Gary's Outdoor Wanderings2: THE YARD AND A FEW LAKE SHOTS

Saturday, September 6, 2014

THE YARD AND A FEW LAKE SHOTS

It takes a lot of effort to make a blog entry from Douglas Lake but its fun trying. This morning found me on the upper end of the reservoir where it narrows down and resembles more of a river than a dam.

I was on the water before the sun showed itself and it felt great to be totally alone on the dark water. I eased upstream following the shoreline on the right side of the reservoir. Its amazing how fast the sun can brighten things up. I looked up in a tree and couldn't believe my eyes. I always complain about too much light and back lighted situations. Well, this is the opposite. Not enough light.

At first I only saw the one eagle facing me. Then I noticed the second eagle above him. How great is that! This is the pair that has been long times residences here on this end of the lake.

They didn't stay long but flew away within a minute of my arrival.

I haven't identified the following bird yet but will soon and I will post it. I've not seen these here before or maybe I just wasn't looking. They act like gulls but are slender and much smaller than Ring Bills or Bonaparte Gulls.

Just identified as a black tern

Of course I just had to photograph a green heron.

Notice the tuft on top his head in the following shots.

Below is an immature bald eagle

The upper end of the reservoir is very pretty until TVA lowers the water level and bares the muddy shorelines.

The road above follows the river and leads to a favorite spot I enjoy looking at as I continually pass it. I won't use names here as permission to do so was not asked. One day I just stopped beside this property and looked at the seemingly endless plants and flowers arranged quite nicely throughout the yard. Then the choreographer of this dazzling plant habitat came out to talk with me. We hit it off immediately as we both love plants. Here are just a few shots of her yard. Its gorgeous! Oh, the dog is ten years old and I'm told he has all his teeth and yes, hes a rescue dog. Pardon me - they "both" are rescue dogs.

Isn't he a beauty?

AWWWWWWWWWWWW!

This brings us to the project I've been working on for the past couple weeks. I built this trellis you see below and I kind of went a bit nuts with it. The thing is 8 foot square and seven feet high with an open top that hopefully will accommodate climbing plants.

I've planted several climbing plants against the lattice and they are going gangbusters up the sides.

The dangling little boxes are light boxes that rejuvenate by reacting to the sun's rays during the day and emit a blue light at night.

The plants below are crepe myrtle. I think I planted 15 of these. Some are pink, some white and the rest red.

I don't like symmetrical plantings so I planted according to the size, shape and color of the plant and how I thought it would look against its neighbors when grown. Not very scientific but we'll see next year what the results are.
What follows is an idea of how the yard looks.

You can see a ban-mitten net in the background of the shot above. The next project I have on the list is to build a 7 foot tall privacy fence on the other side of those pines you see in the picture. It will be about 150 feet long when totally done but I may just complete small sections at a time to keep things affordable. I hate neighbors. Don't want to see em, don't want to watch their kids play on obnoxious florescent colored plastic slide boards, don't want to hear the constant arguments that go on punctuated by loud yelling, don't want to watch him mow his grass so short he creates dust bowels that waft over my plants, Don't want to watch him blow leaves every night with his back mounted, high powered jet leaf blower and I sure as heck don't want to have to look at their tied up dog ever.