a little spittle

May and June are truly lovely months in the Midwest.  Before the really brutal humidity hits...there's plenty of time for porch picnics...

...cats lolling in open windows...

...and easy bouquets from random corners of the yard.

It's not quite time for peonies yet, but irises are looking lovely.

Oh, little bits of color everywhere.  Especially my favorite...chartreuse green.

Despite zero effort on my part, winter sowing was a great success.  These are just the cooler weather flowers!  Warmer weather stuff starts...whenever I get around to it.

My goal is to plant one...container...daily.  I put on my grubby clothes, coat my pants in DEET (it's a bad year for ticks)...carefully weed a large space...plant...and water.   Long ago, I accepted that I cycle through hobbies with varying degrees of obsessiveness.  I hit a gardening peak two years ago and now it's on the decline, although I know it will come back again, hard.  So, I've mentally let go of the back plowed plot, thigh-high with weeds and a few straggly biennials.  I've let go of my expectations for the larger plowed plot, too.  Weeds have come roaring into the beds, and I just do a bit every day.  I have hundreds of sunflower seeds, lots of easy zinnias, cosmos, and celosia too.  All can be direct-seeded into the soil, late May.  Shovel up the worst of the weeds and just let the rest go.  Laying down new fabric paths will help.  

Since I'm so apathetic about gardening this year, I find little things to make it more pleasurable.  Digging up toads while weeding is a nice surprise!

Finding spittlebug nymphs in a froth of bubbles is, too.

The bubbles protect the nymphs from predators - even pesticide! - and keep them from drying out.  They're fairly harmless in the garden, and I always think that they look like they're lounging in tiny luxurious bubble baths.  

Todd spotted this luna moth on the porch.

They have no mouth parts, since they only live for a week and their sole purpose in that week is to reproduce.  Love them!

Claudia, of course, is always great company outdoors.

Our yellowwood trees bloomed this week.  They're odd ducks, sporadically blooming every few years.  Their distribution is patchy as well.  We live in that tiny northernmost circle...the only place in Indiana where they grow.  But they're everywhere here, and we even have a Yellowwood Forest locally.

The cascading white flowers look lovely in bud vases.  They dangle over our country road, neatly replacing the spent redbuds for color.  By the time the yellowwoods are done blooming, every tree will be completely leafed out, and it will truly be summer!  

Have a great week!