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!

mellow yellow

It's the yellow season in the garden!  I didn't mean to plant so much, but I think it's so cheerful and I just can't help myself. 

Our white poppies are about done...

...and now the red ones are starting.  All re-seeded from last year!

Although nothing from the annual garden is near blooming yet, I've been able to get plenty of flowers from the perennial garden.

An insane amount of daisies this year.  They've tripled their original number and just keep growing and spreading!

It reminds me so much of my favorite photo of great grandma Grace.

A busy time with the animals here.  I noticed Claudia wasn't eating, and that she had flecks of foam on her whiskers.  She let me check her mouth and I realized that she'd lost her incisors on the left side and couldn't masticate the hard kibble that she normally eats.  I pureed wet cat food for her until her mouth healed.  It was a strange week.  She occasionally leaves bird parts on our doorstep, but that week there was just one confused bird that she'd tried to gum...

...but only managed to pull out a few feathers.  She's all better now!

The choglets are eating and growing...

...and we've continued our snake streak with a THIRD black rat snake in as many weeks!  This one was in our storage barn.

He was a lot bigger than the first two! 

We've been seeing a lot of rabbits around, too.

And on these rabbits...

Yes, more ticks, and MORE ticks.

I even found a tick crawling on Frances yesterday, and he's a strictly indoor cat!  We are being very, very diligent about tick checks this year and so far only Todd has had a single tick attached.  Of course, he's been in their territory quite a bit lately.

We've both been outside lately because the weather has been wonderful, and continues to look promising in the forecast.  70s into the second week of June?  I'll take it!  So we're outside as much as possible, and when inside, our indoor animals keep us on our toes.

Here's Barnabas, who decided that a mere screen did not provide enough ventilation, and it cramped his stretch as well.  So, necessity is the mother of invention...

A new hole provides enough of both!  And Frances is responding in a similar way to his no-cats-on-the-table training.

Life is never boring around here.  Have a great week!  

toothless men and a turkey hen

 Is it the "cat days" of early summer?

Maybe!  The bramble flowers have dropped and fruit is setting up.

On our apple tree, too!

The brief window for peonies is here.  The windows are always open and we can smell them from the yard, and of course I bring them inside!

Todd has started his yearly ritual of getting a little exercise every few days by mowing sections of the field.  

New young pine cones are setting up for the season...

Sugar snap peas are popping...

...and speaking of "popping," my Sissinghurst poppies are starting to open!  I almost like them better as closed pods.  They remind me of a toothless old man!  So much character.  :)  The flowers themselves are so delicate and fleeting, but I enjoy the leaves and pods for weeks.

Hot days and cool nights bring amazing morning fog.

The porch spiderwebs are bejeweled...

...and morning walks are magical.

I regularly hear turkeys gobbling in the mornings, and see them sometimes, too!

Others are out scouting around, like the southern yellowjacket queen, looking for a good place to start a nest.  Not in our mulch pile, please!

Pollinators are out and about...

Lassioglossum sweat bee

tarnished plant bug

paper wasp

Future pollinators too, like this Painted Lady caterpillar, starting to pupate!  

It's an exciting time of year, one of my favorites.  I wake up early...really early.  I open the windows by 5 a.m.  The frogs sing loudly until about 5:45 a.m., and then the birds start.  Sometimes I go out on the porch.  The garden by the porch is in full bloom...

Owls are hooting in the forest and turkeys gobbling faintly in the field.  If I sit in the porch swing, the little song sparrows that live in the side garden start to sing, just a few feet away.  Claudia is rubbing against my ankles...the porch is her domain.  I feel like I'm in a Disney cartoon sometimes!

It's so peaceful here, even though this is a really busy season for us.  We're working hard now to get things done, so that in the heat of summer, we can relax.  

Have a great week!