The Bunny Nursery

New raised beds, bunnies could still reach the morning glories, chomp, chomp.

My RED pepper plant pepper

 I really love bunnies, even though they have eaten a great deal of my garden this year.  I love their cute faces, how they love to run around, they are very good at evasive moves.  Even though I love bunnies, I don't want a bunny nursery.  I have that now because we put up a small fence on the west side of our yard to keep rabbits out.  Because the adult rabbits were so familiar with me it was easy to round them up and out the gate, but I was left with a few babies.  Eventually they will get used to me and I'll be able to round them up too!  Meanwhile, they have obliterated the foliage on the Asiatic lilies, my new prairie clover, new aster, all my morning glories, hyacinth bean, runner beans, and so on.  Fortunately, some of those can rebound, but a lot was lost.  So, it has been a summer of fencing, screening, replanting, and replanning!

Unfortunately, the drought continues for us, we did get an inch of rain last week, but that's been it for some time.  We have 19 new trees and shrubs, but the soaker hoses help a lot, and the new trees and shrubs don't need a ton of water to keep them going.  Sometimes, even though it is not measurable rain, the rain barrels refill thanks to our large roof.  I rarely have to use city water for the vegetable gardens and can often water all the new shrubs and trees with rainwater.

My new East side raised beds are doing well, not sure the fabric is the best, dries out quickly.  I like it being higher, so I may invest in some metal beds.

Because of some fungus, and poor condition of phlox under the maple tree garden alot of plants have been removed.  I have planted a tiger's eye sumac, but I'm not sure that is a good choice.  I'll have a better idea on how it does next summer.  My new elderberry seems to be struggling a bit, but I'm not seeing any outright disease on it.  Unfortunately, my new sand cherry shrub has been struck with brown cherry spot, it looks horrible, so I think I'll have to remove it.  I've been spraying everything with fungus spray as a preventative.

All things considered it has been a good summer so far!  Time for photos!

new grass for the garden?

love my sage

tough echinops

balloon flower is great!

beans doing well, peas were mostly eaten by bunnies and fried by heat.

happy monarchs with all the butterfly weed

hanging in there, Greenie

Is It Over Yet? (winter). Maybe Next Week? (spring)

It is definitely the Year of The Rabbit, the rabbits killed our apple tree, the rabbits ate my new Nannybush, the rabbits ate my Honeysuckle shrubs, my new Weigela shrub, and they even ate the new Vanderwulf pine tree!  It now looks like a Pom Pom tree with one Pom.  We didn't even get a chance to try and save the apple tree because they girdled it completely in one night, pretty amazing.  I never would have thought that they would eat bark from a tree that size.  I was not the only one to experience the damaging nibbles of a cute furry animal, with the extensive and prolonged snow depth in Minnesota this year, it is a state wide tear jerker.  The garden centers are happy$$.

I'm not going to talk about the long miserable Winter, because Spring is bad enough.  We've been below normal in temperatures and sun, but the upside, we are out of last year's drought!

My assistant, Larry has already removed the apple tree, which will be utilized for meat smokers, garden beds, and sculptures.  We have planted a peach tree, and we will take down the old cherry tree once it is done blooming.  We have not decided what will go in to replace the apple tree, maybe another apple tree. We are planting a Black Hills Spruce to replace the old cherry tree.

On the upside, my parsley and oregano plants survived the winter, lots of insulation!  I see signs of asparagus, the Prairie Smoke and tulips are starting to bloom, the new cherry tree looks good, the new Elderberry shrub looks good, and Fred and Ethel showed up!  They were a little later than usual, but we were happy to see them!  

I have 2 new beds for the East side of the house, which will probably contain flowers and vegetables. I haven't given it too much thought yet. Greenie

my grow box assembly helpers

a window strike death- a pretty female red bellied woodpecker

Our birch and crab apple trees touching the ground.  They didn't break!

Fred and Ethel

                                                       First Butterfly of Spring, a Sulphur!

The girdled apple tree stump.