Small tales

Yard work today so I'm late in posting. I spent four hours cleaning up the fallen debris from the trees and taking care of the garden, but this time I got the whole yard done at once. I've been moving a little slow since then. It was hot in the sun. Fortunately, with so many trees that wasn't much of an issue but I still worked up a pretty good sweat. Of course I no sooner finished watering the garden than the clouds rolled in.

I figured it would rain and bring down more branches so I was really wishing Ortega had called about mowing the lawn. I guess I wished hard enough because he pulled into the driveway as I getting out of the shower. The sun came back out when he was done. Outside of a weird and brief shower - in the brilliant sun, without a cloud in the sky - it never did rain.

The yard looks even better this time because the I have the plants growing this time. The window boxes are thriving, I'll have to put up string up for the morning glories before the end of the week and my planter filled out nicely with the addition of the impatiens. They must be compatible with the salivia because I had about written that off and suddenly it's sending up new flowers. I love the color of these impatiens as well. They're a really nice shade of pink edged with a darker hue. Never saw a color like this, I swear they glow.

The garden is a bit less of success story. I'm beginning to think of it as less of a garden and more of a giant wildlife feeder. Michael will be thrilled to know he's winning the bean contest. It appears the deer have a taste for bean plants as well as strawberry leaves. They wiped out my two little rows and so far only one lonely little nasturtium has popped up. I have a feeling the deer will eat those as well. The other stuff however, is growing well considering how little sun it actually gets back there. The plants are tall but not full. In any event it's fun to watch it growing even if I never actually harvest anything from it.

No exciting bird stories to report. The two little wrens visit most every day and pick through the spider's stash of bugs. The cardinals do as well, usually at different times but the male arrived with the wrens yesterday. He actually hopped into the window well and looked through the glass at me. There was also a huge crow fight the other day. They were putting up a huge ruckus but I couldn't see what it about. They were on the other side of the neighbor's house.

Oddly the insects have been more interesting. I saw the weirdest dragonfly today. He had two sets of little wings and he was absolutely psychedelic. I mean dayglo stripes of color, red and yellow and blue. He flew around me for a minute and then he landed on the ground. I didn't notice at first that he had landed on a green caterpillar of some kind. It was bigger than he was. I figured it out when he started dragging it away. No way he was going to take off with it. Last I saw him, he was dragging it through the grass.

The other delight has been the lightning bugs. They come out at dusk here and they fill all the yards in the hood. I can watch from the door, my preferred method because they are really big here and it feels like being in the Meadows in Noho. It's like a little fairyland of blinking lights. And once in a while, an especially big guy will streak across the night like a comet.