"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!

ABBA-cadabra

 The last of my poppies are blooming.

For weeks, their crinkled, lettuce-like leaves have elongated and unfurled.  Really, the leaves are so pretty that the flowers are completely extraneous.  The buds are heavy and gorgeous, too.  

Then overnight, the frizzy flowers flame and then wilt quickly.  They frizz, and then frowse, in a day or two.  Poppies don't like the heat much.  But that red is gorgeous against the blue of the forget-me-nots!

The chartreuse of bupleurum is a nice backdrop.  It's a lovely plant, with its tiny yellow-cupped flowers on top...

...and its lily pad-like leaves at regular intervals along the stem.

They're putting on a good show, but as the heat continues and intensifies without even a hint of rain, I know that they won't be around for long.  Todd has continued to plow up land for me...

...and last week, I direct-seeded hundreds of celosia, cosmos, and zinnias.  Sometimes I was a bit heavy-handed with my seeding...

...but it will be easy to spread them around.  I also seeded hundreds of sunflowers, and the first few have unfurled already.  I'll have to be diligent, because I've seen the warning signs in the garden...

Deer.  As soon as the sunflowers are a few inches tall, I'll have to continually lay down Liquid Fence...and cross my fingers.

Despite the heat and the ticks, it's been nice to work outside, especially since we had a few days of unseasonably cool weather.  So many butterflies...

...and bees.

Random single poppies...

...and other interesting plant bunches, like this nigella, are easier to enjoy at ground level.

One of my favorite things about working in the garden early in the day is the gnat swarms.  They are positively poetic as they shape-shift a few feet above the ground, like bird swarms in miniature.

Gnats sleep in the meadow grasses until they're warmed by the sun.  Then they rise and congregate.  

They are a real pleasure to watch!

Claudia watches me work from some cool perch.

Inside, the kittens are growing and continuing to charm us with their antics.  They love being in the bathtub...

...and are quite a pair of scamps!  They fit right in with our random naps.

Calliope has found a new sleeping spot to avoid their bothersome attention.  It's...on top of my newly-cut fabric.

Oh, well!  We've enjoyed gorgeous cloud formations this week...

...and even managed a quick concert.  ABBA, of course, or the closest thing to them...a cover band.

All in all, June is shaping up nicely.

Have a great week!  

you've got to mole with it, baby

 Some of my ranuculus have gorgeous blooms.

They're a lovely little lot spot of color in the garden...

...and a favorite in bouquets, paired with silvery artemisia.

Unfortunately, they're being assaulted from all sides.  As soon I had finished laboriously weeding, digging, and depositing seedlings in the side garden, I started to see this:

Moles.  Moles, drawn by the disturbed earth, decimated the area, raising big tunnels beneath the prepared earth, eating the delicate plant roots.  I don't want to poison them, so I'm stuck.  And attacks from above:

Deer don't eat coneflowers.  This was done by RABBITS...and we've got a lot of them here.  As tempting as it is to just throw up my hands and forget the whole thing, I've decided to just seed the space with sunflowers.  I'll use Liquid Fence (and Claudia) to try to keep the rabbits away, just until the seedlings are tall enough to to evade their grasp.  

Thankfully, I have many flowers that deer and rabbits aren't interested in...

golden loosestrife

yarrow

clematis

roses

phlox

foxgloves

If I don't have as many flowers this year, at least I'm fairly certain to have a nice amount of insects.  Gnat swarms are starting to form as individuals look for mates.  They're a swirling tornado of dots from a distance...

...but if you look closer, you can see the little bodies that make up the clusters.

These crane flies have already found their partners!

Syrphid flies are everywhere.  They are bee mimics...

...but don't sting.  They are true flies.  Aren't they beautiful?

A tiny praying mantis, less than two inches long, hunts for a meal amid the feathery leaves of the yarrow...

...and both dragonflies and damselflies hover constantly as I'm working.

The kittens, too, are constantly watching and learning...

...when they aren't playing...

...or sleeping.

Growing up is definitely hard work.

Have a great week!