Almanac

Nobody we know....I just liked this scene...

The beginning of June.

Bought an invasive species yesterday and paid good money for it too. First seen in the US in 1765 and common then, no one knows its true origin for sure. It may actually be native.

However, in places other than here it is a pest. In my little Rubbermaid garden pond it won't do any harm though. No egress, winters too cold for it, all it will do...hopefully...is clean up the murky mess left behind by the blasted grackles.

They nest in the grape vines on the front of the heifer barn, bringing forth fat broods of Darth Vader fledglings. They also attend mightily to the feeders....and the pond is on the path twixt the two. Seems dumping fecal sacs in water is the practice with grackles and the pond makes things perfect for them.

I went so far as to stop feeding until the babies fledged, but the pond is much closer than the river....so the nice clean water, in which we could happily enjoy the little fishies, is mud brown and foul....

Thus the water lettuce. I don't actually like the stuff, and prefer to use garden plants and wild natives to keep the water nice...plus the filter/fountain of course. However, on years from hell like this one I buy a water lettuce plant and let it take over. Pretty soon the water will most likely look a bit better...unless the grackles do another brood at least.

Meanwhile the profusion of bloom of riverbank grapes is unprecedented in my experience. Usually the little greeny-gold flower clusters run somewhere between unobtrusive and invisible on the showy scale. This year they look like fluffy clouds of lace, pretty in a subtle sort of way. And it is has finally dried out enough so you can smell them, although only a tiny whiff now and then, not the omnipresent waves of normal summer...I love the scent though and I will take what I can get. 

The House Finches have brought their babies in to eat at the feeder. Some fledgling Carolina Wrens checked me out when I was walking behind the barn last night as well. 

Tuti is still coming in too. She is a twisted-winged Tufted Titmouse that has been with us since last winter. It is easy to pick her out by her deformity, but she does not let it bother her. She scolds me ferociously should I approach the feeder when she is gathering gossip and sunflower seeds.

Although the weather has been chancy at best and downright cruddy at worst it is all too easy to love June, my favorite month of them all. 

There be frogs in the peonies

from Northview Diary http://ift.tt/2sKR1Xh