Cop Car's Beat

Yay: Lily-of-the-Valley starts

Over the past several years, I've spent a small fortune trying to get starts of Lily-of-the-Valley (LOV). Inevitably, the package, when opened, revealed a mass of stuff that was unidentified as plants. I dutifully planted and watered such stuff a few times, to no avail. Mentioning this to Bogie, I was told that she had a good stand of LOV that needed dividing. She said that, if she thought of it, she would send me some starts in the fall. I set a reminder on my calendar and reminded Bogie in mid-August. She sent beautiful, healthy plants. 

The transport company was a little confused about what an "up" sign (with arrow) meant, but Bogie had packed the plants so well that they could have rolled that box down the road without apparent damage to the plants.

First Photo: As the box was delivered to our front door. (Arrows on each side pointing toward the street, rather than toward the ceiling.)

Next Photo: Healthy plants that Bogie shipped. She had let them acclimate to being in the planters before shipping and had packed them very well. It is obvious that some of the top layer of soil had been flung loose as (I assume) they tumbled the box in a cement mixer. With these plants it is easy to tell which stuff is plant life and which stuff is packing material - and- I have no trouble discerning plant tops from plant roots.

Last Photo: Planters of LOV in a temporary location where the plants may be watered as our side yard grass receives water from the sprinkler system. My plan is to let them recover for a few days before setting them into the ground near the foundation - on the northeast side of the house.

Many thanks, Bogie, and thanks for the strong advice against opening the box indoors. That advice was spot on.

I should mention that in the late 1960s, I planted LOVs on the creek bank at our previous home. They proliferated and, as of the last time I saw them (2002), were beautiful and healthy and providing protection against erosion of the bank. I no longer recall what the starts of those plants looked like, but I assume they were more recognizable as plant life than was the recent stuff I was sent by mail or that I had bought (packaged so that the stuff was sight unseen) at WalMart.

Share, we must

The first photo shows what happens when I decide to let a cantaloupe ripen on the vine a bit more. I infer from the evidence that a raccoon was having a fine Midnight meal when something scared it off. The ants, flies, and butterflies took over in the light of day (the little butterfly flitted off before I snapped the photo.)

The next photo shows the next cantaloupe with which I shall play the balancing act of ripeness vs attractiveness to the wildlife. Our normal harvest is about a half crop for Hunky Husband and me and a half crop for the critters. That's acceptable since we moved into their habitat and not vice versa.

I should mention that I went out to harvest tomatoes this morning only to find that something had plucked every tomato from the Early Girl vine - ripe, semi-ripe, or green! I brought in several of the cherry tomatoes shown in the previous posting, to ripen on the kitchen counter. After all, we must have our tomatoes.

Weird tomato

A bit over four months ago, I planted two Beefsteak and one Early Girl tomato plant. Because of the weather's having been so unstable, heat-wise and moisture-wise, the Early Girl took about 10 weeks to produce its first ripe tomato. After the unstable weeks we got hot and dry weather. Today, I picked the first ripe Beefsteak tomato - a really weird-looking one (photo, below). It's like an incompletely separated twin.

The vines have all grown like gangbusters. (The next photo shows the vine from which the above tomato was picked.) The weather conditions have just not been suitable for the tomatoes to set on and ripen.

Just starting to color up (next photo) are a bunch of cherry tomatoes that came up voluntarily from last year.

Again, the vines (next photo) have grown like gangbusters.

The last photo shows the Early Girl vine from which we've picked a large number of ripe fruits since late July.

 

From last weekend

Cars

When Elder Brother stops in for a short visit, I clear out the garage enough that he may keep his car garaged. I started doing that one time when hail was forecasted to occur during his stay. At that time, it took some doing for me to clear the space because we had so much stuff in the garage. (One might recall that Hunky Husband and I combined households when I moved back to Kansas in 1990.) Over the years, I've managed to winnow our belongings, inside the house and inside the garage. Now, all I have to do is to place the garden cart and clippings bin out in the back yard; move the child's wagon with the two containers of gasoline for the lawn mower, the recycle and trash bins, within the garage; roll a small set of metal shelves and re-orient it within the garage; and park the lawn mower snug up against the wall out of the way - easily enough accomplished with a zero turn radius machine.

The first photo, below, snapped early Saturday morning (dark enough that the flash went off giving eery glows to the license plates and the rear reflectors on our cars) gives proof that the garage contents reconfiguration succeeds. Left to right, EB's 1992 W-124 Mercedes Benz, CC's 2014 Lincoln MKZ, and HH's 2018 Lexus ES350. 

Cantaloupe

Just before EB arrived, while clearing out the garage, I took the garden cart out by the woods for temporary storage. I noticed the nearly whole rind of a cantaloupe that had been abandoned by some wild critter(s) that had eaten the meat of the fruit. I didn't think much about it, but later noticed a couple of melons on the cantaloupe vines that had sprouted from the green garbage that I had buried some months ago. The next two photos show the two hills of cantaloupe vines that have survived. (I tore out one hill of vines that appeared, to me, to be some other melon variety - possibly squash - that I did not wish to have cross-pollinated with the cantaloupe.) Looking at the photos I found that I could not pick out either of the two melons among the vines in the first photo, but it does show a sumac sprout that I had failed to spot, in person! I've pointed out one of the two melons among the vines in the second photo.

 

 

 

For today's lunch, I cut into the melon that I had found was ripe on the vine. It was a strange looking melon, but it tasted good. Not great, but good enough.

More catching up

When one's life is consumed by pulling weeds and watching the grass go dormant from the heat, posting in one's blog is not very prominent in one's mind. Catching up on "where I'm at" doesn't take a lot.

Cooking

Night-before-last, I hadn't fallen asleep by Midnight, so arose to figure out something else to do. Ah...Elder Brother was expected (sometime) for a day or two, so why not do some cooking? Now, as everyone knows, I'm no big shake as a cook. Cooking is a domestic art, after all, and no domestic art has ever tripped my trigger. For the most part I dislike cooking to the point of hating it. At any rate, I spent a couple of hours in the kitchen and the photos, below, show the results. Apologies that the photos show the "after partial consumption" state of the blackberry pie and the slaw. I partook of the slaw for yesterday's lunch, and Elder Brother and I partook of the pie after dinner yesterday.

When I ordered our groceries for pickup, early this past week, I had ordered two 12-ounce (weight) containers of fresh blackberries, specifying that the shopper might substitute 24-ounce container if they were out of 12-ounce containers. I've found over the past year or so that the shoppers at Dillons are not as astute as the shoppers at the little WalMart. At the little WalMart, the shopper would have given me one 24-ounce container in place of the two 12-ounce containers. From Dillons, I received two 24-ounce containers. That's a bunch of blackberries considering that Hunky Husband eats few of them. That explains why I used them to make my first-ever blackberry pie. No, I did not make the crusts. I had a package of two in the freezer and I used both, allowing me to form a top crust. You might notice the appearance of the top crust. IMHO I had too much flour/sugar/cinnamon mixture to mix with the berries - and - I forgot to pour the molten butter over the berries before placing the top crust on the berries. I poured the butter and sprinkled a bit of the flour/sugar/cinnamon mixture over the top crust - concentrating on the slits, hoping the stuff would ooze in under the top crust. I actually found the finish of the top crust quite appealing. Who knew?

I made up the head of cabbage (that's been in the fridge for at least one or two weeks) into slaw. Incorporated were a couple of carrots, 1/2 of a green bell pepper, and 1/2 of a red bell pepper. As neither EB nor HH enjoys onion, I withheld them from inclusion.

Baked beans were next on my list. That's a 1.5-quart casserole in the next photo. I didn't wish to make enough to feed an army! The chunks of meat in the beans are left-over ground turkey with home-made taco seasoning.

The last thing I fixed was a pan of dessert that I don't know what to call. I start by beating a couple of eggs (with an old-fashioned eggbeater), adding 1/2 cup of vegetable oil and 1/4 cup of water. Stirring in a 15.25-ounce (weight) box of yellow cake mix, 6 ounces (weight) of milk chocolate chips, a cup of mixed raisins and Craisins and spooning onto a bed of unsweetened shredded coconut that I had placed into a 13"x9" cake pan. Over the batter, I scattered a handful or two of pecan halves, 6 ounces (weight) of semi-sweet chocolate chips, and 6 ounces (weight) of Heath chips. Baked for about 30 minutes at 350 degrees F, it produces a dessert that may be cut into bars of the desired size(s). This is a favorite of HH's that I vary each time I make. In fact, I had intended to sprinkle the flour/sugar/cinnamon mixture left over from the pie as the first layer upon the batter. I forgot! What the guys don't yet know is that I snagged a 3-pint container of cappuccino-chocolate chunk frozen yogurt to serve with this.

Crepe Myrtles

A few months ago, I transplanted a small, volunteer crepe myrtle to a better location. A few weeks ago, I transplanted another, as shown in Catching up. The last two photos show how those crepe myrtles looked, this morning.

Both bushes are looking good - especially since, as one may note, the ground is now wet. I broke down and watered the bush plantings in our yard, yesterday, and we received 0.22" of rain early this morning. Yay!

Week in Review - July 16, 2022

Old Friend

The most unexpected happening was hearing from an old friend, Dr J, with whom I worked in the mid-1980s. I've heard from him every few/several years since 2009 and I must say that, unfortunately, his is a tale of woe. (The link that I've given leads to an interview with him.) His education resulted in BS and MS in Physics and MS and PhD in Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering, his specialty being computational fluid dynamics (CFD). CFD is a highly regarded field but esoteric enough that it can lead to difficulties in staying employed. Dr J has been, basically, unemployed for some time. He has physical conditions that have led him to be wheelchair bound, living in the Puget Sound area.

Even back in the 1980s, Dr J labored under a dark star. He was just a youngster of 30 then who hired into the same company for which I worked, only to find that their need for a CFD specialist had evaporated. He was to have worked on one of the programs on which I was involved. As it happened, about that time I needed someone to deal with some scheduling software (this was the 1980s - software's being even less user friendly then). My job was putting together a USAF base plan for Edwards AFB. The scheduling assignment kept him gainfully useful to the company for a few weeks and Dr J's and my contact was rather spotty after that. 

Trimming Bushes

It is horrible giving bushes haircuts when they are being subjected to triple digit temperatures for an extended period of time, but other tasks took priority when the weather was a bit cooler. The bush that had gotten most out of hand was the Coppertina Nine Bark, one of two that I had planted behind the house in in 2015 (not, as it feels, in 2019!) The second bush survived but for one year or two. The next two photos show the "before" and "after" trimming views.

 

 

The next two photos show the three Crepe Myrtle bushes that I planted in 2002 - "before" and "after" a trim. What? You can't tell that I trimmed them? There's a good reason for that. The only trimming that I did was to remove the limbs bearing pink blossoms from among the limbs bearing white blossoms. I had bought a Dwarf Victor (on the right) at Hillside Nursery and the two "pink" standard-sized generic bushes from WalMart. The bush that is in the middle eventually proved to have been two roots in the same pot - one for white, the other for pink. I've been trying to kill out the pink for some years because I like the contrast of a white bush between the pink and cerise bushes.

The following two photos show "before" and "after" trimming of our three Little Devil Nine Bark bushes - planted at the same time as the Coppertina, above.

 

 

Dill & Insects

Our largest patch of Dill Weed has drawn female black swallowtails - more so than usual, this year. We have an abundance of caterpillars, and the blossoms draw all manner of insects - various flies and lacewings. The photos below are the best I could do. The caterpillars don't run about, but the flies and lacewings flit nervously, keeping me from focusing on them. (The sun reflecting off of the viewing screen doesn't help, either!) I can't identify the fleet of black specks in the photo on the left. I assume they are some sort of eggs.

Hummingbirds and Ants

Speaking of bugs: Below is a photo of the hummingbird feeder that I brought in after hanging a feeder with fresh nectar. Since hummingbirds feast on ants, I can't get upset that the ants are consuming some of the hummingbird nectar.

Tomatoes & Potatoes

I was at least a month late planting tomatoes, this year, so I've yet to find fruit even beginning to color up. The photo on the left, below, shows the bush with the fruit coming closest to being ready. It is an Early Girl. (I planted only three tomatoes, this year, the other two being Beefmasters.) On the right is a photo of our total potato crop for 2022. They came up from three different hills where I had planted green garbage. My dad planted potatoes on St Pat's Day nearly every year, but I've never planted potatoes intentionally.

 

 

 

 

We get to laugh at ourselves.

The other night, Hunky Husband and I were watching TV separately, as do we usually. I heard him coughing up a fit. Since it annoys me to have someone bother me while I'm having such a coughing spell, having a speck of pepper catch in my throat or some such, I listened carefully but did not rush in to see HH. I find that as long as I can hear the fit, breath is being had. Later in the evening, HH told me that he had coughed stuff up from his lungs, catching it in his handkerchief, and that he had rinsed it out in the sink, hanging it over the towel bar in his bathtub enclosure. He told me that he had coughed up blood. Would I please check that he'd gotten all of the blood rinsed out?

Coughing up blood is a whole 'nuther thing. Now I am concerned, but I don't really want to let on to HH and get him obsessing about it. I check his handkerchief and, finding a smear of pink, take it to my basement sink for rinsing. In rinsing, I note that there is more and more pink showing up as I rotate the handkerchief in my hands. There are grainy little dots of pink - only on one side of the cloth - each fact of which struck me as strange. Eventually I am satisfied that the handkerchief is clean and hang it on the edge of the "whites" laundry basket to dry.

I preceded HH to bed. As he was in his bathroom brushing his teeth, I lay in bed with my mind wondering. Eventually, my mind wandered over something to do with the watermelon that we had eaten as a late evening snack. Bingo! It was not blood that HH was coughing up, it was small specks of watermelon cellulose and juice. I feel so much better. HH and I got a good laugh at ourselves. The photo shows our next watermelon - on which we shall endeavor not to choke. It's in the bag that I used to carry it, the watermelon having been too large for me to otherwise manage while also carrying two smaller bags of groceries to my car.

 

Catching up

It's been a while since I've posted and I know that enquiring minds really want to know up to what this really old woman has been. Well...if you don't really care, you may be excused to find better use of your time. This is not required reading!

The yard work has been keeping me busy for the spring and early summer, this year. Which is usually the case. What makes it more interesting/harder work this year are the confluence of two happenings: 1) unavailability of quality mulch, and 2) weather that teeters between rainy and hotter/sunnier than hell. I cannot work in the sun or in the heat as I am prone to sun/heat stroke - or - at the very least, heat exhaustion. As I've written at Paying for my sins gives me exercise, my big challenge this year has been to rid us of the sumac that I was foolish enough to plant. It had thrived and, as previously stated, it will be at least a couple of years before I can declare victory. Defeat is unthinkable! Each week, our trash barrel has been completely stuffed with sumac roots that I've dug/pulled up for the past several weeks. The photos, below, show how the largest sumac planted areas look, today. The photos show the same area, but from nearly opposite viewpoints. Note, too, that I have taken out a couple of the small redbud trees and trimmed up the remaining ones.

While working in that area for a few minutes, this morning, I took the opportunity to transplant a small crepe myrtle bush (photo, below). I don't know whether the bush came up from seed (I find hundreds of seedlings all over the place) or from the roots of nearby old crepe myrtle bushes. As was the case for the small crepe myrtle bush that I planted in the same planting bed earlier this year (thought I had posted it but can't find the photo or posting) in either case I don't know the parent bush. It could be a dwarf cerise-colored crepe myrtle, a white full-sized crepe myrtle, or a more reddish pink full-sized crepe myrtle. (For photos of possible parent bushes, please see The past week or so at Casa CC - 7/27/2019.)

Most of my yard-work time during the past week has been spent de-weeding/grassing the planting areas that are farther from the street, but in the same stretch of yard. The next photo shows about one-third of the area in which I've been working. At the left side of the photo, within the area delimited by the steel posts (installed to keep Fred's occasional fence-fall from further damaging my plantings), one can see a multitude of crab grass plants awaiting my attention. I was working in that area, this morning, when it started raining. It is a hot, muggy day and it is now (5pm) thundering out there.

Did I fail to mention that I showed more agility, this morning, than I would have laid claim to? I heard something breaking and ran into the middle of our back yard where I knew I would be safe from falling trees/limbs. It was an unnecessary exercise as the branch from a huge walnut tree crashed on Fred's property, this time. He doesn't trim his trees (or anything else in his part of the woods) which leads to such dead falls. It was not a small limb! (I took a photo, but the bright sun made it impossible for me to see the viewfinder and the offending tree isn't in the photo!)

My mini meadow is coming along nicely this year. The next photo shows it in all its glory. Note the milkweeds - the seed pods of which deserved their own photo. I'll post the pod photo on the neighborhood website to see if anyone wants a pod or three.

I bury our green garbage. It enriches the clay of which our soil is comprised and reduces the strain on our city's sewage system. Our city requires that no garbage be placed in the trash bins. That is what garbage disposers are supposed to make unnecessary. Many of the buried treasures send up shoots - mostly from potatoes and melons. They have a tendency to try to escape their confines. The photos, below, show a couple of examples. In the first photo, a melon plant of some sort has shriveled up in the past day or two - maybe from too much water????

 

 

 

 

To round out the posting, here is a closeup of the little things that have been hanging from our small trees over the past week or two. I'm thinking they are army worms like the ones that destroyed much of our fescue lawns last summer. Kevin is supposed to be sending his lawn specialist out to tell me what we need to have done.

Paying for my sins gives me exercise

For the past several weeks I've made a concerted effort to get rid of the four sumac plants that I was foolish enough to have planted in Fall 2018. There are three segments of planting bed beside our driveway into which I had planted one sumac each. The fourth sumac was planted just outside our dining room windows, in the foundation planting area. I had had a sumac plant at our previous house, and we had one for the first few years that we lived here - neither of which had been a problem. In fact, each of them eventually died without sending out descendants. Little did I realize how different the experience would be with the four new plants. I soon learned that sumac plants send out a myriad of roots in all directions, interweaving as they go.  It will take a couple of years (at least) for me to totally eradicate the plants/roots since I don't believe in using poisons, but I'm working on it

Fortunately for me, most of the roots are not all that deep but they are so tangled and widespread that they are hard to dig/pull up. The weather that we've been having lately has made conditions nearly ideal for me to work on those roots. As I pull up the roots, by hand, I also turn over the soil. (A great tillage scheme were that what I was going for!) I'll show you the progress that I've made.

The first photo is from last Fall, showing all three of the plants/descendants along the driveway - numbered 1 through 3 (not readable unless enlarged), starting with the sumac closest to the street.

Today, the area that is nearest the street looks like this (below). Until I took the photo, I had thought that there were no above-ground indications of sumac ever having resided there. As the photo clearly shows, a sumac is coming up from a root that remains. (I'll get it out, tomorrow - I'm through working in the mud for the day.) As you might guess, the sumac loves to come up within a bunch of daylily (or the burning bush plants that are to the right, unseen in the photo) where it cannot easily be seen. It took me a long time to root out all of the little plants and the roots that had sent them up.

This morning, I finished up (for the moment) working on Area 2 (below). There are no above-ground indications of sumac presence. I can guarantee that such absence of indications won't last long. It took me but one week to reach this point. I've learned how to pull up plants and roots more efficiently - plus, the mud is soupier.

Having made such great progress in Area 2, I started on Area 3 this morning. Well...technically, I had cut a bunch of the above-ground stuff away, yesterday. I didn't work at it long, today, but worked the above-ground branches back-and-forth to loosen the main plant/roots up for better progress tomorrow.

I've not yet really worked on total removal of the sumac in front of the dining room - only trimmed off a branch that encroached on the sidewalk and a branch that brushed the windows and removed a couple of large roots that shot out from the plant's trunk and turned vertically downward along the foundation - which I found in pulling up multiple smaller sumac plants that were hiding among the non-sumac plants. The photo, below, shows the sumac last fall. I didn't bother to take a photo of it this morning.

BTW: See the bush that I had trimmed back to renew last fall - between the sumac and the small green bush at the bottom right corner of the photo? It gave me my comeuppance the other day when I was pulling up one of the large sumac roots that shot downward along the foundation at the house corner shown to the right in the photo. Over-winter, the trimmed bush died, so a bunch of dead, stubby branches remained. The root suddenly gave way as I was pulling it upward and outward - sitting me down, hard, on those dead, stubby branches. Ouch! I now have a hideous bruise on my left, upper thigh - too large to be covered by one of my hands. Fortunately for me, the dead, stubby branches mostly broke off at ground level rather than skewering me. You can bet that I removed the rest of those branches to prevent future such happenings!

ADDITION OF 6/11/2022 8:30AM

This (photo, below) is what I dug/pulled up this morning to remove that little green sprig that was showing above-ground yesterday. One can tell that I did not get it all. There are three reasons for that: 1) It is too hot for me to be working out there (and it is now in the sun), 2) I am dizzy this morning (blood pressure medication), and 3) It is a never-ending task. I could be removing roots to the end of the earth!

The cart (photo, below) is full of much of the roots/pieces that I had dug/pulled up yesterday. The rest were in the (larger) trash cart that had been emptied by the trash pickup people yesterday. (The green cart is not "one of theirs", so they won't pick it up. I'll transfer from our 50-year-old green cart into their blue cart once the muddy root clumps have had a chance to dry out. Right now, the cart is too heavy for me to lift to make the transfer - even after cutting up and transferring the lighter stuff that is on top.)

Receding waters - mostly for Bogie

After the flood waters had receded, most of the water returning to within the creek's banks, I went out to take some photos - mostly to show Bogie since she had been here so recently. The scene in the first photo is mostly in Adam's (next door upstream) area. (The clearly visible lines in the grass are in our lot.) Adam's lot is at the confluence of a tributary, coming in from the near left of this scene, and the main creek that comes in from the far left. Taking the photo into the sun gave a wierdly-colored cast to the light in this photo.

On the opposite side of our yard are the steps that take one from the upper level of our back yard down to the floor of the woods. You can see the flotsam that has been left - clearly the least flotsam I've ever seen from flooding in our yard. I was amazed that the stack of stored concrete blocks was not visibly budged by the water flow. Possibly, this is due to Fred's immense pile of flotsam, hidden by the greenery to the left of the steps, that is still left from 2016. It may account for a slower flow of water in that immediate area.

The next photo shows the hostas, volunteer walnut trees (foreground), and "markers" in the area in which cats Cop Car and Jellicle are buried. Fortunately, as part of the mowing, I had cleaned out the tall grass from around this cluster just before the rain came.

Likewise, I had taken the wire caging and pulled the tall grass from around the struggling hostas that are a couple of feet away from the above cluster. These are the oldest hostas in our yard. (History: I had never found hostas particularly appealing until Bogie started posting photos of her hostas in her yard. I planted several in an area just downhill from the cluster of ash and cottonwood trees. Over the years, they got lost in the weeds and were mowed over several times. These two stalwart plants survived and, with the cluster of ash and cottonwood trees now having been removed, have a chance at long-term survival - if they have the lifespan.)

Bogie, the following photo shows what remains of the brush pile. Since the brush pile had been (mostly) cleared out by "my" tree guys last fall, what had accumulated since then hadn't had a real chance to settle in. I think that all of the pile on which you piled the windfalls while here was washed away and that what remained was an older part of the pile that the guys hadn't had time to haul away. In my next posting, you'll see the beginnings of my new pile - cherry tree limbs. It took a few more hours for the trapped water in this photo to completely drain away.

 

The North Star dwarf cherry tree & other assorted photos

The first photo shows our little North Star dwarf cherry tree as it appeared on 4/21/2022 - sickly. It had been a bountiful producer through the 2021 season but had been showing signs of distress for two or three years. It clearly needed to be removed.

Last year, I had ordered (and paid for) a new cherry tree (no North Stars available) and planting. However, the rainy season vetoed that project and we have no replacement tree.

Yesterday, as a fillip to my yard work, I sawed the branches off of the tree. Having the branches removed will give me more room to conveniently work around the tree trunk. There are saplings growing around its base and I intend to see if they are viable. If I can't buy another tree, perhaps I can grow one. I don't know if the saplings are actually suckers off of the roots of the old tree or sprouts from the numerous mummified cherries that have dropped in the area over the years. As I see it, even if I don't harvest cherries from the new trees, it will be an interesting experiment. (One of the sapplings is just to the left of the de-branched trunk.)

Within the next several months, I'll have the tree guys remove the cherry tree trunk when I have them out to remove the rather large gingko tree from in front of the house. The gingko has grown to be too large (and I had had it planted too near the house, thinking it would be a slow-growing tree) for my possible wildfire abatement plan.

Below, see the total 2022 harvest. Well...I had eaten the cherry that looked the best.

Just after our family's get-together, a couple of hummingbird feeders were delivered from Duncraft. It had caught my attention because its capacity was a mere 3.5 ounces. This seemed thrifty since, in general, our old hummingbird feeders require a fill of about 6 or 8 ounces (capacity is more like 12 ounces), most of which is never consumed. I tried out one of the new feeders on our local hummingbirds. Immediately upon my returning to the house from hanging the feeder, a male ruby-throated hummingbird gave it a try. For the next week, as far as I could tell, that was the only visit that the new feeder inspired. I went back to one of our old feeders, one of which is the green glass feeder at the right in the photo, below.

But, I reasoned, the new feeder might draw orioles if I removed the top and filled the cup with fruit or jelly. I cut up some grapes for it. I didn't see any "takers" the first day, and we had rain overnight. I've kept the feeder out there, despite more rain's having visited us. So far, the only "taker" has been the butterfly shown in the photo, below. It stayed all day.

We have a lot of Stella d'Oro plants, and they are just starting their annual show. The metal posts on the ground had just been removed from marking a small redbud tree and staking two small mulberry trees at the edge of the woods. I placed them there to allow rain to clean them off for me. (Am I lazy or what?!) It is now raining and I have great hopes that those metal posts (and the tools that I leaned against the house when I finished my struggle to remove one of the sumac root balls yesterday morning) will be clean. It's been so muddy for my work at removing my ill-considered sumacs that I am pooped by the time I come in. I don't need the extra work of cleaning up my tools, as I should do.

Last photo for the posting: My red-twigged dogwood bush. Bogie and I discussed it while she was here. Like me, she would not have identified it as a dogwood bush had she not been informed. The bush had experienced significant die-back during the winter. It looks good, though, since I removed the dead branches a few weeks ago.