The weather recently has been fluctuating from pleasant to sweltering with a little rain thrown in here and there. Most of the plants have been thriving, except the two apple trees whose leaves are curling. The unofficial opinion from Uncle Billy is that all of the new growth, which was a result of the spring pruning, is stressed from the extreme heat days we've been having. Sort of like frost burn in reverse. The trees are big enough that it would be hard to implement a treatment so I'm just hoping that whatever is going on is not fatal
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The front porch rockers are Ward's favorite
place to watch the birds. I'm still deciding on mine. |
On other fronts, the birds are giving quite a show as they seem to be very abundant. We are enjoying them from our windows, porch, deck, and yard--meaning we are trying out different lounging places at our new house to see what we like best at different times of the day. So far, each spot has something to offer and it's been fun conducting our tests.
When we are birdwatching, Ward swears that there are more birds here than at our old house. I think that there's just not as many trees for them to hide in, so we see them more. Maybe we're both right because my neighbor told me that there were more birds than usual this year--lightning bugs, too. Whatever the case, I'm happy.
Here are few things I saw recently
during a Second Look.
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| The nadina buds are opening. |
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| On the nadina next to the one above, I saw a bumblebee with these large yellow bumps on its sides. I didn't remember seeing anything like them before and learned that they are called pollen baskets. The baskets are indentations with special hairs on the sides of the bee's back legs and they use them to store pollen until the bee takes it back to the hive. |
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| A couple of yellow day lilies have bloomed. I think there are some orange ones (according to the neighbors) around the corner from this, but they look very stressed from the recent heat. We'll see if they bloom, but I'm guessing they will. |
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| A catbird stops by the deck most days for a bath. He almost empties the bath each time with his splashing. |
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| The wren's nest finally has eggs in it. |
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| We found a robin's nest with intact eggs after previously finding three different ones on the ground. One of those had egg shells in it from recently eaten eggs. This nest is under our deck and hopefully is protected from predators. |
