our very own lettuce for dinner tonight

I mentioned R had built us garden beds. At the end of May we filled them with dirt (topsoil/horse manure mix -- I think 75/25), some old seeds (varying ages) and new seedlings.

As luck and remembering my mother's garden and his grandfather's, we managed accidentally do some good companion planting! Carrots (ours are wee tiny things right now) & Tomatoes (very healthy seedling), Marigolds and Melons, Nasturtiums and Cucumbers! Yay us! (Our cucumbers really came up... whew! thinning 'em now, I feel so heartless...) Have seen only a few possible spinach, beets, and beans (old, old and very old seeds); wish us luck for those. We also have peppers (hot and sweet; the driving rain took care of most of the aphids, wow); swiss chard (mmmmm); lettuce; 1 zucchini (who needs more?). I think that's all ... it's a wee tiny garden.

Companion plant links: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_companion_plants
http://www.lowes.com/lowes/lkn?action=howTo&p=LawnGarden/GardenResults
http://www.ghorganics.com/page2.html
http://www.organicgardening.com/feature/0,7518,s1-2-10-697,00.html

Happenin' In the Dooryard

A Boy
A Hose
A Mud Puddle

Sunlight

Orca (the dog)

Brand-new (mother's day) boxes for raised bed garden! (Made of old lumber and nails we had leftover around. No money spent for the exactly-what-I-wanted present!)

Chickadees
Titmice
Dark-Eyed Juncos
Rose-breasted Grosbeaks (a pair)
Nuthatch
Goldfinches (a pair)
Chipping sparrows
White-throated sparrows

Eastern Chipmunks (at least 4)
Red Squirrel
Bumblebee
White Butterfly
Dark brown teeny butterfly with white stripes

Blooming, or nearly:
Bluebells
Lilacs (white and purple buds)
Tulips (from [info]lepi's drive-by crocussing)
little purple-and-white ground cover
White Violets
Ruby and Yellow Pansies (from last year!)
Red and Yellow Primroses
Dandelions

Recently Planted:
Bee Balm (to compete with the Snow-on-the-Mountain)

A Slide and Large Rocks to climb on

Heard recently:
Black-throated Green Warbler
Oven Bird
Robin
Hairy Woodpecker
Eastern Phoebe ("SqueeKee Phoe-Bee!")
Wood Thrush

Spring Means New Clothes!

Or something like that.

The red squirrels are shedding their winter coats and look especially silly today.

idly noticing birds again

A Robin was singing in a tree this morning around 9.30 when it was still sunny. I saw a White-throated Sparrow on the big rocks around 11 a.m.

I like birds.

You probably guessed this.

more idle observations

Saw and heard the Eastern Phoebe today. He was out back, briefly on the beams of the back balcony and more usually on the second-largest yellow birch that leans up toward the house from the creek bank.

Also saw 2 Chipping Sparrows on the mixed seed feeder. We probably need more bird seed again.

Must note them on ebird.

idly noticing birds

Seen this morning: 2 Tufted Titmice; 1 Chipping Sparrow in Breeding Colors.

Heard: More than 3 chickadees. No phoebe this morning. Don't know what these are:

(warbly whistle) puwé puwé puwé
(squelchy) squué!

International Migratory Bird Day

Saturday, May 17th, will be International Migratory Bird Day.

Come celebrate at the Birds of Vermont Museum, if you are near Huntington, Vermont, that day!

Compact Flourescents and other links

From a friend's suggestion about the Compact Flourescent/Incandescent comparison paper (it's a PDF listed at the link), I wound up thinking about Wal-mart and Phillips, which reminded me I am reading (slowly) The Ecology of Commerce, so of course I googled it, and found more about Paul Hawken on wikipedia as well as a useful summary and application of the book at a Masonry heater trade journal site, and then the organization Wiser Earth, which

is a community directory and networking forum that maps and connects non-governmental organizations and individuals addressing the central issues of our day: climate change, poverty, the environment, peace, water, hunger, social justice, conservation, human rights and more

.

Now I'm poking around my utilities site, seeing how maybe I can pay them less money...

Oh look, here's what I should've done when I broke the two CFLs I broke (in the decade-plus of using them, I've broken two, one was still in the package). Hm. Me and LittleBirder are probably doomed now. Or not, given the limited exposure and that I did some of the clean up correctly and we show none of the symptoms associated. But we knew that.

Channeling a Beaver Spirit?

Tried intalling some extension jambs this morning into our office/library casement window. Perhaps because ours have been sitting around for Far Too Long™, I couldn't (by myself) get the top one in. It's a bit bowed and I'm having trouble. Hopefully R and I together can finish it when he comes home ... but that would require not reassembling the office library from it's current interestingly disheveled state. And I want to finish cleaning it up. Hm.

I think I was inspired by Bruno the Carpenter -- LittleBirder and I read it at daycare the other day...

I did kinda go crazy in here. I put together an old oak table that (without the leaves) is 4' x 4' -- which is really darn large for a space only 8' (maybe) wide. Except it would just look wrong in the corner, and finally I have a surface deep enough to be a useful (and beautiful! Though old) desk. (Plus I have a sentimental attachment to it, mostly 'cause I like it better than any other desk or table in the house). Now if I can just figure out where to put the telescope, and swap the metal (skinny) table for the (silly prefab) computer desk, and put the table in the big basement (and more not-useful-right-now computer and telephony equipment on it in case we ever really finish the hardwire networking), and get the old blond veneer bookshelves from the other basement (not so sentimental, despite having been were my grandmother's), then I could put these other papers and crates and boxes away, or sort of...

Hairy Woodpecker

Over the last couple of days, I've taken some short videos of the male and female Hairy Woodpeckers (Picoides villosus) that have been coming to our suet feeder. The camera work and lighting leaves a lot to be desired (as does the background noise -- you can hear in this one a train video LittleBirder is watching on YouTube*). Nevertheless! It's delightful to have the pair visiting us.

* By the way, it's kind of a neat little train video, with a troll. I am not this skilled in my vids!

Owl House

Two or three Christmases ago, Grandpére built lots of bird houses in lots of sizes, and we each chose one. For ridiculously long time, our barred owl house has been sitting either on our front stoop or in our entry area.

Then, we added white cedar shakes over the pine.

Today, we—mostly my sweetie-pie—put it up on a old maple by the creek.

Aside from being perhaps too close to the road, the location is probably pretty good: right by the creek, a mix of dense hemlocks and deciduous, easy flight path down the dirt road to the old meadows...

We may have put it up too late, in that I read in one place that barred owls pick their nesting sites as early as September. Still, we hope! We know they're around...

Tinted

7 a.m. Dawn. One of those lovely ones of sky shading into gray and lavender, and where the clouds are roses and creams and pearls and golds. All colors marked and framed by the traceries of winter twigs, punctuated by the silhouettes of whine pine branches, thick among the thin.

Out and about with Orca

Tracks! Identifiable: running neighbor with border collie, us. Others might've been fox (red or grey). bobcat, mink, squirrel. Those are pretty likely. Oh, also more dogs, natch. Shrew? And other small rodent -- vole/mouse type (holes in the snow).

Maybe a bit far for Orca -- I was only going to go to the dead end sign and back, but went around the back of the house and along our forest path by the creek -- too tempting not too! Then Orca wanted to go down toward the mailbox so we did but she was shaky and tired on the way back. Her knee is so stiff and what with widespread mild arthritis....

(see also LittleBirder for this day)

looking forward, looking up

I've been looking at the wood pile.

Well, of course, one does, each time we look out the back door. It's just there.

But I've been counting the rows ... I think we're going to run out of wood this year.

.
.
.

I love the hazy clouds over the full moon.

icy snow is good for...

It's thawed and snowed and refroze ... strange weather. But the crusty, icy snow, not too deep, turns out to be nice for teaching LittleBirder to ski a bit.

He loves it.

spider prints

LittleBirder: "Mama, can you put the spider outside so it can make footyprints?"

Mama: "Do you think spiders can make footyprints?"

LittleBirder: "Yup, with their legs."

Christmas Project

On Christmas Day, Grandpére and LittleBirder put together a bird feeder. This is a very cool Christmas present.

The hammer is a present for LittleBirder as well; it came with the kit that Grandpére made.

Beloved Orca

Orca, my Berner, is 11½ years old. She loves the snow as much as ever. In the winter, we call her "Orca Icebiter"

Kingfisher!

I spotted a kingfisher midafternoon today, on our way to get a Christmas tree. It was perched on the branch of a young tree on the shore of the Huntington River, just where Main Road crosses the River, north of Jubilee Farm.

Seemed late in the year for it? But my sister (the Director of the Birds of Vermont Museum) says no, not necessarily. So cool.

snow for skis

LittleBirder has a snow day today. This rather threw my plans of working off, but we played outside in the snow instead. OK, I did chores: shovelling, bringing in wood. Then he got to try his skiis for the first time!

Things to do on the land...