My garden....warts and all....part tres...

Along the back of our yard we have five circles.  The first circle contains a birdhouse which has been used by the wrens this year, Joe Pye Weed, catmint, a moon flower vine climbing up the birdhouse and a wonderful plow we found in Lacon.

This shows the birdhouse and plow up close.  All of our beds have been ringed with brick and are heavily mulched.

The second circle contains a wiegela, the third contains an old bed frame donated by our good friend, Angie, and is filled with cannas, the fourth contains a variegated weigela, and the fifth contains a viburnum, siberian iris and the grass that came with the siberian iris.

This raised bed contains our annuals.  We like to plant giant sunflowers but the deer eat them as fast as they sprout.  So, my husband put tree net around the bed.  And we spray Liquid Fence on everything in the garden.  The deer managed to get all the Phlox before I brought out the spray.  Eating the tops of the phlox tends to make two stems from a single one, so actually we get more blooms but they're way shorter than normal phlox.  Our raised bed contains as many kinds of Zinnias as I can buy over the winter.  We also plant cosmos, tithonia, and cleome.  The net makes it hard to weed so the weeds get higher than I like them to be.  The short pines behind the raised bed are filled with dove, cardinal and chipping sparrow nests.

The bird house on the arch (which came from an old portable greenhouse) was occupied by chickadees this year.  We believe a wren got into the box and pulled all the baby chickadees out and left them on the ground to die.  One was still alive when we found them so I put it back in the box but we don't believe the chickadees ever came back. 

This is the bluebird box that contains two baby bluebirds due to fledge on or about July 4th.  There were originally four and the box was originally on the end of the fence on the right side of the box.  On Monday I was working on the computer when I noticed the box on the fence was facing the wrong way.  I went down to check and found wet grass all over the fence and the box (my husband had mowed the day before).  When I opened the box, the grass was all pulled up and two of the babies were gone.  My guess is raccoons.  I moved the freestanding birdhouse stand in front of the fence and moved the birdhouse to the new stand.  My husband put a foundation block on the bottom of the stand to keep it from tipping over and the baffle keeps predators off of it.  When the two bluebirds fledge, we are putting a permanent pole with a baffle on the other side of the fence.  We can use that pole for our bird feeders when we move them to the north side of the house in late fall.

This isn't a very good picture, it was taken from my craft room window, but it is the father bluebird entering the box.  This was taken when the box was still attached to the fence.  We won't put a birdhouse on the fence again.