Reed Hollow Antiques

This year instead of "In the Garden" I'm going to do this page since much of what I write about and take pictures of isn't about the garden!

Snapped a picture of this guy in September.  Is he predicting a bad winter or a good winter?  The bands look equal size, so maybe it won't be too bad.  Hopefully we won't have a repeat of last winter!

We have lots of praying mantises.  This one was crawling about by my raised beds in front of the store.  They make their cocoons attached to twigs of bushes or small trees or stalks of sturdy flowers.  Next one I see, I'll snap a picture. 

This year's crop of lavender was wonderful!  Check out one day's picking in the next picture.  The strawflowers are coming along great, too.  I'll be selling lavender pouches, strawflower potpourri, and I might try lavender bath oil, too. 

This is my friend with her cat Jack.  He actually walks on a leash!  Very well-behaved!

On July 9th, one of the female mallards walked up from the nearby swamp and showed her babies our pond.  I think she was showing them that it was a place where they might get a good meal when they grow up.  It's very late to have ducklings this young....By this time babies should be full grown.  The mother must have lost all of her first brood.  This was the only day that we saw them.  She walked them back to where they were born. Hope they all make it to adulthood! 

Here's all the necessary equipment for doing the job that is actually quite easy.
First you have to take off the blossom end of the pod and pull it down removing the tough string that follows one side.  This takes only minutes.  Then you blanch them for three minutes and put them immediately into an ice bath.  Picture follows....

Freezing is so much easier than canning! 

Here's the mommy raccoon out hunting for food.  This picture was taken on June 27th.  On July 29th, I looked out and there she was with her four "babies" that were almost as big as herself!

If you guessed Monarch butterfly "babies," you're right.  They just finished off one of the milkweed plants that were growing by our deck.  These are the only caterpillars that feed on milkweed as it's supposed to be toxic to others.  The toxicity makes the butterfly itself toxic and is its way of protecting itself from predators.  I'll keep a watch out for the chrysallis that the larvae will spin.

Remember this bed that was for sale?

Well, since we didn't seem to be able to sell it and the decal had pealed off on the headboard, I decided to save it until I could use it for a garden.  My original plan was to have only various thymes planted in it, but I sold all but some of the English that I had set aside, so for this year it's really a variety of plants.  Next year, I'll do only thyme and it will become a perennial show garden of the many different kinds of thyme that are available.  Here's a picture of it this year planted on June 16th. 

First I put a fitted twin sheet upside down on the original coil mattress, so the coils were open on the top.  Then I stuffed the mattress with salt marsh hay.  Next I added the soil--a mixture of potting soil, compost, and peat.  Finally, I planted it up with English Thyme, marigolds, nasturtiums, two licorice plants, one Wave petunia in the center, and some cosmos.  The thyme, licorice plants, nasturtiums, and Wave petunia will spread out and hang over the sides as they grow.  Here's what I will need to fix--The fitted sheet will rot on the sides, so I'll have to have Scott build me a box with no top and no bottom that will fit around the mattress to keep the soil in.  Otherwise, it all worked out the way I had planned.  Now I just have to repaint flowers where the stencil was, and it'll be finished.  The bed has been outdoors for the last four or five months and hasn't rusted, so it should last for a long time.  Pictures follow--

And multiplying!  I thought the black racer had gotten eaten by one of the many hawks that fly around here, but I'm pretty sure this is the same one and now he has two friends!  They are milk snakes.  It's amazing that they lie together in the sun like this.  Maybe snakes are more sociable than we think!  There are lots of large bullfrog polliwogs and tree frog tadpoles in the pond, so maybe they'll leave the few frogs alone. 

This cute little guy was hidden underneath the bag of salt marsh hay that I use on the gardens.  (I gather the hay on the shore of a secret place.)

I was doing the store's window boxes the other day and when I took out one of the liners, there sat this little "oak tree" tree frog.  This little guy has skin that looks just like the bark of an oak tree.  (He's got a bit of dirt stuck to his little wet snout!)  I carefully set the liner back in so he can keep returning there during the day (his sleeping time).

You might have noticed this bricked area by the back side of the pond.  These are my new strawberry beds that I am constructing.  (Yes, I am doing all the work on this, not Scott, although he did drive the tractor to bring over the dirt!)  They'll be planted with the Ozark Beauty Strawberry plants that we sell here.  I plan on covering the plants when they begin producing because the birds will eat them up on me!  I did in my old strawberry bed that I let the weeds get the better of.  This time, I vow to keep the weeds at bay.  Because of the raised beds, this should be lots easier!

Well, it's not new, but to us it is! And it's wonderful!  Here's Scott bringing over the dirt to the strawberry bed location. However, he started before I had a chance to put down the paper that I had to block the weeds, so I had to move all the dirt!

These ducks in the past have been too skittish to visit the pond (although we did have one little straggler guy that thought he was a mallard last year--probably lost his parents).  This year they are definitely more bold and visiting for the cracked corn.

Nothing says the real beginning of spring like daffodils and forsythia (shot taken from drive in to Reed Hollow back towards Wagon Shed).

I love to walk around in the early morning after a snowfall and see what wonders can be found in Nature.  This morning, I headed out onto the swamp.  First I came upon a long dead tree that had been hit by lightning about seven years ago or more.  The top of the tree was gone, but a good thick trunk remained.  At the base was a great place for either wild critters or swamp elves! 

Further into the swamp were lots more dead trees with holes, all making great homes for wildlife.  The trees that grow in the swamp are red maples (also called swamp maples).  This is a tree that can actually grow in water that is not too deep.  They do die with too much water, and I'm convinced that the road salt that washes into the swamp during the winter does a job on them, too.  Luckily they are a very resilient tree, and they seed very easily. 

There are lots of wood ducks that nest in the swamp in holes like this.  When the babies are old enough, they jump out into the water.  A wood duck's foot has talon-like extensions so they can grip tree limbs. 

This must have been a great place for a chipmunk.  There's the shell of an acorn inside.

As you drive in, you might have noticed the tree that grows at the edge of the small field across from the skating house.  It's called a Tulip tree.  I don't know its Latin name, but in the past, this tree was a real specimen tree.  It grows very quickly and yet has very hard wood.  It also grows taller than most trees in the northeast.  It has cup-shaped flowers, hence the "tulip" name.  This tree one day appeared in the garden that is along the front of our house.  It grew about three feet the first year.  We had no idea what it was or where it came from, but its leaves were so enormous and different, we thought we'd see what would happen the next year.  Well, the next year, it was very much alive.   My mother took one of the leaves and identified the tree.  We were ready to rip it out thinking it was some massive weed!  We had to move it when we realized it would grow into a huge tree.  So, in the middle of a heat wave we moved the tree to where it grows today.  It was so hot that summer.  We actually put an umbrella over it and watered it constantly praying that it would make it.  And it did.  It's about ten years old now.  We love it and think of it as "Mommy's tree."

People also call the Magnolia tree that can live in this area a "tulip" tree, but this is totally a different kind of tree.

And then it's over to the chicken coop to see how the chickens are "enjoying" the snow!  I made a path and they followed along behind.

These bluebirds are probably on their way south.  I saw two different flocks of geese in formation fly over this morning, also.  I think we have lots more winter left!

I picked this forsythia branch before Christmas.  Forsythia forces very easily.  The closer it gets to spring, the faster it blooms indoors.  I wasn't sure I could force it this early, but it worked! 
As you can see, I still have my garland on my mantel.  Greens and white lights are nice decor after Christmas, too.  And, of course, I have certain "snow" things that come out after I put away the Christmas things.

The hens are still laying about seven eggs a day.  All the eggs pictured here are standing upright.  Check out the egg on the left.  Now the shell is a bit wrinkled, but it was a good solid egg, just huge!  I think it must have been a hard one to lay!  The one in the front is a small one with the one on the right a normal to large egg.  We ate the largest egg already--it was a double yolker!  And it made wonderful scrambled eggs.  I saved the shell because it's so big.  You can see it at the store!