Daughter's Wedding Rehearsal

After month of planning, my daughter will be getting married tomorrow.  Tonight was the rehearsal and rehearsal Dinner.  The wedding will take place tomorrow, with both the Ceremony and the Reception will take place at the local camping club facilities.  

The actual Ceremony will take place in the pavilion with chairs situated in a spiral with the bride & groom ending up at the center of the spiral.

The Pavilion - Ceremony will be here with chairs in a spiral

 
There is a patio at the rear of the hall.  Plans are to have torches around the perimeter and the fire pit burning after dark.

Back Patio - Tiki Torches & Fire Pit at Night

 The hall is quite large.

Inside the hall

 You can almost make out the spiral in the "being silly" picture.

Practicing walking "Round-the-Aisle"

 Reception area being set up.

The Reception not Set Up yet

 After we practiced, we went to the future in-law's house for an Hawaiian-style backyard cookout.

Steve and Family members

Mother & Daughter

Everyone had a great time and we need to get some sleep before the "Big Day."

Garlic Scapes - Time to Pick

It was time to pick the garlic scapes, so yeterday morning while it was still cool, I went and picked all the scapes.

The Garlic garden

Scapes

I ended up with about 3 pounds of scapes.  Will probably make some pesto, mix them in with stir fry and possibly dry some for green garlic powder.

And the vegetable garden is growing quite well.

Almost Garlic Scape Picking Time

Our garlic garden is doing well with over 600 garlic bulbs.  Since most of them are of the hard-neck variety, they will produce scapes.  Scapes are the garlic flower that grows from the center of the bulb.  It is basically green garlic.

Garlic Garden

The scapes must be cut if you want large bulbs so the growth energy of the garlic goes into the bulb, not to the flower.

The scape is the piece that is curling

Picked one to see the progress, scape is visible, bulbs are still smallsh

Will post more picture of the scapes as I pick them

Eastern Phoebe - Do Over

Well the last attempt at raising her family was a bust for the Eastern Phoebe mom.  She was forced to feed the large cowbird that hatched a few days before her own.  This cowbird was so large at the time hers hatched that they were only as large as the leg of the cowbird. Consequently, the cowbird got all the food and the baby Phoebes perished from either starvation or suffocation.

The cowbird was raised until it was time to leave the nest and he flew away, leaving the mom Phoebe unfulfilled in her motherly duties.  Usually she would come back later in the summer for a second brood, but this time she started almost immediately laying eggs (one a day).

 

These eggs seem like a different color that the first brood. These appear beige whereas the first ones were white. Don't know why?

White eggs and cowbird egg from the fist brood.

 Incubation period is about 15-16 days.. So we should be seeing the little ones around June 25-26.

Mom sitting on the eggs

Keeping our fingers crossed.  Cowbirds stay away!

Turkey Attack!

A few days ago,  I looked out in the backyard and saw turkey feathers all over the ground.  Oh my, my first thought was that Tom was attacked by the coyote that had been prowling around here.  Tom was nowhere to be found, no dead turkey around the yard, my only hope was that he managed to fly off.  But there were so many feathers!

Feathers all over the back yard

Well, a few days later Tome return looking a little disheveled but not too bad. He seemed a little mor skittish that he was before the attack, but seemed OK.  I guess he was able to pull away from the coyote and fly away.

Tom returns, doesn't look too bad.

All is back to normal. This morning, Elly forgot to fill the bird feeders from which Tom picks up the scraps on the ground from when the birds push the stuff they don't want away.  I guess Tom was hungry, so he came up and pecked at the door window where Elly usually exits to fill the feeders. Who says turkeys are stupid?

Eastern Phoebe Update

I manged to take a picture of the Phoebe nest when the mom was out of the garage. To my surprise there were 4 white eggs and 1 larger speckled. I had never seen this before, but Google came to the rescue. I Googles "Eastern Pheobe eggs" and discovered that this was common. A brown cowbird ids a parasitic bird that lays its eggs in other birds nests and hopefully the othe bird will feed and care for the new chick.  The problem is that this new chick will be larger & more aggressive that the phorebe chicks and may get more of the food from the parents

Cowbird egg in the the 4 Phoebe eggs

We decided to wait and see what will happen. A few days later, I took another photo.

The hatched cowbird

The cowbird had hatched, but the phoebe eggs were still there.  We were worried that the mom would spend all her time feeding the cowbird and abandon setting on her phoebe eggs to hatch.  It turns out that our fears were unfounded as the mother continued to sit on the eggs with the cowbird under her.

After about 4 days. I snapped another photo. This time I was able to see 3 hatched phoebes and the cowbird.  I was amazed at the size difference between the birds. I hope the little ones get fed enough.  The mom & dad are both busy feeding the chicks. I will check tomorrow to see if all is ok,

Large cowbird chick and 3 phoebe chicks ( two with their mouth up, one maybe just hatching)

Memorial Day Update: Sad news to report. I decided to do an up close inspection of the nest, to determine the state of the phoebe chicks.  I removed the large cowbird, now with feathers from the nest. remaining there were 1 unhatched egg and 1 dead phoebe chick.  The other phoebe chick mysteriously disappeared.  Our only hope now is that they return for their second brood later this year.  So sad, but I guess that is the state of wildlife, it doesn't always turn out as you wish.

Planting the Gardens

 The Irises in our perennial garden have just started to bloom this week. here is a sample of what has bloomed so far.

 The vegetable garden is also progressing. Last year we skipped having a garden due to the poor spring weather. But this year we finally ran out of home made tomato suace and frozen green peppers, so we needed to replenish our stock. We also moved the raspberry plants to a sunnier location ing the garden and we expanded the garden bu about 5 feet.

So far we have planted 35 Roma Tomato plants, 30 bell peppers, 12 red cabagge, 12 eggplant, 12 lettuce, 6 hot peppers, 6 Cherokee Purple Tomato, 8 cucumber plants, 2 rows Swiss Chard seeds, 2 rows bush bean seeds, 1 row cucumber seeds, 4 mounds zucchini seeds & 48 Marigold plants. I think that is about it for now.

Yesterday Elly went out the fill the bird feeders. Her friend Tom came to visit.  He is getting so funny, when he is hungry, he comes up o the sliding glass door and pecks on the window.  He does not eat out of her hand though. Still s little afraid.