Catnip Plant, Photo Contest entries, Dave's Garden and so on...

I'm so excited about a couple of things. First, I've entered a garden photo contest and here are the links to see my entries:

http://www.beginner-gardening.com/white-at-night.html

http://www.beginner-gardening.com/dazzling-dogwood.html

http://www.beginner-gardening.com/bee-butt.html

http://www.beginner-gardening.com/moon-in-a-sea-of-purple.html

http://www.beginner-gardening.com/charming-columbine.html

Please be sure to add any comments about the pics!

The second is, I think I have finally ironed out the Search Engine Crawler errors I was getting on my catnip website!!!! Yayyy!! I'm keeping my fingers crossed that it is so...early indicators are good! (please please please please) it's been a very long road. Hopefully I will now be able to show up in the returns for my specific keywords. So come on out y'all and see what I'm talkin about! :-)

http://www.yourcatsscents.com

hope you enjoy.

What is Catnip?

I've done alot of research on catnip and found several interesting uses for the herb. Not only can it be used to calm the nerves and/or stomach of adults, it's also been used to ease colic in babies! There's even a recipe for a catnip enema!

Try this link:

http://www.yourcatsscents.com/whatiscatnip

or just click on the title above.

I think you'll be pleasantly surprised! :-)

Growing Catnip and much more....

I've created this website for anyone out there who just wanted to know everything there is to know about catnip. I must say though that I did not cover any aspects about catnip in witchcraft. However, I did include a nice little sight that may have more on this herb's importance to witch's. It may be that in the near future, I will include a page about just that subject, since I have friend's who might be interested.

Please come see my offering, and I will be glad to let everyone know of any updates!!

click on the title up above or use this URL:

http://www.yourcatsscents.com/

SC Low Country & Coast

My husband and I love to go down to the South Carolina low country to go bird watching as often as we can. We've seen some pretty stunning birds down there that can't be seen easily anywhere else.

An example is the repopulation of the White Ibis on the Carolina coastline. It is my understanding that the population has declined in Florida as it has increased here in the Carolinas. Several factors could account for that trend. Advancing tropical heat from global warming, the continuing drought in Florida, the loss of habitat to urban development...any or all of these could be the reason.

We like to just drive around the backroads on the shore. There are slices of a very specific Americana to be seen on these roads. Houses and mobile homes up on 6-10 foot legs to keep them dry in high water are common. Many times the overall economic status is rather low in the pecking order, though I have a feeling that some of the people believe they are rich in their surroundings, as would I.

Though there are times in our drive-throughs that hold no "wow" effects for us, there are many more that do. We may drive around half a day seeing the usual sights (which are great, don't get me wrong!) and then we will just stumble upon that super cool spot. I recall one day we took a small dirt road that was heading for a coastal area near the Santee Delta. The road suddenly opened up to a meadow and I said, "stop stop stop!!!" My husband jammed on the brakes and we came to an abrupt halt. Fortunately, there was no one else around as is the case on many of these roads. Both our jaws dropped as we gazed in awe at the serene sight all around us. There browsing in the grasses were four distinct species of birds: White Ibis, bothe white mature and gray yearlings; snowy egrets; tri-colored heron and little blue heron. It's one of those sightings that you never forget it was so cool! Unfortunately, my camera was barely up to the task of getting zoomed in close enough to snap good pictures, so they came out a bit blurry because of the distance.


Other exciting sightings have included eagles: the bald eagle and an osprey. We were sitting on the beach one time with our binoculars in hand, watching an osprey fishing in the shallows just off the beach. Suddenly he swooped down and came up with his prize clutched tightly in his talons. He rose up high into the air, preparing to go to his favorite eating roost, when out of nowhere dove this huge bald eagle. The eagle startled the osprey into dropping his prize and caught it before it hit the water again! My husband and I looked at each other and felt outraged for the smaller osprey! Stealing food was Not what one would expect from the "majestic" bald eagle! Too bad I didn't have my camera with me that day, though we have gotten some ok shots of both eagles at other times.

It seems like there are just too many other nifty sightings to list. I'll load a few more. Black-necked stilts, screech owl in a wood duck box, Caspian terns with a young one, storks climbing on the thermals, buffle head duck, blue winged teal duck, pied-billed grebes, plover...

Going to visit the shore and low country of South Carolina has become one of our favorite things to do every year. Between our work life, yard work and family, we try to squeeze in time to head down there every year. In fact, we seem to get this "craving", and until we satisfy it, it gnaws at us in the back of our psychies. Of course we love to go birding here in the upstate too. But the shore just holds a special place for us. Next time we are hoping to head a little further south to the Georgia and Florida coasts.

FLORAL PICTURES

I have to say that of all my subject photos, floral pictures are my favorite. Let’s face it, the flower isn’t going to fly away just as you click the shutter! My cats just get bored and walk away! And it seems that scenic pictures can come out good sometimes, but they have to be pretty special. But floral pictures? It’s hard to go completely wrong!

Flowers stand still………unless of course it’s windy. Then it’s just a matter of timing. If it’s windy, it’s usually best to go with just regular close-ups instead of macros for floral pictures. In that case, choose a nice bunch of flowers rather than going for the individual. Masses of flowers make beautiful floral pictures!

I have to admit, my favorite floral pictures come from using the macro function on my camera. I use a Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ5 with a 12 times optical zoom plus an available 4 times digital zoom. I love this little camera! It allows me to take pictures so close you can see the hairs on the pistil! Or I can zoom in just enough to totally fill the screen with flowers. I usually like to try to get a good floral picture by using just the optical zoom though. This generally lends itself to working with the photo in PhotoShop later on.

I work on and add to my gardens every year. So beginning each spring, I have new subjects to photograph throughout the growing season. Add these to my die-hard favorites, and each year new, unusual or in some cases, perfected floral photos are added to my repertoire.

The natural perfection of flowers are hard to beat when choosing a subject. With nature being the real artist here, all you have to do is focus and shoot!

Echinacea

https://paydotcom.com/r/12510/helping_hand/23446947/

And Butterflies Too!

Since the first plant that I placed in my meager garden, I've loved that breathless moment when a butterfly flits in and checks out my offering. That first plant that attracted them was a purple coneflower. Since then, I've discovered several others that never fail to bring in the floating dreams.

My biggest surprise was the Gulf Fritillary that is attracted to none other than our native growing vine, the passion flower. I learned that this beauty is exclusively dependent on the passion vine for the feeding of its caterpillar. So needless to say, I quickly set up a couple of "fritillary feeding stations" in my gardens.

One plant that I stumbled upon last season was what the seed packet called, "Mexican Sunflowers". They turned out to be four foot tall and strong enough to stay upright in the worst weather. They were a beautiful brilliant orange with a yellow center. And I never saw so many different types of butterflies on one group of flowers!! It was a mind-blowing show, day after day. Butterflies of all kinds covered this plant from sunup to sundown. Unfortunately, it is an annual, so I have to plant it again this year. But it's well worth it for the ensuing show!