Wednesday, July 21, 2021

Aimless puttering

Today was my day off and I had several things that I wanted to get done around the house. However, it wasn't Ward's day off and he seemed to have an entire day of important meetings. What did that mean to me? Anything in the kitchen was too loud. Vacuuming - too loud. Computer work - hard to concentrate on my things while listening to his meetings. So what did I do? Played a few computer games and wandered around from shady spot to shady spot in the yard doing a bit of clean up. Along the way, I took a few pictures to share. 

We are seeing a lot of rabbits this year. This is one of the younger ones.


The day lily blooms are very pretty. However, the leaves all turn to brown as soon as it gets too hot. Ours are moving into the browning stage, but we still have some blooms.


Despite the fact that I pulled up all of the coneflowers two years ago because of disease, some of them have come back and the insects are enjoying them. If you look closely you'll see the bee's pollen covered legs as well as a busy proboscis.



Our little fig tree is growing. We may actually get a dozen or so figs from it this year. That's at least a 200% increase from previous years.


Little skipper butterflies are everwhere.


Some cicadas come out every 17 years and some of them come out every year like this green-eyed cousin to the red-eyed Brood X that invaded earlier this summer.


Another skipper on comos.


The Black-eyed Susan bloomed this week. Something eats the petals of them as well as the cone flowers' petals. BTW, Black-eyed Susan is the state flower of Maryland.


Spirea


Caladium and vinca. These are planted in front of Ward's shop in a planter, made by his dad, from an old hot water heater .



10 comments:

  1. I like the bee photo with pollen laden legs. My day lilies turned brown already after the extreme heat we had.

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    1. I like seeing the pollen, too. I especially like it when I see a pollen ball on a back leg. Such a tidy carrying system.

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  2. Last summer I did not see a single bee in my yard. Though I am not seeing a lot of them, I have seen some and am thrilled for their return.
    Love all of your photos. We are seeing too many rabbits this year and they are chowing down on my zucchini and squash.

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    1. The fences we put up around a couple of our vegetable beds are doing their job at keeping the rabbits out. However, they have been enjoying everything we have planted in another. For the millionth time, I'll say, "All God's creatures have to eat." But couldn't they enjoy the plentiful clover instead of the vegetables? :)

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  3. Looks like summer is in full bloom in your area! Yes, pun intended. Our lilies are also doing well this year and look pretty by the back of the house.

    I SO understand how challenging it is to be productive when people are working from home! My husband is mostly still working here and while he tries to find locations that minimize his work-from-home impact, it's still challenging. At least I don't have to also tiptoe around kids doing school at home during the summer. I'm very grateful we have stayed healthy and being home instead of out and about this past year has been a part of that ... but I miss my time alone in my house.

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    1. We are lucky that we have had a pretty good variety of blooming things since the spring. Some of that is planning, but mostly it is luck.

      Thank goodness we haven't had to work much around school work, although my son was taking classes last year. But mostly he could isolate in the basement and be fine. Good luck in finding some quiet time to yourself.

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  4. Beautiful photos, of course I like the sweet bun bun best! :)

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  5. That little brown rabbit looks a lot like the little brown rabbit that visits my garden! :D

    I enjoyed seeing the pictures of your garden. It is so full of flowers! I like how the vinca flowers pick out the purple in the caladium leaves. :)

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    1. I like the combo of the vinca and caladium, also. Usually that planter just has vinca. It doesn't get much attention and they seem to do well there despite the neglect. The caladium was an extra, so I added it this year. I hope I can save the bulbs over the winter to use again next year. I didn't have much success with last year's.

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