Peony buds and Lilacs
Salvia
My favorite garden angel with Salvia
A Columbine flower, looking up from underneath it
Columbine after the rain
First Peony to open
Later that same day ...
Chive blossoms (given to the neighbor to make Chive Blossom Vinegar)
The slightly whiter Chive Blossoms (I don't remember them being lighter colored)
Honeysuckle buds (If you plant honeysuckle, you'll bring in the hummingbirds ... and the aphids. I found most of the buds absolutely covered in aphids. Hundreds of them. So I sprayed them all with soap water. It killed the aphids but not the flowers.)
A few days later ...
Store-bought petunias glowing in the sunlight
Blanc Double de Coubert (white) and Therese Bugnet (pink) rosebuds
The last of the Forget-Me-Not blossoms
The baby Chickadees peeking out of the Chickadee birdhouse:
Dinner Time!!!
Bunching Onion blossoms starting to open
The first ripe Strawberry
A couple volunteer Painted Daisies that popped up a few years ago
Beautiful, dream-like Blanc Double de Coubert blossoms,
the first rose to bloom this year
Followed very quickly by Therese Bugnet
Followed by the Rose de Rescht, which looks big but is only about 2 inches across
Followed by Carefree Beauty
Here is the bat that visits our shutters ...
and then screams for hours when that side of the house heats up. If he would just move to one of the other 3 sides of the house then he'd be fine. But no ... he has to pick that same spot every time and then he screams for hours as he shifts positions looking for a cooler spot.
The kids call him "Dracula," but they really should call him "Great Big Dummy-Head."
This is my all-time favorite spider - the jumping spider. Especially the one that looks like a little tarantula. This is one that I found on the sidewalk during a walk. I caught him in a Ziplock baggie and took him home and released him in the roses. This is him as he realizes I am photographing him:
And this is him as he turns to leave, obviously unconcerned and uninterested:
(Isn't he beautiful! If you find them in your house, don't kill them. Catch them and release them outside. You can't kill something this pretty.)
And then just a few days after the pictures of the chickadees in the house, the babies flew the nest. And this little guy might be the runt of the bunch because he kept crashing into the chicken-wire fence around the garden.
And after we were done taking his picture, we put him in the crabapple tree,
where he sat for quite awhile.
And when I went back out there, he was gone! Happy flying, Little Runt!
(At least, that's what I hope happened. It's what I told the kids.)
I just gotta say ... It's really kinda cool to be able to hold them. When you first go to pick them up, they scream like they are being attacked and they try to run from you. But after being in your hand for 5 seconds, they calm down. And then when you open your hand, they just stand there and don't fly away. And then they fluff their feathers and preen themselves and look around and let you walk around with them. They don't try to fly away, even when you hold them up near a branch. You almost have to push them off onto the branch. It would be cool if they came back later and remembered us.
