yard | Change Is Hard

August 10, 2015
by dawnkinster 16 Comments

Busy day at the bath

I was doing dishes and noticed a flash of dark grey wing in a shrub beside the deck. I immediately felt alarm. The wing color looked like a junco, and those are only around here in the winter. Surely they were not already descending on my summer! I stopped doing dishes and watched intently.

Turns out this is what I saw:

Visit from a catbird

I saw catbirds when Katie and I were camping a few weeks ago. I know they are also in our yard, but they stay out by the road in the jungle of grapevine covered bushes. I’ve only seen them, even there, a couple of times in the twenty plus years we’ve lived here. I was surprised to see two catbirds in the honeysuckle bush, chasing each other around. And I was stunned to see one hop up on the birdbath.

Turns out there was more fun coming.

A nice cool bath is just the thing!

She (I’m deciding it’s a she) jumped in the bird bath and began to enjoy herself. But then she had an unwanted visitor.

Stay away! This is MY bath!

Then her mate showed up to guard her while she continued to bath.

I’ll keep watch for you.

She enjoyed her bath for a long time.

Shake it mama bird!

But once the mate flew back into the shrub she got even more visitors!

Look! She’s hogging the bath!

Eventually it was all just too much for her.

That’s it! There’s no privacy here!

And the visitors were left on their own.

Was it something we said?

Always an adventure. And to think if I was working I’d have missed it all.

Internet photo of Junco. Not here yet. Thank goodness.

August 8, 2015
by dawnkinster 10 Comments

There’s a Christmas card on our bird feeders

I have often thought, as I watch the birds visit our feeders, that it looks like a familiar Christmas card. You know the one…where a different kind of colorful bird peeks out from behind all the letters in “Happy Holidays!’ on the front? Just a few minutes ago I was reminded of that card again and went to get the camera, moving slowly, carefully, quietly.

If I had gotten the shot this is what you would have seen:

A huge bright red male cardinal lording over the flat feeder, the feeder I had just moments ago filled with black oiler seed. A female, or perhaps a juvenile cardinal, a chickadee, a house finch and a titmouse were all sitting on the feeder with him, some grabbing a seed and flying up to a branch to eat before coming back for more. He didn’t move from his spot. A juvenile oriole and another female cardinal sat on the top of Katie’s kennel a few feet away waiting their turn. A small black and white woodpecker slips in, grabs a seed and departs. The bright orange male oriole swoops down from the trees to the oriole feeder. There is no grape jelly left. He hops to the top of the pole and stares into the window, voicing his displeasure with a quick burst of machine gun chirps. The male cardinal, impatient with all the activity on his feeder systematically chases all the smaller birds away. Most go to sit in a line on Katie’s pen. Waiting. When he’s done gorging himself and flies off the activity on the flat feeder picks up again. Bright yellow goldfinches have stuck to the thistle feeder throughout all the antics. They are pigs. And a female hummingbird zig zags nervously around her own private feeder.

Can you imagine all of that? I hope so because I didn’t have a chance to get the shot.

As soon as I moved to the kitchen and picked up the camera, turning slowly back around to head to the living room Katie woke from her spot in the dining room, raced to my reading chair next to the window, leaped up and commenced to barking. Because if mama is grabbing the camera and heading toward the windows there must be something out there!

So you’ll have to be satisfied with a picture of the princess instead. After all, she says, nothing else is as beautiful.

Who;s the prettiest one of all?

Sigh.

July 22, 2015
by dawnkinster 8 Comments

Wordless Wednesday

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

July 15, 2015
by dawnkinster 15 Comments

Suburban wildlife – or- not so wordless Wednesday

It’s beginning to amaze me the beautiful things that are in my yard during any given day. And to think all this has been going on here at home for years while I’ve been off at work.

Katie likes to bark a warning to us humans sitting on the sofa. By the time we get up and look outside she has managed to chase whatever it was away. But just in the last two days I’ve noticed, on my own with no help from her, plenty of goings on in the yard.

Of course we have the Orioles visiting daily. Sometimes hourly. Do you think this one is a juvenile or just a wet female?

Looking for “more grape jelly lady!!”

It’s a good thing Katie didn’t see this little guy at the birdbath right outside her favorite window.

“Hey! Anybody in there?!”

Do you think the butterfly on the house realizes there are two garter snakes curled up sleepily below?

Look out below!

And just now, in the back yard we had a visitor. Katie didn’t see this either.

Looking for rabbits in all the right places.

Good thing she didn’t. All heck would have broken out.

What’s that smell over there?

So much going on in my own yard that I don’t have time for cooking and cleaning and such. Must keep vigilent, as a sheltie, who will remain nameless, seems to be napping on the job.

STILL no grape jelly lady!

July 12, 2015
by dawnkinster 13 Comments

Cee’s flower challenge

Check out Cee’s blog where she sports a beautiful sunflower and challenges us to show everyone a flower from our own yards.

Well, you’ve seen many of the flowers in my garden, but this one is interesting.

Will be bright red soon!

It’s a crocosmia. The foliage is green spiky leaves perhaps 3 or more feet tall which remind me of gladiola leaves. The flowers open up one by one from one end of this bud to the other. This one happens to be bright red, but I’ve seen them in other shades of red and orange. They are stunning.

It’s a perennial so it comes up year after year, and each year there are more. I’m going to have to move some of these to another spot, so if anyone who lives near would like a few for a corner of their own garden let me know! (Click the small photo to see more detail.)

Pretty

Wordless Wednesday

July 8, 2015 by dawnkinster 14 Comments

July 6, 2015
by dawnkinster 16 Comments

Memories of black raspberries

Berries in bowl

Warm, sweet, juice running down your fingers. That’s the way I remember the black raspberries I picked behind my grandpa’s workshop on the farm years ago when I was a kid. We each got to spend a few days at grandma’s house during the summers back then. I tried to choose days when the black raspberries were ripe and if we were lucky Grandma and I had fresh berries on our cereal every morning.

Years later my sister came here for a visit and we went for a long bike ride. One of the highlights that day was coming across a huge patch of black raspberries, hundreds ripe for the picking. So we did, turning our fingers purple with memories.

This year in my own backyard, where I haven’t noticed any growing before, I found plump ripe berries today. Reaching into the thorny bushes for the perfect berry I was 12 again and back behind the workshop picking for my grandma’s breakfast.

It was sweet.

Grandpa’s workshop

July 5, 2015
by dawnkinster 16 Comments

Yard treasures

Mr. Oriole comes for grape jelly.

One of the joys of being retired is time spent in my own back yard. There’s time to sit on the deck out back, watch the clouds scoot by, the light change on the birch trees, the birds coming in shifts to feed, even the grass growing. What a treat.

Ripening black raspberries.

I remember the days when, while backing out of the driveway on my way to work, I noticed the early morning sun on the front of the house and felt a pang that another beautiful day at home was going to slide by without me. Now I have to keep reminding myself that I get to stay and enjoy the peace.

Gift from blue jay.

I constantly catch myself feeling sad that a day is ending, a weekend finished, a week gone by. It’s as if my body is automatically gearing up to go back to work after a vacation, sad that it’s ending. And then I remember that it’s not.