apple scab and color fab

Mid-May is a wonderful time of year.  It seems like everything is bursting into flower or buzzing around said flowers.  

altica beetle

golden northern honey bee

yellowjacket

white-tailed deer

eastern tent caterpillar

woolly bear caterpillar (in pupa stage)

We've had our mason bee house out for a couple of years but this is the first time it's been occupied!

Mason bees are solitary bees and fantastic pollinators, much more so than honey bees!

Claudia has been a little more active then she was during the colder weather...

A LITTLE more active.

She caught a vole this week!! 

The perennial garden is filling in nicely right now.  I have to keep reminding myself that this was just dirt or grass when we moved in!

Most of the flowers won't pop for a few more weeks but I love the greens!  

And we have SOME flowers.

peonies...so close!

Lots of columbines!  This is Nellie Barlow...

purple and red columbines

sweet william

Unfortunately, one flower that we missed this year was the apple blossom.  Normally our tree blossoms in mid-April.  

This year, not one...single...blossom.  Instead, unsightly spots and curled leaves.

We've got apple scab, a fungal disease.  We need to treat the tree before it's fully leafed out, so it's too late this year to do anything.  A shame, because I'm STILL pulling frozen apples out of the freezer every week for oatmeal or apple cake from last year's crop.  I'll be missing those apples this winter!

Back to work.  Have a great week!  

an intro pro!

 Late May is the best.

It's finally PEONY TIME.

Did I trim back the sprawling plants around the peonies to give them room to grow?  Nope.  Did I remember to put peony rings around the different plants to help with the flop?  Nope!  Which means that the ones on the edges that droop dangerously close to the ground are mine.

The air is perfumed for one glorious week.  Windows open and bouquets in every room.  Ahhh...peony time.

Foxgloves are popping up, too.

I have many of them growing in my weedy plots by the back barn.  I'll get there eventually, but not yet. Since foxgloves are toxic, I don't dare bring them into the house with my curious kittens.  So I leave them in the field, something pretty to look at when we walk by.

I don't feel the same pressure as last year to get everything cleared out so quickly, even though I've got so many flowers struggling amid the weeds.  These foxgloves...

those yellow flowers?  weeds.

...and the biennial sweet williams that I planted everywhere last year, too.

Mountain mint, anise hyssop, bupleurum, poppies, forget-me-nots, orlaya, and yes, more foxgloves are all blooming amid the weeds.

I'll get there...eventually.  I'm plugging away at the beds around the house, with Todd's help.

...and Claudia's, of course!

Meanwhile, enjoying the wildlife outside.  A possum runs through a rain storm, heading to cover behind the fence...

Barn swallows fret as I walk too near their nest...

A green heron pokes around the muskrat house while a plastic decoy duck watches.

Meanwhile, the wildlife INSIDE...

Despite what this photo shows, cat introductions are going well.  As of yesterday, the kittens have free run of the entire house.  Calliope shows them who's boss with an occasional hiss.  Although they look SO sweet...

...they are WILD.  Todd and I sometimes look at each other, amazed, at their thundering rampages around the house.  How can two tiny kittens make so much noise?  They do, somehow.  They're into everything, demanding food and play and head rubs.  Tearing up and down the stairs, over and over again.  Causing a series of mysterious thumps in distant rooms...gulp!  Despite the noise and the chaos and the discovery that almost every houseplant here is TOXIC TO CATS (sigh)...we're enjoying kittenhood!   

Have a great week!