into everyone's life a little rain must fall

 We've had a few sunny days...

...but while it seems like most of the country is in a drought/heat wave, it's been chilly and rainy here for a couple of weeks.  REALLY chilly.  REALLY rainy.

Nice misty mornings on the days where it hasn't been too wet to walk.

neighborhood horses

Flooding everywhere!

Everything is very, very green.

American giant millipede

I finally bestirred myself and got my hot annual seeds potted up.

I think I managed 28 containers before I ran out of soil and energy.  It's been so cold that I've worried the seeds might rot, but we do have some green shoots and it looks like the worst of the rain is over now.  

We had a brief, glorious flare of peonies before the rain turned them to mush...

...and even Claudia got in on the warmer-day action and explored outside for about an hour before asking to go back into the barn!

Our indoor cats have taken advantage of the rare sunbeams, too.

Pepita has been going stir-crazy and is loving any sunny minute outside!

There are rabbits out and about every morning and I have to be careful with Pepita, and guard that she doesn't get worked up and try to chase.

And any place that you have rabbits, deer, foxes, coyotes, possums, raccoons, and my new favorite - a ton of skunks!! -

...you're going to have these guys.

This is a male lone star tick that I pulled off my stomach this week.  Normally I am *so* careful to check myself over daily, but the one day I had a migraine, skipped my shower and stayed in bed...he got me.  Todd had a black-legged tick bite recently and had to take antibiotics, since they carry Lyme Disease.  I pulled another tick from his leg yesterday.  It's rough - Pepita runs in the field every day and although we check her all over every single time she's been outside, it's just hard to see the ticks.  She's so dark, and the ticks range in size from poppy to sesame seed.  So small.  They sometimes hitch a ride inside and drop off.  We are incredibly diligent about checking the bed, the couch, and our bodies, but sometimes...we miss 'em.  It's one of the down sides of having a dog...although there are plenty of positives.  :)

Hopefully the worst of the yearly surge in ticks is behind us now!  Ready to head out and enjoy some sunshine.  Happy Monday!

snow business

 After the warm weather, the rain moved in.

Just a few fall remnants left...

Then a decidedly chillier weather system...I was worried that it might miss us.

But we got three inches!  All right, three inches isn't much.  But it was enough to transform this...

...into this!

I love snow...almost as much as Pepita does.

 

She has a double coat and doesn't seem to feel the cold at all.  She's always begging to go back outside. And I can't blame her...it's gorgeous out there!

 

So pretty!  I seem to remember having constant snow in this area as a kid...I remember sledding, making snow ice cream, ice bowls or other frozen shapes, and much missed school because of weather conditions.  We don't get nearly as much snow now so I'm going to enjoy every minute of it!  

Pepita too.

Have a great week!

the fungus among us

My unfinished to-do list is growing longer every day and the blog has fallen by the wayside!  I will try to keep caught up, because I have a massive photo backlog.

We've had an insane amount of rain.

The weather has been delightfully cool - 70s during the day and 50s at night (it was 57 degrees this morning when I woke up!).  This is great for heat-hating humans like me, but terrible for small seedlings.  I got fairly nice germination, at last, and then the rain and the cool...everything stagnated.  And it's too late in the season to play more.  Thankfully celosia filled in the holes in the annual garden, but it does look like I will mostly have a million pink celosia plants despite all my work this year...sigh.  

One interesting garden anomaly...I did not plant sunflowers this year because it was so cool for so long and sunflowers hate cold, wet soil.  I repeat:  I didn't plant ONE SINGLE SUNFLOWER SEED.  Sunflower seeds are large and distinctive...it's not like I could've planted them by mistake. Yet...dozens and dozens of sunflowers sprang up in my greenhouses.  I used NEW soil that rarely had old soil from old greenhouses mixed in.  This old soil sat outside in the freezing snow all winter long.  Sunflower seeds do not last in weather like that.  They rot easily, and our many little animals would've rooted out any that lasted.  Squirrels, chipmunks, groundhogs, even birds.  Yet...somehow...I have almost a hundred sunflowers.

I planted one last set of greenhouses last week and unbelievably, MORE sunflowers grew.  How is this possible?  Where are they coming from?  Well, in a sea of hot pink celosia...I will take it. 

At least the yellows have filled in in the perennial garden.

...and in all the other gardens around the house.

In front of the garage

Along the front walkway

one of the front-facing beds

I got the very last peonies this week for house bouquets.  They didn't last long...they know that it's June.

Our tree frogs are LOVING all the rain.

Cope's grey tree frog

Our wild animals are loving it, too, from new fawns to a gaggle of raccoons!  :)

The spillway from our back pond to the forest streams that run from it are roaring loud all the time from so much rain!

A rabbit can have 40 babies in a breeding season, and we're seeing it!!  These rabbits were playing in the side yard the other morning.  It was too dark to get a good picture, though!

Wild strawberries are ripening...

...ditto with blackberries.

Lots of busy insects...

winged carpenter ant

leafcutter bee

fall webworm moths mating

chrysophilus velutinus mating

...and insects whose lives have run their course, like this fly infected with the entomophthora muscae fungus.

The name in Latin literally means "insect destroyer."  It infects their brains, kills them, and compels the corpse to climb to a high location for maximum spore dispersal.  Pretty cool!  

The cold and wet has kept me out of the garden...and the rain has interrupted a lot of our walks.

Even bundled up in a sweater and wearing jeans yesterday, I 10000% prefer it to a normal Indiana June.  

Have a great week!