"fish" scales and this plant is...male?

 Babies!

Barn swallows are reusing the old nest in the white barn.  There are nests elsewhere...the air is full of dipping and swooping barn swallows in the barnyard!

More babies in our front junipers.  This is a song sparrow fledgling.

The parents are protective...maybe making a nest directly by the front door wasn't the greatest idea?

This paper wasp queen is making a nest, too.  She's been out and about, searching for wood fibers (any source of wood, even cardboard!).  She masticates the wood with her saliva until she has a ball of pulp...

...which she'll use to start building one of those papery grey wasp nests that are found in so many places.

Turkeys are gobbling in the early mornings, and scavenging during the day when the hunting is good!

I see the same deer almost daily.  

It's easily recognizable because of its strange appearance.

These warty clusters are called deer fibroma, caused by a papillomavirus.  It doesn't affect the health of the deer and can't be transmitted to humans.  It's just unsightly, not harmful!

Butterflies are out and about!

Eastern Tiger Swallowtail female

Great Spangled Frittillary 

Someone dropped a wing recently and I love examining them in detail.  Butterfly wings are covered in tiny scales, like a fish.  That's why their scientific name is Lepidoptera, from the Greek Lepido (scale) and ptera (wing).

Gnats are out in their mating swarms, which are tiny but mighty!

If you look closely, they almost look like they're holding hands in tiny joyful dance circles!

More garden work.

I'm a little concerned with my direct seeding.  The soil is healthy, but the top of the rows are covered in dry,  crumbly clay chunks.  I planted 22 pumpkin seeds but only 2 came up (I'm going to start more in flats this week...seedlings transplanted into the rows are doing just fine).  I planted over 200 sunflower seeds on Saturday.  On Sunday, we got our first real rain in a month, but hours of torrential downpours that likely washed the seeds away.  Sunflowers germinate quickly...if I haven't seen any in a week, I'll probably (sigh) fill flats with seeds and transfer the seedlings.  The garden will be beautiful...maybe not 'til August, though!  Next year, at least, we'll have our system in place and can get things planted a month earlier.  I've been working on more container planting.  The chogs ate all of the hyacinth bean vines that I planted, the week after eating half of my tomatoes.  I'm putting morning glories in their place.  On the front porch, I planted a pretty vine called purple bell vine.  They look normal from above. 

But at eye level?  I'm pretty sure this is really a purple penis plant.

I guess it's a conversation piece?  :)  This week I get the dahlias planted...the last of our landscape fabric comes in, and I fill in the rows with all available seedlings, and seed more if there's room.  Excitement!  The whole garden should be seeded and growing within a week!  We're all ready for a rest.

Have a great week!

can you dig it?

One major construction project nearly completed!  Driveway dug to the barn (gravel coming today)...

...and side of house trenched and graveled to prevent water incursion.

It looks pretty rough, but the dirt areas will be re-seeded and finer gravel added to the driveway once it has "settled."  I finished a little 'construction project' of my own last week, too.  Although we have very nice and very large mulched beds (10+ feet wide, all the way around the front and side of the house), the bed stops short mid-porch.  It looked pretty grim, I thought.  This is from March/April, so pre-mowing and pre-weeding, but still seemed like a big missed opportunity. 

First I laid out layers of wet newspaper...

Then covered with cardboard.

This will kill the grass as it decomposes, leaving a nice surface for me to build on.  The excavator piled fill dirt here to a depth of about 10 inches.  Once I get a free minute, I'll edge with pavers and start planning flowers!  :)

I also had him smooth out big loads of fill in the front field.  This is where I'll make a big veggie and annual flower cutting garden next year.  Hooray!

Some big drama with our local birds this week!  Fledgling birds are out and about, and parents are especially vigilant!

I watched this little guy struggle in a bush for a while before crying piteously for mom.

We have barn swallows nesting in our barn, and they were NOT happy about the construction noise! They vacated the nests and hovered nervously until the bulldozer was done.

Finally, I've noticed a very "tame" cowbird at our front feeders.  He stays when other birds fly away.  I took some close photos of him and realized that his eyes were swollen shut - that he wasn't flying away because he couldn't see me.

I believe this is a disease called mycoplasma gallisepticum, which seems to have started with house finches and spread to other birds.  It's conjunctivitis (pinkeye) and an upper respiratory infection.  We've found two dead cowbirds before noticing this sick one, who has been mysteriously absent from the feeders since this photo was taken.  I took all feeders down and cleaned them with bleach.  Hopefully that stops the infection from spreading to our other birds.  We get a lot of visitors here!

Our woodchucks have matured and left the den, but we've had some other visitors.  Some blink-and-you'll-miss-them wild rabbits...

...some sort of giant turtle (maybe snapping?) in our pond...

...and I've heard - but not seen - wild turkeys gobbling in our side field early mornings.  I can't wait to catch a glimpse! 

Our apple tree has little green apples, so small that you can still see the flower stamens (pic mislabeled) sticking out of one end.  Come fall, there will be pie!

The days have been a blur of enjoyable little surprises and pleasures like this.

We can't relax yet...June is riddled with construction appointments, and we don't even have the subfloor down upstairs yet.  But at least we've got some pretty views while we work.  :)

Have a great week!