Garden Party

Summer has been here for 59 days now, and it has been a very pleasant one, 

but it is finally showing its true colors with a few sultry days.

While everyone is trying to cool off...

a young female cardinal wonders what's going on in the flowerbed.  

It's a party, of course.  

The Salvia and Rosemary sent out fragrant invitations on the breeze to the butterflies and hummingbirds:

You're invited to a garden party.

Refreshments will be served as the nectar lasts.

Please wear your dazzling colors.

And so they have come, dressed in their finery.  

When the party began,

 the rosemary flowers were all standing straight as soldiers at Buckingham Palace 

and forgot to bend a few stems for the hummingbirds to perch on.  

Fortunately, there was some thin, rusty wire in the shop that worked for seating.

If you build it, they will come.




Linking with:
id-rather-b-birdin
Saturday's Critters
and Wild Bird Wednesday

Thanks to Kim Klassen for her texture Cecile on the first image.

Spring Whispers

After basking in the glow of the fireplace, 

winter has kicked off its slippers and cracked open the door to spring.

The ancient yellow daffodils are up a good 5 inches...

and there's new fuzz on the lamb's ears.

A few of the lilac buds have swollen and burst.

Inside, their small purple packages hold,

along with their bottled-up fragrance,

the promise of beauty and nectar.

From the pond, we hear spring peepers singing,

and late at night, under the stars,

coyotes join the chorus with their love songs.

Barley takes note, and is happy to curl up safe inside for the night.

Autumn arrives in the early morning,

but spring at the close of a winter day.

Elizabeth Bowden

Texture by Kim Klassen

After the Rain

Textures by Kim Klassen

R-Factor

The past few days, tufted titmice have been busy stripping sunflower seeds from the seed head hanging upside down on the porch.  They may not know that this action lowers the R-factor in the walls of the interior.

This same seed head serves as a hammock for 2 Carolina wrens, who spend their nights tucked inside the cavity.  Late at night, when I walk Barley, and pass them at eye level, the only thing visible is a clump of back and tail feathers, and I have to resist the urge to reach out and touch them.

Tonight I walked out on the porch at dusk.  They had just checked in for the night, and one little head peered out at me, unafraid, from her leathery fortress.

Three years ago this past spring, Carolina wrens nested on the front porch, and I was there when they fledged.  As the sweet things took practice flights on the porch, 2 of them landed on my lap and settled down on my well worn blue jeans, while their mother chattered at them from a short distance.  I wonder one of those fledglings might be the same bird now watching me from her night shelter.  And, if she is, I wonder if she's dreaming, on these cold winter nights, of lining her nest with soft blue denim.

Textures by Kim Klassen,
of Texture Tuesday.

Also linking with The Creative Exchange,
Deep Roots at Home,
and World Bird Wednesday.

Silver Lining

We lost 2 oak trees this week, or the best part of them, anyway.

Wednesday, 3 men came with a bucket truck and cut down the top two thirds of a couple of trees that were too close to the house.

One of them, half of a double trunked tree, had lifted its leafy fingers to the sky for years,
and now what's left of it seems sad and bare.

Texture by Kim Klassen

Don says a tree is almost never cut down without revealing something else,

and around here, that's usually more trees.

I appreciated the wisdom of this theoretically, but every time I glanced at the tree,
I could only see what wasn't there.

In the evening, Don went to bed before me.

I sat in a quiet house writing a letter, Barley curled up sleeping on the pad at my feet.

Christmas lights still twinkled from the little tree on the dining room table,
and out of the window to the southwest,
the crescent moon made a smileyface over the lake.

The letter finished, Barley and I padded off to the bedroom. 

From out of the window to the east, low in the dark sky, Orion winked at me, and I paused mid-step.  

I had never seen Orion from that window before. Then I remembered the tree. 

There was something hiding behind it after all.

I drifted off into a dream of summer with new leaves,

and branches growing strong and reaching their fingers to the clouds.

In the meantime, I'll be appreciating my new view of Orion in the night sky.

Frost

 Frost decorates the earth with splendor...

  creating Christmas trees...

and stringing lights from every weed.

Textures by Kim Klassen,
(who has 12 free textures available,
one a day for 12 days, starting today)

and Leslie Nicole.