my bad."

>>>>>Kathy like this.

I think the native banana slug does its job in the woods, but also doesn't bother the cultivated plants. It is the brown, black, or spotted European slugs that do the damage to our gardens. I guess they also clean up and digest things, so they are not all bad. Hmmmm. I moved to the pasture rather than the woods, but I imagine it used to be woods a long time ago. I had a banana slug migrate form the woods next door to hang out in my shrubbery. I enjoyed its company, but haven't seen it recently.

Well I wish the slugs in my yard would go back where they came from. They are such pests!

I ran across this awhile ago. My understanding is the same as yours, Holly. I haven't ever found anything definitive that says our native banana slugs don't eat live plants, but I operate under that assumption. European slugs get bagged with the dog poop or carried across the yard to the woods.

http://oregonstate.edu/dept/nurspest/mollusks.htm

I will say that although I love most living things, slugs aren't included in that group. I have in fact seen some of our bannana slugs eating my plants, but the occasions are few and far between. I will take the time to move them back into the woods if I find them in my garden. With the European ones however...IT'S ON! They are not welcome in my garden, and I do everything that I can to keep the population down as much as possible. I have been working very hard at creating an enticing environment for toads and snakes, as they are some of the few creatures that I know will eat the slugs and slug eggs. If I do find one of the brown or black ones...let's just say, they aren't carried to the edge of the woods!

I don't carry them off either. As interesting as that video is, it hasn't changed my view on critters that eat my plants!

On a positive slug note, they do make a good excuse to buy beer to bait the traps. Oh my, what to do with the left-overs. ^_^

ROFLOL Left over beer? Isn't that an oxymoron?