Early Summer Flowers at The Cabin

Learning how to garden up at our cabin has been fun but a bit expensive.

We have four seasons up here which is new to me.

Our neighbor, Rebecca, who was raised on the mountain, gives me great tips, and knows where to find the wild sweet peas, strawberries and blackberries.

She has also told me to only buy plants on the mountain because they've had a chance to acclimate to the high altitude. 

But sadly, everything is way more expensive up on the mountain.

She also knows about the skunks that visit us nightly and how they will go away if we bang pans together, and the brown bear who comes up on our porch and lifts the latch on the wooden box to eat all the bluejays peanuts.  LOL

We saw our first raccoon, he was standing on his hind legs in the middle of the street staring us down.

We laughed so hard!!

Our side yard is a coyote crossing from higher up and the coyotes cross the street at our place to  go down to a lower water source.

And Rebecca told me to watch for snakes, yuck!  Haven't seen any yet.

We have at least a hundred gopher holes, and our other neighbor told us to put gum down their holes.

I tried it, we'll see what happens.

The stellar jays and chick-a-dees have made nests on our property and it's been delightful to see the babies coming to us for food and water.

The babies aren't afraid.

Jim made a special feeder that Rebecca showed him how to build that houses orange halves and grape jelly for the robins.

And we just started seeing baby squirrels and chipmunks running around and playing on our back hillside

Who knew we would be visited by so many critters and that there was so much to learn.

But we are loving it!

I'm finding that sunflowers thrive up here with very little water, and the bees love them.

Rebecca told me to just drop their seeds and they will come back next year.

But the stellar jays are so hungry I'm scared they will eat them so I think I will bury rather than drop them.

I just found out that all these small white daisies are called feverfew, and the lot across the street from us was full of them.

They have really good dye properties according to Woman with Wings.

Sadly it's too late in the season now to pick them, so I will try to remember for next year.

This plant is a beauty, and I'm hoping it will come back next year, the nursery lady assured me it would.  

We shall see.

I think she told me it's a cousin to the foxglove and delphiniums.

I planted some geranium starts in my garage saled wishing well and they've taken off beautifully, but Rebecca says they will have a hard time in winter so I'll have to bring them indoors or take them down the mountain.

And I just planted this Fouth of July rose a couple of weeks ago and the blooms were amazing.

I hung a large basket from between two huge pines and planted begonias that are thriving.

Not sure if I need to dig them up before winter comes.

And even though this sunflower has a funny spot in it's center, I still wanted to include it because it was so tall that I had to shot it from a worm's eye view and it shows off how tall our pines are around the cabin.

Jimmy calls me his mountain woman  :)