They're Back!

Every year we wait and watch for the birds that flew south last Fall to come back.

One by one I count them off: brown thrasher, catbird, house wren, chipping sparrow.... and the latest: the hummingbird!

A spiderweb ship

A little rain, a little sun, a little more rain - our weather swings back and forth. This morning I found a little spiderweb ship all covered in water drops, sailing along in the pine. If you enlarge the image, you can see the sails.

After the rain

Look at all that wet green steaming in the morning sun - is it the rainforest?

Or just tropical Indiana?

Splish splash

Yesterday and today it has been raining. When it stopped for a minute I went down to look at the pond. The water is way up on the rocks along the shore. In the water I spied some very big tadpoles.

You can see that the water is full of maple seeds too.
On top of the water I saw one of last year's baby turtles, a little bit more grown-up than last year.

Does it look as if the pond has green rug on top of the water?

That's algae covered with pollen and mulberry flowers.

I am going to wade in and pull some of it out when it stops raining.

Survivors

Last Fall, when the weather began to get cold, I took pots of plants inside to be warm during the winter. Some of them sat in the bedroom window where the sun comes in. Some of them sat in the breezeway where not so much sun comes in.

Now it's getting warm, even at night, and the plants can go back outside. Some of them didn't survive the winter even inside in the warmth.
Some survived.

Some of them are only a shadow of their last summer selves.

and a few look just as fine as they did last year.
And now I can clean up the breezeway and the bedroom!

Nothing but Blue Skies...

Today is brought to you by the color BLUE.

Inspired by Bluebird blue:

Blue skies

sky blue

Periwinkle blue

Bluebell blue

bells of blue .

A tree is a home for...

What lives in trees?

Are you thinking about birds? Squirrels? Insects? Sure, all of those live in trees.

You might not think that a tree can be a home for a garden, but just look: These dandelions are nestled in the crevices of the old maple tree.
Way up over my head, I see a bush growing out of a place where the trunk splits.
It's a honeysuckle bush thriving up there.
I'll bet if you climbed up in that maple you'd find even more plants growing on the tree.