The Sun is Killing Me: Sipping Tea and Watching the Hummingbird

Saturday, January 1, 2011

Sipping Tea and Watching the Hummingbird

I sit at my table this fine first day of 2011 sipping my flowering tea and watching the hummer. He is busy this morning chasing the other birds away from the yard. The Rufous is a feisty little thing. Here he is on take-off:

The butterflies are also out and about this morning. Here is one on the Aralia blossom:

After we had a few hard freezes last week the flowers are few and far between (other than the lemon and aralia blossoms and the plants in pots that travel in and out of the greenhouse) so I have the hummingbird feeder filled up with fresh nectar. And since there are no blooms to post, this flowering tea blossom will have to suffice:

The tea is bound and tied together in a small bundle or ball and when hot water is poured over the top, it blooms. Very fancy!:

Happy New Year everyone!

3 comments:

Amy said...: Pretty photo of the hummer! I can't seem to get a photo of those fast guys. Happy New Year, too!; January 3, 2011 at 11:08 AM
Roberta said...: That tea is awesome! I love the photo of it. Yeah, yeah the hummingbird's swell but the tea!; January 10, 2011 at 9:38 PM
Paul said...: How IS that tea? I was given some old ones and they taste really bland, but no doubt there are different types.; January 18, 2011 at 12:11 PM

Zone What?

Seattle to Olympia is Gardening Hardiness Zone 8.

Zone 8: -12 to -7 C (10 to 20 F)

Austin is Gardening Hardiness Zone 8-9

Zone 8: -12 to -7 C (10 to 20 F)
Zone 9: -7 to -1 C (20 to 30 F)

The USDA map was updated this year - 2012. Some zones have shifted from the previous version.

See the current map here:

http://www.usna.usda.gov/Hardzone/ushzmap.html

Although both Austin and Seattle are in similiar zone hardiness, their climates could not be more different! Temps top out in the 80's in the summer in Seattle, where in Austin they can top 110 and stay in the 100's for months on end. The same plants that enjoy the Seattle maritime climate will fry in a second in the semi-desert that is Central Texas.

Learn about the heat zone map here:

http://www.ahs.org/publications/heat_zone_map.htm

Check out the AHS Heat Zone map here:

http://www.ahs.org/pdfs/05_heat_map.pdf

Past Garden Quotes of the Month

"The fair-weather gardener, who will do nothing except when the wind and weather and everything else are favorable, is never master of his craft."-- Henry Ellacombe
"The trouble with gardening is that it does not remain an avocation. It becomes an obsession." -- Phyllis McGinley
"The way of cultivation is not easy. He who plants a garden plants happiness." --Chinese Proverb
"A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in." --Greek proverb
'Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.' - Albert Einstein
"Unemployment is capitalism's way of getting you to plant a garden." ~Orson Scott Card
"I never had any other desire so strong, and so like to covetousness, as that one which I have had always, that I might be master at last of a small house and a large Garden." ~Abraham Cowley, The Garden, 1666
"A weed is but an unloved flower." ~ Ella Wheeler Wilcox
"Last night, there came a frost, which has done great damage to my garden.... It is sad that Nature will play such tricks on us poor mortals, inviting us with sunny smiles to confide in her, and then, when we are entirely within her power, striking us to the heart." ~Nathaniel Hawthorne, The American Notebookse
"Half the interest of a garden is the constant exercise of the imagination." ~Mrs. C.W. Earle, Pot-Pourri from a Surrey Garden, 1897 (Thanks, Jessica)
"When one of my plants dies, I die a little inside, too." ~Linda Solegato
"In gardens, beauty is a by-product. The main business is sex and death." ~Sam Llewelyn
"Plant carrots in January and you'll never have to eat carrots." ~Author Unknown