Adam Rodgers Photography

Black-Eyed Susan (Rudbeckia hirta)

We decided to go to my parents house last week to go swimming. It wasn’t that hot by the time we got there, but it was still refreshing to get in the pool.

My mom has spent countless amounts of time on her flower gardens. I took some shots a couple months ago (spring). I haven’t posted any of them yet. While we were there she had many that were in bloom and simply beautiful.

This is just one of many flower pictures I took last week. Black-eyed Susans (Rudbeckia hirta).

Saturday June 14th, we went to the Seneca Park Zoo, our local zoo. We actually had most of the family with us. My mother, my brother Rick, my brother Matt and his wife, Christina and their daughter Lilly.

It wasn’t that hot, and the rain held out until we were about 1/2 way through.  This was Lexi’s first visit to the zoo.  We tried to take her the week before, but when we got there it was closed, so we ended up feeding the ducks and geese in Charlotte.

The zoo in general is a pretty good place for taking pictures of animals.  Some animals are more cooperative than others.  The Seneca Park Zoo has a good variety of animals, nothing spectacular, but definitely worth  visiting.

Bald Eagles are one of my favorite animals.  They always seem to have a very noble expression.

Well, this past week we trans-planted our melons (watermelon and cantelope), pumpkins, and some corn. These were all started from seeds, inside. Based on the melon section in the Stoney basic skills It stated that melons do well on a trellis. Now this is something new to me. I have always seen melons grown on the ground. Now the key to melons on a trellis is to tie a nylon stocking under the fruit once it starts to develop, to provide support. So I decided to once again use PVC.

I made the trellis, by making 2 rail type sections and then adding some uprights to help support the rails. I simply tied, lashed the rails and uprights together.

OK, so this week, we transplanted the pole beans to the garden. We started then from seed inside several weeks ago. I am hoping they make it. The reason I say this is, they grew like crazy and I didn’t give them poles to climb before I moved them outside and the wind did a number on them. If has been a few days since I transplanted them to the garden, so look like they are going to be fine, and some of the others aren’t looking that good.

Now if you are wondering what the beans are using to support them, it’s PVC pipe. This is the first year we have grown beans of any kind. It just happened by chance that my wife picked up a book a few weeks ago Storey’s Basic Country Skills: A Practical Guide to Self-Reliance. The information in this book is great. I have learned a lot just flipping through it. In the garden section there is an entry about pole beans. It recommends using a tee pee or A-frame to support the bean plants. So that is what I did. I made mine using schedule 40 PVC.

Last Friday evening we went to the Cool Kids event in Brockport. They were featuring Wild Wings, a non-profit organization specializing in birds of prey. They house and care for permanently injured raptors. They brought four of their friends, Quiver (American Kestrel), Wink (Eastern Screech Owl), GHO (Great Horned Owl), Amber (Red-Tailed Hawk).

I was hoping to get a chance to talk with them after the presentation but the weather didn’t cooperate. It did however hold out until the end of the presentation. Then the skies just opened up.

Well, we started planing our garden a couple weekends ago. I have decided to keep a running log of our garden’s progress here on my blog. I am planning on posting at least once a week (about the garden), with pictures.

So far we have onions (red and yellow), bell peppers, Roma tomatoes and a couple beefsteak. We have some plants that we started from seed inside that I need to harden and then transplant them to the garden.

This a picture of my pride and joy, Alexsia. She loves to help in the garden. Every time I go out to work in the garden she is there to help. She even helped plant the beefsteak tomatoes.

Adam

We started our weekend trip on Friday morning.  We went to the local zoo (Seneca Park Zoo) to get a membership.  In prepping for the trip I found that the local zoo has an agreement with several other zoos.  If you are a zoo member you can get either free or discounted admission to other zoos, nationwide.  We have a 2 year old that we are planning to take to the zoo this year, so the membership just made sense.  To top it off, our membership gets us into the Buffalo zoo and the Niagara Aquarium also.

We arrived at the zoo early afternoon, when we got through the gate we were a little surprised at all of the kids there.  They were on a field trip.  They were leaving as we got there.  There was a lot of construction at the zoo. As a result of the construction we had to do a bit of extra walking. The weather was actually pretty much perfect for our day at the zoo. It wasn’t too hot or cold.

We are talking about going back sometime after July. One of the things that was being built while we were there was a tropical exhibit. (Yeah, we were surprised that they didn’t already have one.) There were some tropical birds in the giraffe house, but only a couple.

The photo above is one of the Golden Tigers that was basically posing.  He had a couple of friends in with him, but he was the one that definitely stood out.

Next will be the Buffalo Erie botanical gardens.

Adam