Mockingbird Hill Cottage

Mockingbird Hill Cottage

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The Garden, Deer & Gypsy Moth Caterpillars

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Boy, the plants in the gardens are really taking off. Except for yet another phlox that I caught a young deer chomping on at 5:30 this morning. Darn it! It will come back but it was one of the few that hadn’t been chomped on the first time around. It will be a case of delayed gratification.

But back to “taking off” –

There’s the Annabelle hydrangea right next to the spirea. Lots and lots of blooms this year. And the roses to the right are also blooming.

We are having an outbreak of gypsy moth caterpillars in our area. They are everywhere. And they’re eating all the leaves on one of my oaks, and most likely on another one up in the woods. It’s terrible! There are all sorts of posts on our local FB pages about them and I guess you can really see the devastation up on the mountains. They’re also attacking rose bushes (I removed one from a bush the other day, but you can’t touch them directly or they’ll give you a rash.) And willows. And pines. So far, all of my maples seem safe, but damn, it’s horrendous! We’ve lived here nearly 19 years and I’ve never seen anything like it. There are all sorts of “remedies” but they don’t work consistently and many of oaks around here are very old and very tall and it’s impossible to get to the caterpillars because they start at the top of the tree and work their way down. I see them on the side of the house and one dropped on my head a few weeks back. I’m hoping we’ll soon see the end of the devastation. And I’m praying our young oaks survive this. Supposedly, they start to change into moths in mid to late June. Metamorphosis is coming. But in the meantime…

Be gone!

Harper in a new ensemble made by Hilly Rags, who lives in England. I have not been buying clothes for the girls, but every once in a while, when I have a little extra and something pops up, I treat myself. I have another dress by a different maker coming in the next week or two.

She looks darned cute, doesn’t she?

Stay safe.

Happy Wednesday.

 

Spirea Running Amok

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Our other spirea is blooming. It will bloom again later in the summer.

Okay. You’ve seen a closeup of the flowers.

Let’s step back and take a look at what this tiny little bush that I planted a couple of years after we moved in has become.

You can see the Annabelle hydrangea behind it. I planted them rather close together, having no idea how large they might become.

Let’s get an even better view:

This year, it has gone crazy. I need to cut it back, but I’ll wait until the end of summer. When I realized how much it had grown, the flower buds were beginning to show themselves and I didn’t have the heart to do any pruning. (And I secretly like seeing how far it will go.)

Cripes, it could take over the whole lawn!

It was a quiet weekend here. I did some mowing on Saturday – the corral – and I’ll mow the back forty later today. Don was at a gig during the afternoon yesterday. I do miss him when he’s gone. Everything is more interesting and fun when he’s by my side. But one thing is sure, I accomplish a whole lot more when he’s away. I did laundry, swiffered, vacuumed, and dusted. I watched part of a ball game and the men’s singles at the French Open. And I worked on a puzzle that is promising to be very difficult. A challenge!

It got much cooler yesterday and it seems to be the same today. I’m going to mail a package at the post office, drop some books off at the library, and stop at the nursery to find a replacement for a porch plant that died. Why it did, I don’t know, as I plant it every year. Just one of those things.

Then I’ll mow.

Stay safe.

Happy Monday.

 

Catalpa Blossoms and a Puzzle

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We had a huge storm yesterday afternoon, which sent some of these blooms down to the ground, but thankfully, there are still lots of flowers on the catalpa tree.

What a wild storm – rain and wind and a crazy intensity. It lasted about 30 minutes.

Here’s Maeve examining a catalpa blossom. She was quite taken by the size of the flowers.

I finished the puzzle:

It’s another Mucha and it’s called Reverie (Dream.)

I have run out of Mucha puzzles as I’ve done all of them, Sigh. So I ordered a Klimt and that should be arriving today.

We are now attempting to live without a microwave. I’ve never cared for the look of them and we were using the smallest and least instrusive one we could find, but it started to rust inside and then it misbehaved and smelled funny and we felt it was no longer safe. We really only use it rewarm coffee and make oatmeal, both of which we can do with Stella, so we added it to our pile of crap that needs to go to the bigger dump in the next town and we are now microwave-free. And we have more counter space, which we love.

I’m headed into the last section of The English Girl. by Daniel Silva. I’m not sure what I’ll read next. I have three books on hold in our library system that are being released this month but it usually takes a while to get them.

After so much groundhog activity last summer – remember all of the babies? – we have seen one groundhog a few times. Once, near the house, and once by the shed. And another time scampering across the back forty. That’s it. Maybe they had enough of life on this property and needed to move elsewhere. We do see bunnies and birds and chipmunks – and deer, of course. I loved those groundhog babies, but wrangling them all day long was a bit of a pain.

Okay.

Stay safe.

Happy Friday.

Lambs Like to Party

Lambs Like to Party

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