Flowers Are Blooming

Ready for Summer!

The flowers are blooming in the yard. I love iris flowers, and have several different types and colors. Not as elaborate an assortment as my next door neighbor, who has planted iris in about every color in the rainbow.

We have had flocks of gold finches and indigo buntings feeding in the yard, with some sassy woodpeckers and nuthatches thrown in. A very shy pileated woodpecker is in the woods back of the house, and occassionally lands close enough we can watch him through binoculars. We also have our usual flocks of cardinals, orioles, and blue jays.

I hope the same mamma deer that has had her fawns in years past in the hollow behind the big brush pile comes back this year, and has another cute baby. Last year she and her fawn ate all my green beans from the garden, but they were so interesting to watch I was glad to sacrifice the beans. In the fall we sometimes get little herds of deer moving through the back acres, and they will come up and drink the water from the outside dog dish.

We have a fat groundhog living in the brush pile, and I see about six cottontailed bunnies every morning being herded by my old border collie mix doggie Bingo. She doesn't kill them, she just very gently moves them away from the garden area.

Grey and red foxes run in the woods at night yipping away, and coyotes run in the field across from the house. The raccoons play over there at night; we can hear them "talking" to each other from the house. I saw a weasel last year, but no sightings so far this year. Weasels are shy and hard to sight because they are sooooo quick and low to the ground.

The annual turtle exodus has not started so no box turtles in the yard. I see armadillos in the area, but Bingo herds them away from the yard. For some reason she does not like armadillos. When I moved here 23 years ago, there were no armadillos - they have moved in recently and are quite the diggers. If I find one, I catch it in a garbage can and relocate it down at the creek where it can dig to its hearts content and bother no one.

No sightings of copperheads yet and I hope not to see any. I don't mind friendly snakes like bull snakes or black snakes or garter snakes, but I draw the line at deadly vipers.

I am relaxing on a beautiful spring evening, glad to be feeling better. I think I am over the flu or whatever I had. It was nasty and I got awfully dehydrated, and my blood sugar got way out of whack, but I'm rehydrated now and tomorrow should be a work day!!! Yeah! The Headache is still with me - I was irrationally hoping it would disappear with the flu. :( I'm thinking maybe Joe Biden was right - avoid public transport if you want to avoid catching what's going around. My fellow travelers shared a little too much with me. I just hope I haven't passed it on to someone else.