Wild Roses – their scent is everywhere this morning.
Nature stories, all of which happened this morning:
• The other day I noticed that one of the ‘entrances’ that Henry used to go under the shed no longer had leaves blocking the opening. Some little creature had been cleaning up. I showed it to Don and said ‘Let’s keep an eye out.’ When one groundhog vacates his home, another often moves in. This morning, Don opened the door to make his trek up to the back forty to see the sun rise and there, on the ramp of the shed was a groundhog. Both of them were startled and the groundhog ran under the shed. When I got up Don told me about his encounter, saying it was a big, fat groundhog. Later, as I was sipping coffee, Don called out to me to look out the window and there was the groundhog, eating the grass. At one point he got on his hind legs to munch on some plants (thankfully, by the shed instead of in my garden, but it’s clearly time to keep a vigilant eye out for mischief.) He was last seen on the lilac side of the lawn. We’re pretty sure this isn’t Henry as he seemed a bit too spry. We’re not saying that definitively, but I think Henry would have made an appearance before now. This guy might be our new tenant. I also saw a deer running through the woods beyond the shed.
• Don went for a walk and after I finished what I was reading, I went out to the front porch to sit for a bit on the glider. I heard a loud whirring noise, couldn’t figure out what it was, looked up, and there was a hummingbird dining on my hanging plant.
• I got up, walked over to the garden and a big fat bumblebee was dining on the catmint. One of the biggest I’ve ever seen.
• Don came back. I made our second cup of coffee. We sat on the sofa in the living room. Don said that he saw something running up on the back forty. Maybe it was a cat? A fox? I got up to look, and saw a flash of something running – maybe a dog? If so, it was just a bit bigger than Scoutie had been. I went outside to the Secret Garden to get a peek, thinking if it was dog, it might need rescuing. I saw a large deer standing there placidly, staring at me. That was when I realized that the little animal running was a very young fawn. The fawn was running back and forth, very fast, just like a puppy does. We’d see it tear around a corner, disappear, then switch directions. Don used the word ‘gamboling.’ It was extraordinary. I’ve seen lots of young deer around here, but I’ve never seen one that young playing like that, gleefully running back and forth while Mom waited nearby. Oh my heavens, it just made my day. I’ll treasure that image for a long time.
I am always appreciative of where we live but never more so than on a morning like this. It’s going to be hot and humid later today, but this morning has been a gift.
Stay safe.
Happy Saturday.
What a joyful morning for both of you, may the rest of your day be as wonderful.
Take Care,
Kaye
Thank you, Kaye! Stay safe.
Gamboling! Now there’s a word not seen nor used enough. A lovely morning, indeed. And those wild roses! So beautiful, I can only try to imagine their perfume—mmmmmmm.
It’s really lovely, that scent. Thanks, Shanna! Stay safe.
Beautiful…lovely morning. I don’t usually work with the grandsons on weekends, but they spent all day yesterday in landscaping with dad…or several hours…they asked me this am if I was available. We had such fun…working but fun…it is hot here today already. The deck door is shut, and the air conditioning is running…I will do projects, read, do puzzles…nice day…the boys told me they have storms and rain today-good for the new flower/shrub garden….have a good good day today. brenda b
You too, Brenda. I haven’t yet turned on the a/c but it will be soon! Stay safe!
wow … i wouldn’t have guessed those beautiful flowers were wild roses. maybe it’s the stamens? or the petals don’t seem to overlap like other roses i’ve seen? or maybe i just need to get out more?!?
love your morning … that you and don could see the fawn run and play with its watchful mother nearby (oh, the freedom of innocence and the power of love … making me cry right now) , the bee, hummingbird, groundhogs …!
and i am loving my morning. this is kind of embarrassing to admit, but it’s almost 9:30 and i am still in bed. i am calling it “self care”. :)
also, your use of the words “nature stories” instantly brought to my mind some book titles … “brighty of the grand canyon”, “misty of chincoteague” (and all the rest of marguerite henry’s books), “born free” … i always went for books about animals when at the library and am grateful to have some books from my childhood … and for my childhood and my family!
hope the rest of your day is as good as its beginning!
stay safe and well, claudia, don and everyone!
kathy in iowa
Kathy, stay in bed! Hope you’re feeling better soon x
I second that, kathy!! How are you feeling??
My daughter read the Marguerite Henry books. How she loved Misty of Chincoteague!!
hej, chris k in wisconsin!
thanks very much!
i am not at 100% yet, but overall feel much better …
fever, chills and a very scary headache (that lasted two weeks) are gone, i’m eating more than cereal and can now smell food again. my energy level is at “sloth”, but i’m not complaining about any of it because so many people have/had it so much worse.
how are you? hope you have been able to see your family and hold your granddaughter again and that you’re all safe and well.
where i live now is quite small (500 sf) and i don’t have room for a bookcase so those books i mentioned from my childhood are put away in a bin, but they are easy to get to so one of these days i’m going to re-read them!
thanks again.
hope you enjoy the rest of the weekend!
kathy in iowa
hej, dee dee.
thank you so much!
i am feeling much better, especially compared to may 17 until just a couple days ago. no fever now, i can smell things like dill pickles again and the worst headache i’ve ever had is gone. my energy level is very low, but all-in-all, much better.
and i did stay in bed for another hour this morning. :)
how are you? hope you and your family are well and safe and having a nice weekend.
thanks again, dee dee.
kathy in iowa
I’m glad you’re practicing self-care, Kathy. Good. And make sure you keep doing it!
I loved all of those books as well. They were a big part of my young life at the Bookmobile.
Stay safe!
thanks much, claudia!
i will definitely keep taking it easy, not over-doing stuff. hope you and everyone else does, too … life is scary and extra-hard right now!
i know things will get better. i hope you all do that, too.
i loved those books, the library at my grade school, the city library … and i especially love my parents for everything, including encouraging my brother, sister and me to read, helping us with school, taking us to the library and being the best role models. and i am so happy that my little great-niece and great-nephew (the two that are old enough and able) love to read. :)
hope you and don are having a nice night and enjoy the rest of the weekend.
thanks again.
kathy in iowa
xoxo
Our Provincial flower here in Alberta, Canada is the Wild Rose, which is just the same as your wild white rose, but pink. Just starting to bloom on our property as well. LOVE the scent!
We’ve had a family of deer hanging out in our woods. As long as they don’t munch on our flowers, we’re quite happy to have them reside here. And we seem to have gained a cat that we’ve affectionately names “Oliver” ~ he lounges on the deck (until we come out) and on the tiny veranda on my potting shed. Hoping he stays away from my gardens too as I don’t wish to have to deal with his potty habits! Hummingbirds have arrived here too. Once the rain clears after the weekend, I’ll hang up our feeder. We have bird seed hanging in the front and we always put the hummingbird feeder on the back deck.
Have a great weekend Claudia!
X Chy
We always have deer on the property, but I’ve never seen a fawn this young, this close to the house. Enjoy your hummingbirds, Chy! Stay safe.
We’ve been having some strange weather patterns over here. It’s been unseasonably warm throughout most of April and May but the last few days have turned very cold and wet. Last night we had hailstorm, I switched the heating back on and went to bed with a hot water bottle!
It’s lovely to see your garden and its wildlife. We’ve had a couple of hedgehogs visiting at dusk. Not so welcome was the mouse I spotted. My next door neighbour said she had seen it too in her garden. It wasn’t a tiny field mouse either. It gave me such a fright, I was watering my plants on the patio, just after dark when I saw something about eye level on the house wall near the patio door. I thought it was a small bat at first, I don’t know which of us moved fastest! In more than forty years, I’ve never seen mice nearby so I bought some humane traps which allow the mouse to be captured unharmed and then you’re advised to release them in a woodland setting at least a mile away.
Anyway, touch wood the traps won’t be necessary as it/they seems to be gone. I would hate for it to get into the house.
Happy Saturday
We’ve had the same changeable weather patterns here since at least March. It sounds like the weather is erratic everywhere right now.
Mice are a part of life here in the country. We do our best, but everyone has to deal with them!
Stay safe, Dee Dee.
This sounds like the most perfect day. A little bit of heaven in your world during a time when we so badly need it.
So thankful. I needed it desperately. So did Don.
Stay safe, Jeanie.
Isn’t nature wonderful?!! Lots of rain here in OB this early am!! Delightful! So rare. Our yard is singing
Enjoy your outdoor life this weekend!!
Oh wonderful! Don and I used to run outside and do a dance when it rained in Kensington. Especially when the extremely rare thunderstorm came. Enjoy, Priscilla! Stay safe.
Last weekend when my daughter stopped by, we were walking through the yard and we saw the largest bee we had ever seen. We both at first wondered what it was!!
The Peonies have opened and when hubs & I were outside watering this morning, their beautiful scent was everywhere. I only wish they lasted longer. It looks like we may have some residual rains from Christobel on Tues/ Wed, so they will likely be finished off at that time.
All you needed was the bluebirds to fly in and bring your smock and place it over your shoulders! Oh, what a beautiful morning you had!
My peonies haven’t opened but I only have two buds this year! I think it’s because of the late freeze and snow we had. That bizarre weather also impacted the lilac bloom. Sigh.
We did have a beautiful morning and I’m very grateful. Stay safe, Chris.
You described a perfect morning. Love all of wild life…..it makes me forget the pandemic and life seem normal. Haven’t started my Wodehouse book yet. It’s next in line. Wanted to share an author with you. William G. Tapply is dead but I’ve read all his Brady Coyne novels. He is a lawyer and is always involved in a murder. I’ve enjoyed him as much as Connellys Harry Bosch character. Have a blessed weekend. Patty McDonald
Thanks so much for the tip, Patty! I appreciate it. Stay safe!
Oh, I would have loved to have seen that fawn gamboling. Love your animal stories and I hope sometime to see a picture of your new tenants. I too like to sit quietly and watch what happens out back of the house. Between the birds and the critters there’s usually always something to watch.
Take care,
Kay
There is. I find it more fascinating than anything on a screen! Stay safe, Kay.
Thank you for sharing your wondrous Saturday morning.
And to think the wild roses have scent as well as beauty … ah, nature; it’s ALL wondrous! We are creatures just like the deer and groundhogs, bees and hummingbirds; needing a dose of the outdoor world with sun and even rain. It’s do-able in other ways, yet I think more challenging to utilize our precious senses when stuck indoors, so it’s nice to have a mix of inside/outside, even if it’s brightness from a window or new growth of a little potted violet on the sill over the kitchen sink.
Inside/outside is what’s keeping me sane at the moment! Enjoy your outside as well, Vicki. Stay safe!
Was glad to have your well-written and soothing visual imagery of today’s blog post when feeling a little sad about the anniversary of the D-Day invasion at Normandy. (I always felt a need to visit that part of France when younger, then never did.) I was saying to my husband that it doesn’t seem to get any easier when thinking about my uncle, just in his mid-20s and already a father at the time … with him in The Second Wave and on those beaches (and to think he stayed silent and never discussed it, which is why I have to understand why he smoked like a chimney and fell victim to a gambling addiction; clearly his own brand of coping mechanisms). He was a loving family man, good to his employees, a friend to so many; loved his dogs and his children … and me. I miss him so much and it will always be an ache that we lost him almost 50 years ago, when he was only age 52 (heart attack). He survived D-Day and then six months later (and likely unbelievably battle-weary), also had to fight in The Battle of The Bulge; and, by the time he finally got home to the U.S. for good, he’d served from 1940-45.
My husband and I were talking this morning of how our boomer generation won’t forget the significance of June 6 because our fathers were WWII veterans, but the day will come, with all the remaining WWII vets gone (and then us with their first-person stories gone with us), that the generations who follow won’t know of June 6 unless they’re a student of history and can read a book about it. I guess it’s the way of all wars. Anyway, just thinking of this today, and I know these dates mark the memories for you, too, Claudia, because you’ve spoken of your own father and his service to country. Brave men (and women) of the 20th century.
Ironic that Trump’s website brags about being anti-Antifa. Antifa doesn’t really exist as a group, but it stands for anti-fascist. So if he’s anti-anti fascist, then he’s anti-D-Day, right? And anti-WWII. Because we were there to fight and defeat fascism.
Sigh.
I got to reading the other night about some of DT’s investments and lawsuits. (Have you ever read what went down with his purchase of Mar-a-Lago?) Red flags (as in warning signs) waving, sentence after sentence. Wow. And it led me to also read about his father which in turn led to even more questions. Wow again. Anyway, I hadn’t known that DT’s grandfather died in the U.S. 1918 pandemic (influenza). Just makes you think how any thought of a big epidemic might strike a grandson, the family having suffered such tragic loss in its past. That the grandson would be wide awake with any such threat in 2020. You’d think it would be high on his radar.
I did know about his grandfather – that information came out at the start of the pandemic.
Of course, T is a narcissist, so he doesn’t really care – in the end – about how his grandfather died. When we think he might think like a normal person, we are mistaken. He is a malignant narcissist and he is simply not capable of either compassion or empathy.
Yeah, I saw a very-credentialed commentator I like who was interviewed on one of the TV news channels and she said Trump is simply not ‘conversant’ on any topic but the economy because business is the only thing he really knows or can understand (and, I feel I can add, MANIPULATE), such that when it comes to racial injustice, saving the Earth from global warming, a national health crisis with such grievous loss to so many families as their loved ones succumb to Covid, etc (so many ‘etc’s’), it’s all otherwise his ‘weak’ suit, so he steers clear.
And what was the headline today in, was it the Washington Post(?); something about him changing some law (I guess lifting a ban) to where it’s easier now to hunt bear cubs and baby wolves (I didn’t get if this was confined to Alaska and/or elsewhere; I need to read further when I can stomach it, but hunters allowed to lure hibernating bears and then go kill the mother and babies in the dens with headlamps, or shoot swimming caribou from a boat [some of that I think is allowed to the indigenous people, I’m not sure] but this was more specific to our national parklands, naturally a ban that compassionate President Obama had put in place to protect wildlife; conservancy … I feel like it’ll take Biden’s entire presidency of eight years to reverse all the damage Trump has caused in half that amount of time).
It’s not only his weak suit, he doesn’t have any empathy. xo Stay safe!
Not much pleases me more than hearing/reading about someone really caring about and enjoying nature and their surroundings. Thank you. We too had a momma and fawn in the back yard eating mulberries along the woodline. Beautiful, until they munch my hosta and azaleas.
Have a wonderful evening!
They generally stay away from my hostas. But last year we had a young, rather daring deer, who chomped on them. Stay safe, Kelly.
Here in Oz we are in a very cold spell. It is so cold at the beginning of this Winter. I am having to put on more clothes than I usually do with the cold. Sadly no wild animals around us as we live in a suburb, although a very green and lovely garden suburb. So, it is lovely to read about your morning’s activities and the beginning of a hot day. Even though it is cold, our vege garden is growing quite well and we are eating quite a bit from the garden. Flowers can’t be eaten, although we do have some flowers in the garden.
It was lovely to read of your morning as it is so different to the life we are living each day in Oz. However, we do see lots of lovely and not so lovely birds. We have white Sulphur Crested Cockatoos and white Corellas. Both of these can be destructive – eating fruit and even attacking wood on houses. However, they are big beautiful birds. Then we have Eastern Rosellas who are the colour of the rainbow and so pretty. Sometimes we see Doves which are lovely. Then we have Minors which are aggressive to other birds chasing them as if they own the garden. I often yell at them, “This is my place and not yours”, when I see them chasing little birds away. We also have 3 Magpies who love to hang around when we are working in the garden as they love to eat worms. Sometimes I give them small cut up pieces of meat which they ‘kill’ before they eat.
Meant to say no gambolling here in our neck of the woods, but lots of flitting about. Also the Minor birds are often called Noisy Minors which adequately describes another of their terrible behaviour.
xo
I would love to see the rather exotic birds you have, Robyn! They sound beautiful! Stay safe.
Claudia, what a special gift you were given in seeing that baby and mama. Precious, although someone has been munching my hollyhocks! No no. My Don was taking grass clippings to our “back 40” and walked right up to a beautiful red fox. He said he didn’t know who was startled more. We’ve seen them early in the mornings on the road, but never so up close and personal. Our orioles have flown back to “Baltimore” and now we are graced with the aerial dance of the hummingbirds. Isn’t Nature the perfect remedy for us? Take care.
We’ve had foxes around here, but I haven’t seen one in a while. Nature is absolutely the perfect remedy, Penny! Stay safe.
Well I was thinking yay if you rescue a dog you might finally have a dog if you keep it. But a deer is nice to watch. Hey you guys might get a kick out of Chuck the ground hog on youtube. so cute and look at his garden. Might be an idea for you.
Thanks for the tip, Erika. Stay safe!
What joy!! It sounds like Snow White, where all the woodland animals are happy and peaceful and enjoying the summer. So glad you and Don got to see the show. I had a lovely surprise when I woke up this morning (Sunday) and looked out my bedroom window. Overnight the Mountain Laurel had burst into bloom and there was a fluffy blanket of white peeping thru the ferns and trees. Just the other day, I’d seen from the kitchen that there were buds. As you know, they don’t last long but during the few weeks they are in bloom, they are just gorgeous and we have a few clusters around the property. I hope they draw bees, but I don’t know about that. Someday I’ll get around to planting a bee garden (or asking a gardening friend). Today it’s clear and bright but windy here, doesn’t look humid. I’ll be on your garden (thanks for offering to share) with a book if anyone calls. LOL. Have a lovely day.
Oh, that Mountain Laurel must be beautiful! It’s a gorgeous day here, Nora. I hope it is there, as well. Stay safe!