Gardens and Wildlife – Cynthia Reyes

A Good Home, Gardening, Gardens and Wildlife

Bees on Snowdrops

April 2, 2020 Cynthia Reyes

The pollinators are out and buzzing around! Blog Photo - snowdrops bunches

And since snowdrops are the only flowers blooming right now, the bees are to be found there.

Blog Photo - snowdrop bunch 3

I didn’t know snowdrops were attractive to bees and other pollinators, but there they were!

They will have many more blooms to choose from soon, as milder temperatures have arrived in this part of Ontario.

Blog Photo - Bee on snowdrop 2

Mindful of pollinators over-wintering in the leaves and dried stems of last year’s plants, we kept the leaves on the garden beds until this week when my husband got to work with his trusty rake. I helped a little, but he said he enjoyed doing this alone, so I left him to it.

A Good Home, Animals, Birds, Country Living, Ducks, Gardens, Gardens and Wildlife, Garlic

Wonders Never Cease

September 13, 2014September 16, 2015 Cynthia Reyes

Every so often, I wish I had a well-behaved garden.

The kind where everything does what I want, when I want.

Where flowers don’t stray into lawns and lawns don’t stray into flowerbeds, and the strong wind didn’t break one of the arches on the arbour my dear husband so carefully built.

But this I know:

Real gardens offer up surprises each week, each day and sometimes, each hour.

Like flowers blooming in unexpected colours.

And interesting visitors.

Like this large bird in the apple tree.

And wild rabbits.

Cleaning themselves without a care in the world.

Like this mother duck, with her ducklings.

She must have squeezed herself under the fence.

This ant, dragging a dead moth many times its size. It took the moth way across the verandah.

This beet, expected to be dark red, is somehow orange.

A single squash. It’s from a vine that strayed from our neighbours’ squash plantation.

“It’s yours”, he says. The thing will grow to almost half my height. No kidding.

These onions, because they delight and surprise me each late summer.

And the garlic, just because the sight of them when newly harvested always surprises me.

The sight of our daughter’s little doggie, coming around the corner at full speed. Well, sort of.

And this shadow “selfie”, which I didn’t know was there till I downloaded it and nearly jumped in surprise.

Gardens: places of surprise and discovery.

Dedicated to all gardeners, everywhere.

A Good Home, Animals, Art, Artist, Country Living, Farm house, Garden, Gardening, Gardens and Wildlife, Home, Life in canada, Nature Paintings, Rabbits, Spring, Wild Rabbits, Wildlife, Winter

It’s A Wild Life

June 19, 2014June 20, 2014 Cynthia Reyes

It is a truth universally suspected that a family in possession of a wildlife painting must be in need of some wildlife.

Years ago, my husband’s family had a farm and he and I became custodians of it. The farm was on a hilltop so we cleverly named it Hill Top.

Husband, children and I summered and weekend-ed there. I loved that farm and wanted a name sign for our front gate. So my husband commissioned a local artist to make one for my birthday. Author-illustrator Beatrix Potter – she of Peter Rabbit fame and a farmhouse named Hill Top — came to mind.

The moment that sign went up, Peter Rabbit, his parents and all their friends took up residence in our gardens.

They ate us out of home and land. As soon as we planted vegetables, herbs and flowers, they ate them. There was soya and wheat growing in the fields. But why travel so far, when there’s good stuff nearby?

My husband couldn’t bring himself to hurt them — not with that sign out front. So there we were, hoist on our own petard.

When our family moved to another home, there were no rabbits — we thought.

And then two auspicious things happened:

We visited the old farmhouse. Our daughter noticed that the new owners had removed the Hill Top sign and begged them to give it back. They graciously agreed.

Soon after, our resident red fox – a predator of rabbits — upped and died. It might have been the sight of the sign that did it. But there was his carcass, lying across our stream.

It took gallons of expensive fox urine to protect our gardens that year. (If you want to learn more about that inauspicious episode, you’ll have to read my next book.)

And now?

Years after moving to our current farmhouse, we’re besieged by wild rabbits — again. Squirrels too, but they don’t eat shrubs, herbs, flowers and vegetables.

Last winter, the rabbits were so starved for food that they ate all my clematis vines, plus the barks of several tender young trees and shrubs.

My husband did a very manly thing: he shouted at them. The rabbits ran — and immediately returned.

We decided to sympathize. Wild rabbits, too, have to eat.

But soon it was spring — time to plant vegetables.

Husband decided the rabbits should be moved to a nearby nature park. He set a humane trap filled with things that Beatrix Potter said wild rabbits love: carrots and lettuce and cabbages. But we might as well have posted a sign saying: “This is a rabbit trap.”

Truth is, these particular rabbits mostly eat grass and clover so far this spring.

Truth is, our daughter has named them Fred and Penelope. (At least, she thinks there are only two. But where there are two, there are — or soon will be — a dozen.)