Cecile foliage.

Cecile proliferation.

Variegated clematis.

This morning, five mature wild turkeys and at least twenty chicks were checking out the newly worked soil in my tea beds.
(So many turkeys that the feline IPM troupe decided to sleep in.)

Those leaves are really weird!

Weird in (well, from) my garden: I keep thinking my neighbor has a dog loose, but it's not. It's a galloping groundhog :D The first time I saw it do that, I ran over there with a leash all ready to save a pet. Weird critter!

Thank you, Carol, I find those pics. very interesting. Weirdest things here is I sprinkled some fresh mint around the roses in front for the past weeks, and the deer never bother. Deer must really hate mint.

I suppose the weirdest thing is my cow. It isnt placed exactly where I would have liked it, but after we got it off the truck, it was too heavy to move around. I think about painting it purple, as in "I never saw a purple cow..." I have several garden art critters, but the cow is the best. That's Tippi sitting on it.

only myself.

I love your cow. I have cows, too, but mine are real. I let them into the barnyard to eat down the grass there, and one of them broke two boards and got into the yard. Thank heavens, the only damage was a broken cane on Martha Gonzales, although she--the cow, not Martha--stomped around and left giant cow prints in several of the beds.

I don't have any weird foliage that I've noticed. The only other thing I can think of is two sandhill cranes that come up to the gate and dance until we feed them. And then as Camp said, there's me in all my gardening glory.

I love what Camp wrote: such great humor!

Hi Floridarose: I thought catrose's cow was real at first ... I was wondering why such cow allow a cat to mount ....

You should see how I dress like in the garden, a cross between a hobo in pajamas and a Halloween-costume.

This post was edited by Strawberryhill on Sat, Jun 29, 13 at 11:54

I want that cow!

Jeri

Turkeys, groundhogs, deer, cranes, and cows! My garden is looking quite tame in comparison. The only groundhog I've ever seen is one on the local news every February 2. I had no idea groundhogs could gallop! My garden is mostly occupied by the elderly (and rather inefficient) squirrel and raccoon patrol dog...and my neighbors rats. Shiver.

Carol

This post was edited by PortlandMysteryRose on Sat, Jun 29, 13 at 13:52

I'd have to say my sprinkler.

{{gwi:283647}}

Ha! Ha! Oh, that's a great pic, Altorama. Your irrigation system looks a lot like mine. I installed chicken wire around my back beds so I could enjoy both a garden and a Samoyed-Eskimo. I prop my hose nozzle through the wire mesh to deep water sections of plants.

Carol

I've done the same thing, Alt. It is rather strange, isn't it?

There's a town that has a contest each year where people paint and decorate those cows. They stand out in the street in front of stores.
I love the sprinkler.
My weird thing in the garden is a story. It's actually more nice than weird. A few years ago a Jack Rabbit lived in my garden. I became fond of him. He as very tame and never ran when he saw me. I never saw any obvious damage done by him. Early that spring my back went out badly. It was painful and i was worried that I wouldn't get my spring garden chores done, I was pretty sad about it all. On a lovely warm day I decided to do some creative visualization to help heal my back. I laid right down on a pathway. It felt so warm and good, connected to the earth. I said to myself, "Here are the roses so strong and beautiful. You have given them all your strength that they may thrive and now they want to give it back to you and heal your back" I concentrated on that thought and the warm earth on my back with my eyes closed. When I opened my eyes the rabbit was right there looking at me. Then he turned around gently and slowly hopped off. He didn't go through the beds. He hopped along the pathways till I lost sight of him. I never saw him again. No I didn't have an instant miraculous recovery, but I'll never forget it.

What a sweet story, Pam. This sounds crazy, but I once had a cow talk to me--she saw me in the garden, came up to the fence, and started rearing up on her hind legs and mooing at the top of her lungs and then trotting off, coming back and doing the same thing. It turns out her calf had fallen in the creek, and she wanted me to save it, which I did. One of our cats also talked to me. He walked up to me while I was watering my pot ghetto, looked me in the eyes and gave this pitiful meow. I realized instantly just by the way he looked at me something was wrong and rushed him to the vet. We found out DH had put small dog flea stuff on him. He almost died, but three days of intravenous and $300 later he lived. DH is no longer allowed to put on their flea stuff.

Mendocino

Portland had a painted cow auction one year.

Your bunny: what a beautiful story! It's like The Veveteen Rabbit, only your rabbit truly was real. When I was a child, I once raised a spicebush swallowtail butterfly from a caterpillar. I released it into the garden where It remained for several days. When I placed a cap of sugar water on my hand, it would light and drink.

Carol

A pair of yellow-bellied water snakes chose my Mr. Lincoln bed to make little snakes in. (Note to readers : when all three of your dogs are staring at the exact same spot and barking like lunatics, do not go out in flip-flops to see what they're barking at.)

Not in my garden, but since we were in Carpinteria for a car show today (included roses btw) I decided to find and stop at a nursery I had heard about.

WOW I will be going back to spend a few hours on a cooler day, what incredible displays they had on the grounds. But, I now know that I "need" one of the metal garden goats that were by the parking lot. Neeeeee Neeeee Neeeed a goat :)

FYI if you are every taking hwy 101 through Carpinteria, take a moment to pull of on Santa Claus Lane and visit Seaside Gardens.

Here is a link that might be useful: Seaside Gardens

The weirdest thing I found in my old garden, when I started digging up the beds under some ancient trees, was a huge collection of broken plates, crockery, forks, parts of bricks. My husband said it must have been used as fill around the turn of the century (19th, that is) when the house was built. I can't tell you how many fingers I sliced digging into what should have been soil. That was odd but tolerable - it was when we started finding not-at-all-ancient hypodermic needles from the scary apartment complex next door that we knew we needed to move. That was way worse than any four-footed animal could ever be.

Cynthia

I'd love a metal goat to stick out in my roses! I've spent a lot of time and money trying to keep my real goats OUT of my garden, lol.

Kind of like this goat

Here is a link that might be useful: A similar goat

Florida Rose, That's wonderful about the cow and the cat. They really do talk to us in their way if we are willing to listen.
How lovely about the butterfly Carol.

Ooo, Debbie! Water snakes. That reminds me of another thread with an extended snake theme. Biology research programs should hire gardeners to track various species. They'd save a lot of field work. Flip flops. No, ma'am! I heed your advice. In Minneapolis, I dashed to the box with bare feet to collect my mail a couple of times...in the deep, white winter. Things I'll never do again item #217.

I love the goat (and the cow), too! However, my garden is so itty bitty and I so lust after roses that my gargoyles are lucky I haven't displaced them yet. They sense me scowling at them as I type.

Carol

Carol, your clematis foliage looks exactly like my Sweet Autumn clematis. None of my big-flowered clems show variagation. I thought it was just a quirk of Sweet Autumn. Lou

Lou

How interesting that you've seen this, too! Does your clematis show silvered foliage annually? Mine has displayed plain ol' green until this year.

I think the variegation is caused by a virus of some sort but not one that weakens the plant in any noticeable way. I tried posting on the Clematis Forum and emailing a local clematis preservation garden curator but never received any replies. Someone else on the Clematis Forum grew a different variety that showed green and white variegation.

Clematis terniflora foliage is rather pretty when variegated. I wonder if the pattern is stable. I may try rooting cuttings.

Carol

12 white cats leaping in the moonlight
seem to me to be dancing,
after sunset I put a big dish of cat food on my front porch for the stray cats in the neighborhood, (and again in the morning)
For some reason nearly all of them are white, we've tried for years to catch the 3 fertile mothers, but no luck there yet.
One nervous little white furry guy, has one green and one blue eye, and he keeps climbing up into one of the Spanish Lavender and broke it down so there is a wide platform of smashed branches mid-way up the plant. That is where he sits to view the world. I read that lavender calms down cats, so maybe he's doing a little aromatherapy. He is kinda weird and very cute.

Under a bright full moon I see many white kittens and cats leaping over the smaller plants and tracking and catching moths, in an area that is covered with white clover,
white cats leaping over white clover in the moonlit misty meadow.
The view has a magical air about it, especially when the mist is rising.

Lux

Lux

That IS magical! Your own little angel ghost cats romping in the clover. Do they disappear at dawn?

What a great subject your feline visitors would make for a children's story. Once upon a time, there were 12 white cats leaping in the moonlight .... If they were black cats, you'd probably have 13 in your garden.

Carol

Not weird, but good in an unusual way: my daughter went out yesterday to get some basil from the pot in the flower bed in our small house yard. She called to me in the kitchen: "Melissa, come on out! There's a snake! COOL!!"
So thankful she's never been a girly girl (not one of those that eat rocks, either, as someone once described it to me). Also thankful we have no poisonous snakes locally. I knew we have a snake, or snakes, under the terrace, and saw one on the other side away from the house recently as well. This is the first time there's been one right in the yard beside the house. I don't know the species, but some specimens reach a good size: years ago we found a complete shed skin below the terrace that was a long as my husband is tall: 5'3".
We have rats in the roof, too: difficult to deal with in a three story house. Wolves, apparently, have begun to move into our area, following the wild boars and the recently arrived roe deer, and committing sheep massacres. Wasps nesting in the air intake to the bathroom heater and trying to colonize our closets (we don't have window screens); hornets in the chimney, at least they lived there the last two summers. A THIRD, completely new, variety of beetle found gnawing on a rose yesterday, in addition to the two old customary plests. I do feel the faunal presence here quite strongly sometimes, especially in summer.
Melissa

Melissa

We should alter the sequence of the phrase "flora and fauna" to "fauna and flora." It sounds like your local animal life outnumbers the plant life! Please tell your daughter that I admire her for understanding that snakes are cool. Who says you can't appreciate both reptiles and roses? My daughter is all about dinosaurs at the moment but she can still call half my roses by name.

Carol

Lux, that is a beautiful scene you paint. I feed strays also, but nothing so lovely. I can't put the food out at night because of the possums and raccoons. I do it early morning.

I forgot I have a bee tree down by the creek. If you stand beside it, the tree sounds like it might explode any moment the noise is so powerful from all the bees at work. It's almost scary to listen to. Thank heavens they're not in my house like yours, Mellissa.

Carol, yes, this SA clem looks like this every year, but I can't remember when the variegation started. I've been trying to stamp it out of this bed (2, 4D) - don't know how it got there, but it tries to take over the other clems and roses, and trying to dig it out doesn't work. Talk about vigorous!!! SA is really lovely IF you have space for it but, at least here in my part of the country, it can become rampant quickly. I hadn't thought about it possibly having a virus. Could be. Lou

its not unusual to hear the cockatoos in summer, as there is a large golf course about a kilometre away, and they do early dusk flybys. One evening they wee a lot louder than usual, so i stuck my head out the back door to see a flock of about twenty or so feasting on the remains of the sunflowers! They were out there, all over the fence and next door neighbours roof, taking turns quarrelling, trying to bully each other away from the seeds, falling off them and reorganising themselves. Having demolished anything edible, they disappeared, and I havent seen them since

That is so neat, Curdle. In Kissimmee, Fl. there is a lake near the courthouse. There are wild little green parrots all around that lake, and they hang out in the trees in the courthouse parking lot. I used to love to sit and watch them.

Wow! A flock of cockatoos. That is a real sight in the yard! The largest, most coloful birds in my fig tree are tanagers and flickers.

I think San Fransisco is home to wild parrots, too. Telegraph Hill. I saw a delightful film about them and the man who cared for them.

Carol

This post was edited by PortlandMysteryRose on Thu, Jul 4, 13 at 19:37

These stories are so cool!!!!

The groundhog knows me now, so that must explain it. If I go out with the dogs, he runs away (and they can RUN). If I'm alone, he rolls around in the sunshine like a dog. He was sunning himself in my neighbors' front yard for a good 20 minutes the other day (they weren't home). I'm naming him Fido :)

Meredith, I'd love to see that galloping, roly poly groundhog Fido! Do you think you might have an opportunity to photograph him?

Carol

I don't have anything as exciting or delightful as all these stories. I suppose one odd occurrence was a large gopher snake on the deck that had wrapped itself around a terrified rabbit. I have no idea what he thought he was doing since the rabbit was much too large for him to eat. My husband extricated the rabbit, who ran off without saying thank you, but the snake stayed on the deck for a few minutes hissing at my husband, who had thwarted his plan to.......good question.

Another was the bobcat who sat in the roses a few feet from the dining room French door. I suppose he was studying his surroundings that were a little different from the norm, i.e. tall weeds, dusty bushes and live oaks.

Ingrid

Oddest thing in my garden...me or the roses-it is a toss up :D

I have been busy the past week but I walked the garden today, what is up with all those Austins thinking they should throw a 5' cane of thorns? Lady of Megginch has one that is taller than me-so much for a shorter front row rose. Good think I like her and the roses behind seem to think 7' is good.

I'd love to get a great pic of Fido the Groundhog, but he'd look like a small brown blotch with my cell phone camera. He'd look just like a little dog, lol. Y'all would be telling me to go leash him up and make sure he gets back with his owners :D :D :D

Goofy Groundhog :D

I'll try, though!

There is a culvert by where he suns himself, and that took me a bit to figure out. Clever Fido hides in the culvert under the neighbors' driveway when danger comes! Fido's a smart, cool dude :)

What cool stories! Love the communion with Jack Rabbit.

And the mother cow--I witnessed a lot of similar startling things when working with cattle that demonstrated their emotions & awareness--enough to make me cringe at how cruelly they are often treated *sigh*.

So good to see animals that are loved & cherished. What cute photos!

Ingrid
You and DH should have official animal rescue status! I adore bobcats. My husband's grandparents had a friend with poor eyesight who thought she was feeding a large housecat until his grandparents said, "Look at that bobcat on your patio!"

Meredith
Even though he and I have never met, I adore Fido.

Kippy
Austins sooo put out the rogue canes, don't they? What is it with those roses? While all the other breeds are sitting nicely at their desks, hands folded and wishing you good morning, the Austins--duplicitous delinquents that they are--promise to be good little tidy shrubs while flinging thorny canes behind your back.

Carol