Experience

Experience is a hard task master; but when you learn this way you don't forget. It has been said many times that experience is the greatest teacher, and I do believe it. I learned so much the first winter I spent in this home. It was a severe winter and I lost a lot of plants that I’d had for many years, and some of the ones that were here when I moved in.

A Shadehouse

I had my shadehouse set up because I love to propagate plants. Here you also need a greenhouse for winter which I didn't have and didn't have the extra money to buy one. I got the 'brilliant idea' to try and make the shadehouse into a greenhouse.

Mine is a 10 x 20 with a screen top rather than solid top like this photo.

Absolutely not the best idea I ever had. I bought a roll of heavy duty clear Bisqueen and Cousin Tom, Charlie and I covered the shadehouse with it. 

It would most likely have worked except for the howling winds we had with every hard freeze every day and night throughout the entire winter.

Every day Charlie and I re-clipped the cover with heavy duty clips and re-sealed seams with cold weather duck tape. Tom always helped when he came by on Thursday’s. Eventually we moved the shadehouse down to the south side of the barn to shield it from the north and northwest winds. That did help some.

The very last night of the last hard freeze with howling winds blew the top cover loose and it rolled back enough so that the bitter cold penetrated the space inside long enough to freeze many of my plants. My makeshift greenhouse was a miserable flop.

Hard lesson learned!

Eastern Black swallowtail Larvae

St. John's Wart

While we were transferring plants into the makeshift greenhouse in the late fall, Charlie found an Eastern Black swallowtail larvae feeding on one of the six St John’s Wart plants. 



This was exciting for him to see. These were some of the plants I lost. This photo has flowers, but mine was bare of flowers.

Luna Moth

A bit earlier I was moving some of my Bromeliads’ and a Luna Moth flew up past my shoulder and in my face as I was bent over, and it is the only one I have ever seen here in my yard. It was so beautiful I was just in awe.

Pileated Woodpecker

I have a huge Live Oak tree in my front yard and sitting on the porch one morning I heard some loud sounds coming from up in the tree.

 I didn't see them at first because they were on the opposite side of the tree, but eventually they moved around to my side so I could see them.

It was a pair of Pileated Woodpeckers; when they peck big chips of wood fly out from the tree like bullets raining down. I watched them all the while they were here. Once in awhile they return.

I kept a butterfly journal the first year I was here, of all the butterflies, and the birds that visited. I kept a daily record of temps, and little notes of what was happening, the weather and so many other things that happened on a daily basis.

I wrote it up daily in my computer, and I also copied it to a disk, but my computer fried and the disk has somehow been misplaced or copied over. Hopefully it is still here somewhere and I will eventually find it.

Another hard lesson learned; take better care of important things, at least the things that are important to me.