Cicada

One of my favorite sounds of late summer is the buzz of cicadas. Even though I hear them singing to each other from tree to tree and across the street, I hardly ever get to see one. Usually the closest I get is a discarded skin. But this year, I stumbled on Lyric Cicada. Unfortunately, […]

Is fluffy cute?

Once it gets dark, the bird feeders become skunk feeders, or at least the worm-laden cruft of sunflower shells underneath. All too often, when I go out looking for my evil fluffy white cat, that bit of fluff in the bushes turns out to be a skunk. Even the cat gets confused. In one of […]

Boring, boring compost

The batch of compost I started last month is all cooked up and spread out. I actually emptied it last week, but I kept finding something else to post until I almost forgot about the compost. So maybe things are a little out of order, but the compost makes everything else possible.

And garlic, too

I see now that I dug up my first garlic way too early. It took another month for the other two garlic plants to mature. They finally lay down flat on the earth as if they just couldn’t take it any more. So I dug them up, and hey presto! A whole head of garlic. […]

Tomato Onslaught

After hearing so much about late blight in tomatoes and potatoes, I feel like I got away with something. I mean I planted a tomato plant in the same spot three years in a row. It’s even been the same variety the last two years, Early Girl. In order to thoroughly tempt fate, I also […]

Catmint for bees

The promised thunderstorms finally paid off. The cat even came inside and curled up by the window listening to the cooling rain. Just this afternoon, he was sitting in the middle of the catmint, noshing away, while bumblebees buzzed around him. Like these:

Water lilies again, again

Monet it’s not, but it’s still water lilies. A flower opened just the other day for the first time in weeks. And now there’s two at once. It’s getting crowded in the tub, between the water lilies and the duckweed and the guppies.

Swaying, buzzing goldenrod

After a cool June and a wet July, August is actually August! What a concept. Hot, muggy weather. Suddenly darkening skies that tease with the promise of a thunderstorm. And goldenrod arching up from the ground and swaying under the weight of bees and other buzzers. Goldenrod is one of the best bee plants. Sometimes […]

Fruit of weeding

You never know what you’re going to uncover when you finally do some serious weeding. No, I take that back. Mostly you know you’re going to uncover more weeds. Until I found a squash under a pear tree. Partridges were not involved.

Black swallowtail

Time for another big fat butterfly picture. This one I caught Monday, when I saw a huge butterfly swooping around the butterfly bush. How cliche. How pretty. The way it kept sweeping its wings as it fed made it hard to miss, even from a distance. That’s why the wings are a bit blurry. According […]