The weather has been very hot and humid recently with a thunderstorm every afternoon/evening. I feel like I'm living back in New Orleans where we had months of this kind of weather. Actually since I started to write this post, it has began to storm and the electricity has bumped off twice. Let's hope it remains on.
When I took a walk around the yard this morning, I found that the deer had been enjoying themselves. In one bed, every single coneflower bud had been eaten and in another every hosta bud was gone. Add eaten day lilies and black-eyed-susan and I started to wonder if I would have anything to take pictures of except stems. However, they did leave a few things here and there. I think I appreciate the blooms I do find even more because of this.
It is definitely mating season in the bird world as I usually see pairs of birds together visiting the feeder. The bluebird nest has two eggs in it with probably more to come. The new wren's nest looks complete, but there are no eggs in it yet. Those wren's are tricky with their decoy nests, so we'll see what happens.
Here are a few things I saw this week
during a Second Look.
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| Coreopsis. This is one of the few things the deer have left alone in our yard. I don't know if they don't like it or they like the day lilies and coneflowers next to it better. Okay. I just looked up coreopsis to see if it is supposed to be deer resistant and it is. However, coneflowers were listed right along with it as being deer resistant. That has been far from my experience. They seem to love them at my house. |
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| Day lily |
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| Geranium, "Rozanne" |
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| Day lily |
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| Lamb's ear |
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Assassin bug--nymph (l), adult (r)
I had no idea that the spider looking bug I saw yesterday on the astilbe was really the nymph form of the insect I saw last fall. Apparently, their bite (both forms) can be quite painful. I'm glad I didn't try to handle it, but I did watch it for awhile as it used it's feelers to navigate almost like it was blind. |
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| Balloon flower |
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| Cardinal and house finch |
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| Pollen covered bee in day lily |
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| Bluebird eggs |
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| Goldfinch |
