Another rescue mission

It's about 3 weeks past the average last frost date here and it hit 88 degrees this week, yet the weather forecast for tonight predicts temperatures in the 30's and patchy frost. So I rushed home after the gym tonight to rescue my plants from rapidly falling temperatures. (I've been in rescue mode already this week with the baby bird incident on Sunday.)

Here's one cool thing about container gardening: you can move the plants! So instead of eating dinner when I got home, I hauled a bunch of large, heavy, waterlogged (did I mention it was raining?) containers of plants into the garage. Bonus workout!

So I have peppers, eggplant and herbs camping out in the garage tonight. Good thing I hadn't planted the tomatoes outside yet!

Plants grow faster than I can write...

So here's a photo dump of the last few weeks:

Seedlings 4/24/13


Repotting pepper plants 5/7/13


Peppers, tomatoes and basil under the lights 5/18/13


Here's a link to the grow light building plans I used:
Cornell gardening resources Low-Cost Grow-Light Frame Plans

Gardening isn't just plants

Every year since I started gardening it seems I have come across something I've never seen before.

One year I had this pretty yellow and black butterfly hanging around my mums.


Another time I discovered that these fuzzy caterpillars love basil.

And these striped caterpillars really love parsley.

Found this little dude on my bell pepper plant. Possibly a katydid?

I've also found frogs, chipmunks, leaf cutter bees, cucumber beetles, hornworms (ick) and lots of other bugs.

So today after potting basil and parsley seedlings out on the porch, I walked around the side of my building to put my gardening stuff away in my garage and a weird movement on the ground caught my eye. At first I thought it was a small lizard wriggling around in the wood chips, which would have been in odd thing to find in this area. I looked closer and saw it was a baby bird, pink and scaly with its eyes still closed. The poor thing seemed to be in distress and was struggling to crawl around with its spindly legs and stubby little featherless wings. I didn't see a nest or a parent bird around, and had no idea how to rescue a baby bird, so I called the humane society. They advised me to place the bird on a towel-nest in a small box and they would come out to pick it up. Within 15 minutes this little guy was on his way to the Bird Center of Washtenaw County. I hope he survives!



I never would have seen him if I hadn't been out working on my plants.


Bird Center of Washtenaw County
Humane Society of Huron Valley