hot spot

Working on two full weeks with our Pepita!  She has somehow taught herself to fetch...

...and is working hard on SIT and COME HERE.  Still no house accidents, still sleeping through the night in the office crate, and now she rests quietly in her living room playpen for 4 hours in the morning and 3 hours in the afternoon, allowing us to get work done.  When not in the playpen, she is actively working with one or both of us.  Frances supervises from a safe distance.  He knows that she's been good, but cats are so interesting and new!

Pepita made her first trip to PetSmart this week...

...and managed her first 15-minute trail walk this morning!  She's making amazing progress.  

So is Claudia!  Her tubes come out tomorrow and I think she'll finally be able to leave the crate she's been living in and roam around the barn.  Todd has been spoon-feeding her (because of her cone), cleaning her crate and litter box, cleaning her incision and drain tubes, and making sure that she has plenty of pets and reassurances.  We'll both be glad for her to gain a little bit of independence!

Meanwhile, our hot weather stretch continues.  I open the windows every morning, no matter what, for a bit of fresh air.  It doesn't take long for our floors to become actually wet from the humidity and after we slide around for awhile, I grumpily close them.

 I keep trying to rouse myself to work in the garden, but between the heat/humidity and Pepita, I can't seem to get time to get anything done.  I did get the pumpkins planted, at least.

But the cutting garden (hangs head in shame)...we've got the saddest 4-foot sunflowers ever, and despite the fact that I spent an insane amount of time weeding at regular intervals until just two weeks ago, weeds are bursting out everywhere.  I'm definitely writing it off for the year.  At least the perennial garden has a ton of color...

daylilies

...and a ton of visitors!  The bee balm, especially, has drawn all sorts of butterflies...

eastern tiger swallowtail

zebra swallowtail

great spangled frittilary

pipevine swallowtail

...but also one of my favorites, the snowberry clearwing hummingbird moth.

They used to be a rarity, but now the garden is FULL of them.

You can see why they're called flying lobsters!

They're great pollinators and I love to see them around.  I also saw two really cool sphinx moths this week...the blinded sphinx moth (so named for a coloration quirk - they are not actually blind, but they don't have mouthparts and don't feed...just breed quickly and die!)...

...and the elm sphinx moth.

A couple of beauties!  

We're still catching lots of action on the trail cams.  Bobcats, coyotes, possums, deer, squirrels, skunks, turkeys, turkey vultures, herons, and so...many...raccoons.  I counted five in this video!

Todd has only seen two ticks so far this year, and I haven't seen any.  Our winter was especially cold (I wistfully remember) and that helps keep the population down.  However, seeing this deer on one of our cameras reminds me to continue to be vigilant.  There are still ticks around.  See those lumps on the backs of her ears and bridging the space between?  Those are ALL TICKS.  Yuck!!

Between trying to keep up with Pepita and Claudia, get work done, keep the house in order, and generally keep things moving forward while trying to survive in 90 degree heat, there isn't a lot of time left for leisure.  However, I'm going to try to take a cue from Pepita...

...and the cats...

a typical Frances nap

...and take a break every once in a while!  

Have a great week!  

keep on keeping on

 Rats!!

Well, not in the literal sense.  This time, it's deer.  They jumped our fences and decapitated close to 130 sunflowers.  One hundred and thirty!  A pretty devastating morning with more than a few tears.

Then...a flash flood.  "Tornadic clouds" passed over and dumped over 5" of rain in just a few hours.  Thankfully, no real damage, but my poor garden went from this:

...to this.

Gardening is not for the faint at heart!  Thankfully, I was able to harvest from the wreckage.

Beautiful, mysterious poppies.

Sprawling nicotiana, with its angular, architectural structure:

Sweet peas...

...and so...many...snapdragons.

The color range is just amazing.

I am only missing blue and purple to make a full rainbow.  Thankfully, forget-me-nots and canterbury bells round it out for me.

Between the deer, the moles, the beetles, and the crazy weather - cool to blistering hot, drought to torrential downpours - the garden is in pretty poor shape.  But, it's not all bad.  After a week, many of my shorn sunflowers are showing new growth.  They'll be bushy and short, bit I think I will have flowers.

Tadpoles were discovered in a large outdoor bucket!

And many of my perennials are still standing tall.

No matter what condition the garden is in, we always have butterflies.

Our bee balm in particular is covered in these Great Spangled Frittilary butterflies.

So I'm going to ignore the weeds, try to shore up my flattened plants, and just keep picking.

Have a great week!

Farm-tastic!

More lovely days in the town where even the graffiti makes us feel right at home:

It's wonderful to have so many great places to hike close by.  We've gotten into the delightful  habit of a leg-stretching stroll at least every other day.  There's so much to see.  Beautiful butterflies...

...including this aptly-named great spangled fritillary.

Check out those spotted eyes!

I also saw a banded tussock caterpillar making his way across a leaf...

...and these sawfly larvae were making short work of a leaf of their own!

Sawfly larvae are very destructive.  A group of sawfly larvae can skeletonize a leaf in no time, and even adult sawflies prey on plants! 

This was a fun discovery: the corpse plant (Monotropa uniflora).

It lacks chlorophyll and does not get its energy from the sun.  Instead, it uses its root system, and a has a parasitic relationship with a certain fungus, from which it draws nutrients.  Because they don't utilize sunlight, they can be found in some very dark places! 

We stumbled on this really colorful bog yesterday, full of birds and odd, spiky flowers.  I can't wait to go back with my binoculars!

We even found a nearby park with a pond where we can indulge in goz love!

More great news:  we're under contract to buy a 5-acre hobby farm!  I'm so picky and I don't like contemporary house styles, so I was absolutely thrilled to find this great A-frame.  It needs massive updating...carpet removed, walls repainted, cabinets knocked out, lighting replaced.  But I think it will be AMAZING. 

Two of the acres are fenced in and animal-ready!

The view from my future office deck:

The barn!

The deal isn't done until the deal is done, so right now I will say that I'm thrilled to be under contract and hopeful that there are no problems and we'll close as planned in early September.  I'm already planning a fruit orchard, massive vegetable and flower gardens, a chicken coop, climbing roses up the side of the house (A-frames just beg for climbing roses!), and a beautiful red door and window boxes full of red geraniums to offset all of that drab brown! 

Stay tuned!