you've got to mole with it, baby

 Some of my ranuculus have gorgeous blooms.

They're a lovely little lot spot of color in the garden...

...and a favorite in bouquets, paired with silvery artemisia.

Unfortunately, they're being assaulted from all sides.  As soon I had finished laboriously weeding, digging, and depositing seedlings in the side garden, I started to see this:

Moles.  Moles, drawn by the disturbed earth, decimated the area, raising big tunnels beneath the prepared earth, eating the delicate plant roots.  I don't want to poison them, so I'm stuck.  And attacks from above:

Deer don't eat coneflowers.  This was done by RABBITS...and we've got a lot of them here.  As tempting as it is to just throw up my hands and forget the whole thing, I've decided to just seed the space with sunflowers.  I'll use Liquid Fence (and Claudia) to try to keep the rabbits away, just until the seedlings are tall enough to to evade their grasp.  

Thankfully, I have many flowers that deer and rabbits aren't interested in...

golden loosestrife

yarrow

clematis

roses

phlox

foxgloves

If I don't have as many flowers this year, at least I'm fairly certain to have a nice amount of insects.  Gnat swarms are starting to form as individuals look for mates.  They're a swirling tornado of dots from a distance...

...but if you look closer, you can see the little bodies that make up the clusters.

These crane flies have already found their partners!

Syrphid flies are everywhere.  They are bee mimics...

...but don't sting.  They are true flies.  Aren't they beautiful?

A tiny praying mantis, less than two inches long, hunts for a meal amid the feathery leaves of the yarrow...

...and both dragonflies and damselflies hover constantly as I'm working.

The kittens, too, are constantly watching and learning...

...when they aren't playing...

...or sleeping.

Growing up is definitely hard work.

Have a great week!  

in the pink

 It's the final days for the peonies...

The sudden shift from 60s to 90 degree heat has frizzled the delicate petals.  But they were so beautiful while they lasted!  Meanwhile...my roses are all opening up.  

They don't love incessant rain and then punishing heat, but we'll see how they do.  They look so beautiful in the back house garden.  Because I love remembering how far it's come...here is the before, from three years ago.

And now...

Almost entirely perennial, with a heavy emphasis of yellow, one of my favorite colors in the garden. The other gardens that border the house are delightfully overgrown, as well.

Just the way I like it!  See Claudia in a lot of these pictures?  She's always following along, or "contributing" to the household in other ways.

yes...she ate the whole thing!

She's not the only contributor around here...a black rat snack slithered out of our garage this morning.  They are wonderful to have around for keeping the pest population down!

We have even more helpers around here.  Last week, I discovered a dead mouse in one of our humane traps in the barn.  We normally check them daily but somehow, this one was missed.  I threw the mouse out onto the driveway.  Just ten minutes later, opening the door to come back up to the house, I disturbed a whole flock of turkey vultures!

Here's one hanging out in the yard last week!

They can smell dead animals from a mile away.  I couldn't believe that the flock had located that tiny mouse in a matter of minutes!  Pretty amazing.  

Inside, it's all coming up kittens.  They play hard, and they sleep hard.

Klaus is a bit more dignified, searching out dark closets for his naps, but Frances is an exuberant napper and will stretch out anywhere.

But, he generally prefers my lap, which makes it a little bit difficult to work sometimes!

Klaus will occasionally crawl into my lap, but he's much too serious to go in for the full cuddle.  I think that he's mostly curious:  what's the big deal?

As dignified as he is, he purrs continually while playing.  What a sweetie!  

These guys have kept me so busy that I just haven't had time for hobby fun.  However, I just bought enough of this Three Irish Girls yarn to make a sweater!

Regrettably, I frogged the last sweater that I was working on.  I bought all of these gorgeous Icelandic wool...

...but it was scratchy and have no "give," kind of like working with cotton.  My hands ached while knitting.  I hated to waste the money...but I was able to resell the lot for nearly what I paid for it!  Win win.

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!