an intro pro!

 Late May is the best.

It's finally PEONY TIME.

Did I trim back the sprawling plants around the peonies to give them room to grow?  Nope.  Did I remember to put peony rings around the different plants to help with the flop?  Nope!  Which means that the ones on the edges that droop dangerously close to the ground are mine.

The air is perfumed for one glorious week.  Windows open and bouquets in every room.  Ahhh...peony time.

Foxgloves are popping up, too.

I have many of them growing in my weedy plots by the back barn.  I'll get there eventually, but not yet. Since foxgloves are toxic, I don't dare bring them into the house with my curious kittens.  So I leave them in the field, something pretty to look at when we walk by.

I don't feel the same pressure as last year to get everything cleared out so quickly, even though I've got so many flowers struggling amid the weeds.  These foxgloves...

those yellow flowers?  weeds.

...and the biennial sweet williams that I planted everywhere last year, too.

Mountain mint, anise hyssop, bupleurum, poppies, forget-me-nots, orlaya, and yes, more foxgloves are all blooming amid the weeds.

I'll get there...eventually.  I'm plugging away at the beds around the house, with Todd's help.

...and Claudia's, of course!

Meanwhile, enjoying the wildlife outside.  A possum runs through a rain storm, heading to cover behind the fence...

Barn swallows fret as I walk too near their nest...

A green heron pokes around the muskrat house while a plastic decoy duck watches.

Meanwhile, the wildlife INSIDE...

Despite what this photo shows, cat introductions are going well.  As of yesterday, the kittens have free run of the entire house.  Calliope shows them who's boss with an occasional hiss.  Although they look SO sweet...

...they are WILD.  Todd and I sometimes look at each other, amazed, at their thundering rampages around the house.  How can two tiny kittens make so much noise?  They do, somehow.  They're into everything, demanding food and play and head rubs.  Tearing up and down the stairs, over and over again.  Causing a series of mysterious thumps in distant rooms...gulp!  Despite the noise and the chaos and the discovery that almost every houseplant here is TOXIC TO CATS (sigh)...we're enjoying kittenhood!   

Have a great week!  

the annual mating game

 Spring!

A much-need rain turned torrential.

The birds tried to keep dry under the shelter of newly-leafed branches....

...but my outdoor seedlings took a pounding and had to be repotted.

The warming temperatures have brought out the lovebirds!  These two earthworms are makin' babies!

Have you ever wondered what that pink band on earthworm bodies is for?  It actually moves during reproduction, producing mucus.  The worm's eggs stick to the mucus and then passes them over the seminal receptacle of the male, thereby fertilizing the eggs.  

These two cabbage white butterflies caught my eye with their fluttering mating dance.

Male cabbage butterflies inject a hard packet of sperm, which makes up 13% of their body weight (for comparison, this is equivalent to a 5-gallon bucket for a human).  The hard packet helpfully contains nutrients that the female butterfly uses for nourishment.  Clever!

Todd and I disturbed this (nesting?) pair of geese on the back pond.  

I miss our South Carolina "goz" so hopefully we'll see babies later this spring!

There are nesting bluebirds along the fence line...

We've seen turtles peeking out of both the back and the front ponds...

...looking for mates?

We're planning a spring garden expansion.  Here's a big delivery of compost...

...and I've been hurrying to get hardy annuals into the ground as weather permits.

It's nice to enjoy the plants that don't take these exertions...the perennials that faithfully return every year.  

We're loving the redbuds coming on and all of the green that's suddenly (and delightfully) crowding our senses.  Hooray for spring!

Mr. Bluebird on my shoulder...

I have piles of work to my left, and piles of work to my right.  I got home from the gym HOURS ago, and I'm still in my sweaty tank top and yoga pants.  I can't seem to get anything done, though, because in South Carolina, it's bluebird mating season, y'all!

The first blast of really warm weather this weekend brought them out (don't worry, envious Northerners...we're back in the 20s by the weekend!).  I've been watching them sitting on branches...

Preening on posts...

 

 ...and generally flitting around.

 

But today I noticed some other behavior.  Males and females both were gathering nest-building materials.

Females alone build the actual nests, but males help to gather the materials.  Here's a female landing on one of our four bluebird nest boxes:

Meanwhile, the males were displaying very aggressive behavior.  Multiple males sat on various branches and flapped their wings in great agitation.

Then I saw an actual male bluebird pair fight for the right to mate the waiting female.

I've spent a great deal of time watching them this morning, and reading about their behavior.  But oh, it's not just bluebirds.  Our trees are alive with little song birds now, and I've been out with my camera in the little time that I've had available this past week.  I wanted to make sure they had plenty to eat, but we were out of traditional bird seed.  I decided to make a non-seed mixture and see how it went over.

The recipe is easy and endlessly adaptable.  Have seeds, nuts, raisins?  Toss them in. 

Basic Recipe

2 - 2 1/2 cups bacon grease (I save our leftover grease in the fridge)

2 cups cornmeal

1 cup peanut butter

1 cup white flour

Heat the bacon grease and peanut butter until it's melted...

...and mix in everything else.  I packed the resulting (stinky) mixture into a standard loaf pan and put it in the refrigerator until it was mostly solid.

 It looks very much like peanut butter fudge when sliced.  I wrapped up my individual slices and put them in the freezer until needed.

I'm going to put them in little onion sacks or feeder cages, but just to see how they went over with the birds, I set one on top of one of the birdhouse posts (we still need to replace the old birdhouses, but the posts still stand).

Ten minutes later:

Success!  The birds went crazy for it.  It only lasted a day!

Give it a try if you want a non-seed alternative for your backyard birds.  Have a great week!