more Hercules, please!

 The season is marching along, with so many daylilies...when did I plant these?

Hosta flowers are starting to come up, too.

The garden is really starting to pop (I'll have better pictures soon)!  It's definitely more tame this year - no 4' cosmos or marigolds - but it feels more manageable, too.  We've had regular rain, which is a big help!

Right on schedule, we have squash bugs.  And where there's squash bugs...

I had terrible germination with my pumpkins (like with everything else) and was only able to plant about 10 this year...and many of these were volunteers from the yard!  Even though the pumpkin plants are just a few inches tall, they are swarming with squash bugs.  I have to crush the eggs every couple of days, or the babies will eat the pumpkin leaves and possibly kill the plant.  

Herons are still visiting the pond regularly...

heron pouncing on a fish 

...and many other interesting creatures are around, too!

eastern tent caterpillar moth

eastern whitelip snail

house finch

song sparrow

plume moth

[look away if you're spider-averse!]

venusta orchard spider

hentzia jumping spider

Todd found this beauty in the driveway recently.

It's a female eastern Hercules beetle (a male would have gigantic 2.5" horns!).  Isn't she a beauty?  Check out her wings...it looks like a watercolor painting!

She was legs-up days ago, so I put her on the porch, where she moved sluggishly.  I didn't expect her to live, but she continued to do so, so I moved her to the garden.  She's gone now.  I hope she's laying eggs somewhere...I'd love to have more of these around!  

There was a rabbit right by the house...or there used to be.

The weather has been...amazing.  With one hot and humid exception, we've been in the 70s for several days.  It was 55 degrees when I woke up today!  Beautiful sunny days and blue skies.

The kittens watch me from their perch while I'm working outside...

...unless they're otherwise occupied.

Pleasant days indeed.

Have a great week!  

fence sense

 Warm days, cool mornings, and beautiful fog in the back field.

Todd took advantage of the nice weather by putting together a fence, made up of old farm gates.

We had 1500 feet of fencing put in, but one fence doesn't go all the way down to the water at one end.  Now it does...hooray!  

I've been working outside, too...slowly getting seedlings in the ground.  It's not my favorite gardening activity.  I don't like getting dirty and as I'm gritting my teeth and flicking off ticks, I'm trying to remind myself to be positive.  The sun is shining, there's a soft breeze, and think of the flowers that will grow here!  Amid these contemplations, I've noticed a song sparrow that comes every time I start to dig.  Singing while perched on the garden bench...

...or grubbing for worms, just a few feet away from where I'm working.

I'm reading on the porch swing in the late afternoon now...

...and sometimes the sparrow will perch on the deck rail and regard me curiously.  He's not the only creature I see every day.  We have so many turkey vultures!

They are remarkably efficient.  A full-size deer was hit by a car about a half mile from our house.  We passed it every day on the way to our walking location.  It didn't take long for the turkey vultures to find it...

...and the deer was nearly gone within four days!  Another cool thing that I've started to see on this short trip...bowl and doily spiderwebs.  The spiders themselves are tiny and rarely seen, but their webs are everywhere in the late spring.  You can see how they got their names...their small webs look like bowls suspended over gossamer doilies.  They are best visible in the early morning sun.  By afternoon, they fade into the shadows.  

Of course, I'm also seeing tons of new growth on our daily hikes!

The cats were momentarily interested when I started opening all the windows, but they are still devoted to their daily naps.

Frances

Barnabas, sleeping against the barrier meant to keep him separated from Calliope

Even Calliope has started coming downstairs to spend the day by an open window...

...although she's still pretty skittish.  

Enjoying the temperatures, enjoying the birds, and enjoying more flowers coming up in the garden...

geraniums

lily of the valley

false baptisia and euphorbia

part of front shade garden

...loving the spring!

Have a great week! 

"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!