our sweet Claudia

It's been a tearful week here on the homestead.  Claudia, our beloved barn cat, is not doing well.  It's hard to qualify the exact issue, other than she seems to have aged rapidly.  She's not eating much.  Her fur is extremely dry and matted and she does not like to be brushed like she used to.  She has a stiff, arthritic walk and spends most of her time asleep, but not in her usual spots on the porch chairs.  I suspect that she's unable to jump up like she used to, so we've made a soft place for her on the ground.  She stays there, but spends more time in secret cubbies under bushes and locations unknown.  I've heard about animals going off to die somewhere and have been really fearful.  This week, Claudia is getting tons of wet food treats and head rubs.  

I caught my first glimpse of Claudia in July 2019.  She was feral...

fleeing our first encounter

...but quickly got used to her new family.

We both love her so much and are trying to sneak outside as often as possible to give her the love and attention that she deserves!

I'm glad that she's finally getting some warmer weather.  It's been so chilly and rainy this spring.  Some flowers have loved it...

my 'Roguchi' clematis

late-blooming poppies

lambs ear

...but most flowers have been unhappy, including my poor annual cutting garden.  My last-minute planting of the easiest flowers - zinnias, cosmos, marigolds - have produced a handful of seedlings, a few desultory sunflowers (how?!?), and weeds.  It's too late to plant more seeds.  The garden is toast this year.  At least I can take a break from the seeding, potting up, and planting out of grumpy seedlings that don't tend to make it past the first few days.  Next year I'll start over with new seed and hopefully will have better luck.  

Tons of critters around, at least!  In the frequently foggy mornings...

...I see lots of deer.

eyeballing my sunflowers...

Some cool caterpillars...

grub worm

bronze cutworm moth caterpillar 

...and other insects.

syrphid fly

eriophyes tiliae, the red nail gall mite

another gall wasp, the wool sower

I've found some really exciting spiders, too (skip the next few pictures if you're spider-averse)!

This is a northern male black widow spider, only slightly venomous and less aggressive than the female.

Ditto this red ant-mimic spider.

Check out this wolf spider and her egg sac!

Todd has informed me that we have "record humidity" settling in for the next few weeks, so I'll be spending less time outside...and more time inside with these guys...

Frances and Calliope, an uneasy truce

Frances nap

...and just outside, with this gal.

Have a great week!

the fungus among us

My unfinished to-do list is growing longer every day and the blog has fallen by the wayside!  I will try to keep caught up, because I have a massive photo backlog.

We've had an insane amount of rain.

The weather has been delightfully cool - 70s during the day and 50s at night (it was 57 degrees this morning when I woke up!).  This is great for heat-hating humans like me, but terrible for small seedlings.  I got fairly nice germination, at last, and then the rain and the cool...everything stagnated.  And it's too late in the season to play more.  Thankfully celosia filled in the holes in the annual garden, but it does look like I will mostly have a million pink celosia plants despite all my work this year...sigh.  

One interesting garden anomaly...I did not plant sunflowers this year because it was so cool for so long and sunflowers hate cold, wet soil.  I repeat:  I didn't plant ONE SINGLE SUNFLOWER SEED.  Sunflower seeds are large and distinctive...it's not like I could've planted them by mistake. Yet...dozens and dozens of sunflowers sprang up in my greenhouses.  I used NEW soil that rarely had old soil from old greenhouses mixed in.  This old soil sat outside in the freezing snow all winter long.  Sunflower seeds do not last in weather like that.  They rot easily, and our many little animals would've rooted out any that lasted.  Squirrels, chipmunks, groundhogs, even birds.  Yet...somehow...I have almost a hundred sunflowers.

I planted one last set of greenhouses last week and unbelievably, MORE sunflowers grew.  How is this possible?  Where are they coming from?  Well, in a sea of hot pink celosia...I will take it. 

At least the yellows have filled in in the perennial garden.

...and in all the other gardens around the house.

In front of the garage

Along the front walkway

one of the front-facing beds

I got the very last peonies this week for house bouquets.  They didn't last long...they know that it's June.

Our tree frogs are LOVING all the rain.

Cope's grey tree frog

Our wild animals are loving it, too, from new fawns to a gaggle of raccoons!  :)

The spillway from our back pond to the forest streams that run from it are roaring loud all the time from so much rain!

A rabbit can have 40 babies in a breeding season, and we're seeing it!!  These rabbits were playing in the side yard the other morning.  It was too dark to get a good picture, though!

Wild strawberries are ripening...

...ditto with blackberries.

Lots of busy insects...

winged carpenter ant

leafcutter bee

fall webworm moths mating

chrysophilus velutinus mating

...and insects whose lives have run their course, like this fly infected with the entomophthora muscae fungus.

The name in Latin literally means "insect destroyer."  It infects their brains, kills them, and compels the corpse to climb to a high location for maximum spore dispersal.  Pretty cool!  

The cold and wet has kept me out of the garden...and the rain has interrupted a lot of our walks.

Even bundled up in a sweater and wearing jeans yesterday, I 10000% prefer it to a normal Indiana June.  

Have a great week!  

a little night magic

This is a tough time of year for blogging, because not only is it incredibly busy in general, but it's so beautiful outside that I've taken a ton of photos...this week alone, I've edited and saved 132.  It's hard to narrow it down and choose favorites!

Some things aren't pretty, but they're interesting, like this centipede in the process of molting.

Some things aren't exciting or rare, but I find myself admiring them every single day...like our red maple.  In different light, the leaves range from pale yellow to bright red and I love them so much!

And some things ARE fleeting and worthy of mention.  It's PEONY SEASON (said in Oprah's deep announcement voice)!!!  I have big drippy bouquets all over the house.  PEONIES!!

Peony time means poppy time.  I got these seeds from the famous Sissinghurst Garden in England.

The perennial garden has positively sprung to life this week and I can't help posting more pictures!  

Everything you see here will be in bloom by July...lemon balm, coneflowers, obedient plant...but until then, I'm just enjoying the different leaf textures.  

Todd has been working in the yard...

...and I've been working too, lots of weeding...

...and working on my annual cutting garden.  It's been so cold this spring (down in the 40s this week!) that my seedlings just haven't done well.  I'd hoped for a better yield, but I'm getting maybe 40% germination.  I'm going to keep putting out greenhouses and hoping for the best!  

Claudia had to go to the vet this week for a sore paw, but she's feeling better now and is back on duty.

Not fast enough, though.  When I was weeding in the tomato garden, I kept finding these big grass balls buried a few inches below the soil surface.

Vole nests.  Their little holes are everywhere!  I found other little secret nests, too, like this sac spider nest.  Just a bit of mud, suspended from wire, completely hidden until I weeded.

And from another nest...I think this is a song thrush egg.  I found it in the driveway.  Isn't it pretty?

A little night magic...someone's been visiting our front porch under the cover of darkness.

A big raccoon is leaving tracks in the pollen (thankfully pollen season is over, so I can clean up this mess at last!).  I see possums, raccoons, and skunks on the trail cam, right in front of our porch, almost every night!

Of course, I'm still checking the ones that are down by the pond.  Look at the tiny buds on this sweet little buck!  Pretty cute!

(Date is wrong...this is from a couple of weeks ago)

So many other things, but I'll have to save it for next time!

Have a great week!