A Touch of the Tropics

The parakeets still come to our bird feeder almost every day -- at least, every day that I remember to put food in it. They and their equally squabbly avian cousins, the starlings, can demolish four suet balls in the course of an afternoon. A lot of it winds up on the ground, where the pigeons and other little birds manage to peck it up. These two were out in the garden yesterday.

I had a quiet day, taking care of some tasks around the house. I watered the orchids and took the citrus tree out into the garden for a hose-down. I think it has spider mites -- the leaves have that vaguely speckled look that plants with mites get. I gave it a bath despite the fact that it's not very warm out there -- a high of 48º F at noon (9º C). Olga tried to sunbathe but it was too cold even for her!

The single little fruit on the citrus has turned decidedly orange. So it is, in fact, a mandarin orange, as my plant app said many months ago. That mystery is solved.

When I lived in Florida I used to hear that citrus trees need chilly (but not freezing) nights to make the fruit sweeter. I have no idea whether this is true or not but maybe being out in the chilly air yesterday, and being bathed by chilly water, will not only knock back any mites but give the fruit a boost.

I also spread our last two bags of mulch, so that task is finally complete. I didn't get achy like before, I suppose because I wasn't out there as long or dealing with as much of it.

And I got out my hand-saw and acted all butch by sawing in half an old fence post that had been left lying in the front garden. (Perhaps I should have sung "The Lumberjack Song" as I worked.) It's been there for years but until our recent garden butchering pruning, it had been hidden by foliage. It sawed pretty easily, probably because it's so old and rotten, and once cut down in size I threw it in the bin.

Here's a close-up of our bird bath. In the right light the poem on the side really stands out:

The kiss of the sun for pardon
The song of the birds for mirth
One is nearer God's heart in a garden
Than anywhere else on earth

This often-quoted bit of Victorian doggerel comes from a poet named Dorothy Gurney, who (according to Wikipedia, which is never wrong) wrote it in 1882. It's part of her longer poem "God's Garden." I suspect our birdbath is very old and has been standing in this garden a long, long time. The words are weathered and worn away by scratchy little starling feet and not always easy to read.

Oh, and I'm just seeing that our forsythia is blooming! That literally happened overnight.