The City Cottager starts Pot It Up 1-2-3!

The City Cottager At Market!

Oh where, oh where has the City Cottager been? I have been to the market to sell plants and things!

To the market? Yes to the market; the Raleigh flea market!

Life as we all know has many twists and turns on the road we travel. The last 7 plus years I have been working at a local garden center but that chapter in my life has ended. I love working with plants and people and have all this crazy plant information in my head so I started a very small plant business called Pot It Up 1-2-3! My first season started on April 1, 2017, yes April fools day! I love a good joke!

 I am a bit rusty with my writing but I hope now that I have dusted off my blog I will share more about life at the City Cottage and how it has changed. I have also learned how to use my Chrome book to download pictures!!! I bet it was always there, right under my finger tips and I just didn't see it. That is the way with me, stumbling around until I unearth something worthwhile.

So the journey continues!

Spring

Spring is here! Along with the spring rain. I have just finished writing/compiling a short pamphlet about native plants to attract birds and butterflies. It was a challenge to get it into booklet form but it was accomplished! I will take it to the printers this week! It will be my first written work published! I hope to continue with the pamphlet form to increase my knowledge and ability to share that knowledge in written form.
The wonderful journey continues! I hope to begin writing on my blog once again. See you soon?

Taking a winter rest!

As I sit at my desk counting and naming the birds that are coming to my feeder I am thinking I am going to take a rest from writing, not that anyone will notice! I may look to another form of writing or just move forward to another adventure. Not sure. If my computer would be easier to use with this blog I probably would not take a 'rest'. But it is very difficult to load a picture and these days my chromebook doesn't always want to start up. It is just very frustrating. I do love to write, I just need to find my form. As my dear father would say, "We'll see".

Tomato dreams!

Tomatoes! Oh I can not wait to see them grow once again in my yard! I just finished the last that I had put up from last summer! I had made them into sauce and froze them. They helped to add a very special flavor to the homemade soups I have been making to get me through the long cold winter days.

The tomatoes shown here are heirlooms of different varieties. I intend to be very simple with my tomatoes this summer. I want to focus on healthy, productive plants. I am researching what variety is best suited for my backyard climate. Once I decide on the varieties I will plant them in very large containers in full sun! I have some wonderful organic compost ready to fill these pots!

Oh how I yearn for spring. I miss the heat of the sun on my old bones and the exercise that digging in the soil gives me.
The journey continues!

Rooster Rescue

This is Fancy Pants. A Silver Laced Polish Hen.....oops I mean rooster! He was supposed to be a hen but turned out to be a rooster. We have had a love hate relationship since he started to declare himself a 'him'.
I have five hens living in a good size coop and 'play pen' but Fancy Pants had more needs than they could fulfill especially Evelyn who lost back fathers from his 'saddleing' her. Last June, 2014, he was kicked out of the hen house. Enough was enough. He not only was wearing out the girls he was attacking me! It is not good to bite the hand that feeds you! It is now January 2015 and Fancy Pants is doing just fine. I made him a 'man cave' that I put him into each night so he will be safe from night predators. As to the day time predators he seems to be big enough and tough enough that he is not bothered.
He goes to roost on the top of the girls playpen each night. It is about 6 feet high. Each night I go out to close up the girls in the coop and reach up and grab 'him' and take him to his 'man cave'. Tonight it was misty and cold. We had freezing rain the night before and today did not get above 32 degrees. There was street work being done in front of the house behind me. Perhaps all of this contributed to his stance on the 'playpen'. He was about a foot or so in from the edge so I was not able to just reach up and get him He was also standing looking a bit alert even though it was dark and usually he would be sleeping. I though, oh my I will need to get the ladder to reach him but then an idea popped into my head- try the 2x2 to push him to the edge of the pen so I could grab him. Well! Did I strike gold! He hopped onto the 2x2 and allowed me to bring it down with him on it where I could hold him and bring him to his 'man cave'! Rooster rescue done successfully!
Good night to all and to all a good night!

Northern Flicker visit

The Northern Flicker is a year round resident in North Carolina. It is a brown and white woodpecker with a red spot on the back of its neck, the nape. It has a very bold black mark above a speckled breast and the male has a black 'mustache'.

It has been a few years since I have seen them visit my yard. Yesterday as I was about to let my dog out into the backyard I saw two Northern Flickers ground feeding! Nice surprise! Tivo had to wait until they finished looking for food before I let her out. The Northern Flicker is the only woodpecker to habitually eat from the ground preferring ants and grubs and such. I watched as these two welcome visitors found and ate what appeared to be grubs from my yard. I wondered why I don't see them more often in my yard as they are here year round but it may be that in the winter I get the northern migrants. Regardless of where they come from and how long they stay they are a welcome sight!

Bird Feeders Continued

 I like to reuse anything that I can. I am not a big fan of oranges but at this time of year the Clementine orange is popular and I do enjoy them. They are small, easy to peal and sweet. The oranges are sold in a mesh bag. I knew the squirrels would have a blast chewing it apart but I thought I would give it a go as I had a suet cake but no suet cage. I was surprised that this bag hung out there for the birds for a few weeks. Then, yes the squirrel had a desire for suet cake! Yes he ate through the mesh in no time and had his cake too! The orange mesh was all that was left! I will not suggest this mesh as a possible suet cake holder.

The weather remains cold so I purchased more suet for the birds and was going to buy a cage to hold it but remembered I had some left over hardware wire in the shed. Once again I set out to reuse and make my own suet cage. This time I believe I have success!
It only took me a few minutes to cut the wire and fix the suet inside.

I hung the suet up next to the other bird feeder and was excited to see a Gold Finch in his winter colors come to visit! In fact I do believe a male and female Gold finch were the first visitors!