• Home
  • About Penny
  • Blog
  • Contact
  • Gallery
  • Press
  • Subscribe
  • About Penny
  • Contact Penny
  • Gallery
  • Press
  • Menu
  • Skip to right header navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to secondary navigation

McCormick Interiors

Penelope Bianchi

  • Home
  • About Penny
  • Blog
  • Contact
  • Gallery
  • Press
  • Subscribe

ducklings

Early Springtime in the garden 2012

March 30, 2012 By //  by Penelope Bianchi 31 Comments

These pictures were taken two weeks ago, around the middle of March!

Many people think we don’t have seasons in Santa Barbara;  but I am going to show you that we do!

You can see the wisteria; which not only looks beautiful, but smells sublime!


It creeps across the front of the garage, and around the side through the “sweet olive”!

This is pretty much its prime;  no leaves yet!

The finial fell off the duck house;  I am not replacing it until the end of the summer!  The wood duck loves posing as the finial!

wood duck!

The juvenile black-crowned heron takes turns!  And there is a mallard sitting on eggs in one of the nest boxes!

This heron won’t hurt the baby  ducklings;  but we chase the Great Blue Heron out of here when there are baby ducklings!

Our Boston ivy comes in red in the beginning;  red leaves are not appealing to birds.  The rooster is happy to have his tail feathers coming back!!

From the other side!

The real roosters didn’t lose their tail feathers!

This shows a glimpse of our mesquite front gate.

This shows the mesquite railing that goes across a small stream from the pond ! It is interwoven with willow; so it is a living railing! The willow loses its leaves in the winter.

Hardenbergia  vine blooms in the winter (the purple one) and the white potato vine (a type of jasmine) blooms 12 months a year!

Chickens busy at bug finding and eating!

The crabapple fence just starting to leaf out in the herb garden!

These steps are petrified wood!

I love the rock edging on the herb garden; and the lavender planted in gravel.

This is our “Certified Backyard Habitat ” sign!  My granddaughter was in the first grade when we went online; filled out the application,  and sent it in with photographs.

It says  “This property provides the four basic habitat elements needed for wildlife to thrive:  food, water, cover, and places to raise young.

It has been certified by the National Wildlife Federation as an official Backyard Wildlife Habitat Site.”

We are very proud of that!!

Our gardener planted these native iris two years ago as a surprise;  he didn’t think they “took”;  but look at them now!!!!

When the gardeners on our lane “blow” (mercifully only once a week) , they leave the pile of oak leaves for us!!  My favorite path material!

more iris!

More hardengerbia and potato vine and chickens!

In a week or so; I will post what it looks like further along in Spring!

Early Springtime in the garden 2012Read More

Filed Under: Blog, Design, Gardens, Home, Landscapes Tagged With: backyard habitat, chickens, duck house, ducklings, garden, gravel garden, hardenbergia, herbs, heron, iris, lavender, mallard, National Wildlife Federation certified backyard wildlife habitat, native garden, petrified wood steps, potato vine, seasons in Santa Barbara, spring, wild garden, wildlife, wisteria, wood duck

Duckling update!

May 11, 2011 By //  by Penelope Bianchi 3 Comments

“Be like a duck. Calm on the surface, but always paddling like the dickens underneath.”  Michael Caine.

I have not been very good about keeping duckling updates!  But I have pictures to show their progress!  They are  46 days old today!  I have added a few images to show how they have grown over the past weeks. Ducklings are able to fly at 53 days old so it is almost time for them to move on from our pond.  It is a joy each year as we hatch new babies and have the opportunity to watch them grow.

The ducklings bask in the sun along the side of the pond, a view of their duck house in the background.

And today, they are hardly recognizable as baby ducks anymore.  In about a week’s time they will fly away in search of bigger and better ponds! Of course they always drop by for visits, but I don’t know if they will ever find a pond where the owner lovingly chases away hawks and other predators, or where they can nestle in the comfort of their very own duck house.  But I like to think so!

Duckling update!Read More

Filed Under: Blog, Design, Gardens, Home, Landscapes Tagged With: duck house, ducklings, garden, Mallards, pond

Ducklings

April 20, 2011 By //  by Penelope Bianchi 28 Comments

Little Duckies

Welcome baby ducks! This is the tenth year we have had mallards hatch in our pond.  Hatched March 24th, they are now almost 1 month old.

Ducks take a special liking to backyard pond: By Carolyn Bolton, News-Press Correspondent

A Mallard gave birth to a brood of ducklings Thursday on a private pond off East Valley Road in Montecito. “They just hatched this morning,” said Penny Bianchi, an interior designer and owner of the pond, pointing to the eight cotton-ball-sized baby ducks as they were taking refuge under their mother’s wings.

The ducks are part of a long line of wildlife that have found refuge at the home of Ms. Bianchi and her husband, Adam Bianchi, who manages his wife’s interior-design business.

…

DucklingsRead More

Filed Under: Blog, Design, Gardens, Home, Landscapes, Press Tagged With: animals, duck house, ducklings, garden, habitat, pond, SB News Press, wild animals

  • « Go to Previous Page
  • Go to page 1
  • Go to page 2
  • About Penny
  • Contact Penny
  • Gallery
  • Press

Site Footer

Search

Copyright © 2019 · McCormick Interiors ·: Designed & Maintained By: The Blogging 911