chorus: don't fence me [out]

The visitors just kept coming this week!

Chogs ("chunky hogs," or what we call groundhogs) were out and about as usual.  

I found a dig spot beside our red barn, which we just can't allow.  It's one thing to let the chogs live under a dirt-floor barn that we're using for storage, and another thing entirely to let them tunnel under our big temperature-controlled concrete-floor barn.  We filled in the hole and are being watchful for other attempts!

Wild turkeys came to the front field to feed.

Best of all, they brought their BABIES!  So many turkey poults.

Believe it or not, they can fly at this age.

I startled them when I came around the barn and they headed for the trees!

Our heron is back almost daily in the front pond.  Yes, the algae is gross.  We're hopefully doing something about it next week.

The usual pests, the cottontail rabbit...

...and the whitetail deer were back, ranging into my garden and eating down my dahlias.

It's one thing to eat dahlia stalks, which will grow back.  It's another thing entirely to visit the row of 150 sunflower seedlings that I just planted this week and start digging them up.  I started yet ANOTHER tray of seedlings to replace the ones that were eaten, and Todd fenced in the row with cattle panels and stiff netting over the loud complaints of our furry friends.

I didn't have quite enough to replace the eaten ones, but we'll still have around 120 sunflowers if all goes well...hooray!  

Our friendly neighborhood possum comes nightly, too.

Meanwhile, everything in the perennial garden is in bloom (terrible cell phone pic):

Which brings out the bugs!  A pair of mating leatherwing beetles pollinated my yarrow.

Bees, bees, bees!

The milkweed is blooming...

...and causing a furor.  First, these little guys are about half the size of a rice grain, so it's hard to get a good picture...but after a lot of research, I've discovered their identity:  sugarcane aphids.

They're relatively new to southern Indiana and normally prey on sorghum, not milkweed.  Big infestations can damage the plants and keep monarch butterflies from laying eggs (they exclusively use milkweed).  I carefully hosed off each leaf, but they came right back.  I'm still deciding what to do...

Meanwhile, one of the "good guys" turned out to be more of a frenemy than a friend.  This spined soldier bug nymph normally eats garden pests, but this week he turned on our lone monarch caterpillar...

...and devoured him, making him a take-out meal as he moved him from leaf to leaf.  Poor caterpillar was a sad, wrinkled version of his former self.

Hopefully we'll have other monarchs, and I also planted dill, in part, to draw them in.  

So many visitors this week, and I even missed a day with my usual pukey hormonal migraine!  Even so, I still managed to have a couple of visitors in my sick bed.  Not great for an upset stomach, but a healing balm for the spirit.  

Have a great week!