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Thursday, January 17, 2013

"another year over AND a new one just begun . . . " PART TWO-H-2 (Oct 11th — Oct 24th 2012)







Today's entry here on Blogger is part two-H-2 of a series of posts pertaining to a year-end review for special occurrences in my urban garden for the year 2012 (the schedule for this series is described in part one as well as part two-A of this topic) and, as I've said, because October 2012 was the month Hurricane Sandy hit the area near to where I live, my garden went through another upheaval, so I will be posting the review for October in three parts.

The first part of October's review covered days which included the dates from October 1st- through October 10th of 2012, is what I discussed yesterday.

Today, Thursday, January 18th, I will conclude my review for October 2012 by covering the dates from October 11th through October 24th, and tomorrow, Friday the nineteenth I will cover the remainder of October.

So without further ado, I "give" you today's entry, and I'll start with the images atop this posting. These images are copies of comic strips I created to depict scenarios of my visiting birds, and were rendered with images from previous months; there is a "back story" re the specifics of my endeavor on one of my Pinterest Boards.

It has been my hope to create more strips of this type; and since it seems that the time period I'm covering in this blog entry today was certainly filled with enough antics by my visiting birds to give me plenty of material to work with, which you may surmise from the images below, please keep in mind that these are just a representation of many, many antics which my visiting birds "performed" in my garden between the time period on October 11th and October 24th of 2012.


October 11th AND 12th 2012:








The first three images feature a female house finch and a number of this variety visit my garden. In the third image you notice that her eye seems to be crusted over and that she is struggling to see. Since I am legally blind myself, I had not noticed this affliction until I used some magnifying software with my computer.

However, because this particular blog posting is a review of occurrences in my garden, I will leave any more specifics re my eyesight or my finches' eyesight for a different post (so please stay tuned to my musings here on Blogger and tumblr, and additionally I'll try to post alerts on TLLG's Facebook Page when I return to this topic of my visiting birds eye challenges.

Meanwhile, getting back to the images posted above, the third image features my mourning dove; the fourth image features my sight-challlanged house finch with two mourning doves and the fifth image features a male house finch. 

                                           
October 13th 2012:




In the first of these three images, you may notice that one of my female house finches has both of her eyes crusted over; and again, as I mentioned in the paragraph above, I will address the eyesight issues of my visiting birds in a separate blog entry. Two arrows have been added to this particular image to "highlight" the fact that both eyes, in the case of this house finch, have been quite compromised. Since the month of October is vision awareness month, it may be most apropos that I discovered my birds' eye challenges at that time! 

In any event, in the second picture in the images posted above this paragraph, two mourning doves can be seen getting up close and personal atop a feeding tray in my garden; whilst the third image features a male house finch checking out the "scene" in my garden from the vantage point of my string lights!

Later that same day, atop my string lights, I discovered a newbie visiting my garden and a photo-op of him/her is posted below.
                                    

I initally thought she/he was a baby bluejay and it would be quite sometime before I found out the bird was not a baby bluejay, but it is a tufted titmouse; whose adorable "animated" face became the inspiration for many photo-ops on my Pinterest Boards. Moreover, I've written about her in a number of entries here on blogger as well as within my tumblr pages.

In any event, on the first day I discovered her/him in my garden, I was so pleased to see her/him enjoy my Halloween decor as evidenced below. 


However, the tufted titmouse was not the only one checking out the decorations Juan V had put up for Halloween: a "lone" house finch, also found my "feisty" Jack-O-Lantern, but in the case of the house finch, she seemed non-plussed re my decorations as she stood on her feeder's perch, as seen in the image posted below.




October 14th 2012:

A few of my visiting birds may have discovered my Halloween decor on the afternoon of October the Thirteenth, but on October the Fourteenth, I discovered something too as seen in the images below.


I discovered that my female house finches were not the only one with eye problems: their boy-toys, husbands and brothers seemed to also have the affliction as seen in the images posted below.





As you can see these sweet birds have the "crusty" eyes, and as I've said I promise to return to their eye issue, but in the interim, if you are curious, I have written about the plight of finches on the Eastern Seaboard in relation to blindness; and you may read about it (on tumblr) by clicking here.

My friend, Michael, who helped me prepare my garden for the "so-called" renovation in September of 2012, had informed me about the Eastern Seaboard disaster, and it broke my heart to think of their plight. While I'm legally blind, I don't have to fly! The following are a few more photo-ops of these sweet birds.





                                            
October 17th 2012:

Lest you think that "events" in my garden in October were just for the birds, I was "greeted" with some new growth on a number of the "things" I grow and the following photo-ops showcase some of those moments.


Oxalis Buds
Autumn Clematis's Flowers 
Rosebud
(Not the Rosebud from "Citizen Kane)
                                                 
October 18th 2012:

To my knowledge, the first time a male cardinal visited my garden was on October 18th 2012. Prior to this I had only seen or heard Cam, my "lone" female cardinal visitor; however, on this date, I noticed the male cardinal (pictured below). 



I did not want to scare it away and besides, rain was coming down in torrents; given these two situations, I took the image through a closed (and probably dirty) window, hence the "Monet" (blur) quality.

In spite of the heavy rains (which occurred for a couple of days in a row), my "regular" visitors , enjoyed the garden as you can see in the photo-ops (that only represent a fraction of images featuring their antics) posted below.









October 19th 2012:





And the birds seemed to be getting used to the Halloween decor (that Juan V and I had "installed" on October 2nd of 2012), as evident by an image posted below.



Meanwhile, speaking of Juan V, he returned again on October 24th to assist in the planting of bulbs for tulips, crocuses, and hyacinth, and the results of that day's work can be seen in the aerial images below.







All five images are different angles to illustrate the same thing — where various bulbs had been planted. In each of the images the letters correspond to the same thing, which is as follows: 

Letter "A" indicates where Tulip Couleur Cardinal were planted, letter "B" indicates where Crocus 'Ruby Giant' was planted, letter "C" indicates where Saffron Crocus was planted, whilst letter "D" indicates where Hyacinth 'Bi-Color' Blue was planted.  (Even the bags the bulbs came in are included in the Juan V's photo-ops!)

At Halloween time in 2012, the "treat" of planting bulbs was especially welcome after all the "tricks" which had been occurring in my garden such as my renovation scenario and weather damaging (and in some instances killing) the "things" I grow!

And planting the bulbs was not the only "treat" which occurred on the twenty-fourth; my Sweet Autumn Clematis sported hundreds of flowers as seen in the aerial images that Juan V took, images which are posted below.





The latter of Juan's three images includes an arrow indicating where the Tulip Couleur Cardinal bulbs were planted (Letter "A'" in the images with letters superimposed over them which are above the autumn clematis's photo-ops. The arrow is included in this image for perspective on how massive the autumn clematis had become! 

This vine is a survivor, indeed, and to think at the time these images were taken, it had only been a few months since it was entirely uprooted to be moved into a new "home," only to be uprooted again; and put in a "body bag" during my renovation in September.

With only seven days to pass before October 2012 would end, it appeared that this month would go down as the month of garden "treats;" little did I know at the time I made this assessment that Hurricane Sandy was on its way to the area near to where I live, a true October trick indeed!

But that event, as "they" say, is another story; a story to be included in my post where I will conclude my October 2012 review. As I've stated before, that post is scheduled for tomorrow, January the Eighteenth, so I'll see you then!

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