Jaci Dawn

The first weekend of Summer is almost officially over. We had one nice day. Today, it rained. That’s pretty normal for this corner of the world, but it makes my toes cold and wet. I categorically refuse to wear socks in the summer.

I am trying out this nifty new product. I’m not sure if it has a name or not, but if it does, it’s an Ant Moat. It hangs between the hook and the hummingbird feeder and you fill it with water. In theory, it stops the ants because they can’t swim. Sounds logical and if it works (this feeder is in an area with heavy ant traffic), then I will purchase more of them. I should have washed the label off first, so next time…

This was a spur-of-the-moment purchase. A funky glass bird feeder that is probably prettier than functional, but I filled it and put it on a shepherd’s hook in the backyard. now to see how long iot takes the little birds to find it (it’s much too small to host the big birds – they’ll have to share with the squirrels out front).

Speaking of bird feeding: for three years in a row, I have had zero fortune with growing sunflowers. I’ve never had such a black thumb with such an easy plant to grow, but there you are. This year, my husband decided to not mow down the volunteer sunflowers that sprang up underneath the front yard feeder.

He made that decision after I sprang for six sunflower starts at Portland Nursery, which are also doing quite well. I took this photo before I added the old croquet balls to the yard decor. There are only four croquet balls left from the cheap variety store set we purchased when our kids are little. The brandboys used to roll them down the handicap ramp out back, but now that they live far away, I’m turning the set into yard decor.

I like random yard art. The door knob is one of three that came inside a chest of drawers I purchased at Goodwill. They’re just funky plastic door knobs still attached to part of the door. Inexplicably, someone saved them and I repurposed them to the garden.

The gazing balls are just cheap plastic ones. I positioned them on the roots of a bush that died in my garden. When I dug it out, I decided I liked the shape of the root ball and rather than toss it away, I am using it for yard art.

An old lawn chair becomes support for the Russian Sage. By the time the sage blooms, it will be tall and prone to falling over. The chair fits over it perfectly.

The remains of an old stool become a tomato cage for one of my struggling tomato plants. My wire art hangs from two store-bought tomato cages. And my grapevine is beginning to take over the corner.

We’ll have grapes this year if the birds don’t beat us to them!

Speaking of random yard art, Daphne has taken up residence on my cheap garden bench.

So did the cast iron bird. You can see my bench had an accident. Eventually, I will recycle the bench into yard art as it is cheaper and easier to just purchase a new bench for $40 than it is to find replacement slats. I just have to decide what I want to do with the old bench first.

I bought this at the Farmer’s Market. The artist called it “Bird on a Stick”. She had dozens of the birds & even sold sticks, but I told her I had plenty of sticks in my yard to use.

I did some planting on Saturday: the peppers are staked with old hot-wire stakes. The stakes consit of rebar with a ceramic insulator at the top. I have about 8 of them that I picked up out of an old barn on some property we lived on long ago. They don’t make hot wire stakes like these anymore and I’ve used them for a variety of purposes over the years (Christmas lights, plant stakes, gate stops, temporary fence for horses that I no longer own).

I have no idea why I took a photo of our one and only tree. It’s a dying Lodgepole pine. Two bird feeders and two suet cakes dangle from it. We call it a “Habitat Tree” because it attracts so many birds to our yard. As such, it can’t be cut down. Sadly, it’s completely dead on the north side and slowly dying up the other side. My dad suggested it has a fungus. We know it has tiny black borer beetles. It’s not tall enough to be a threat to our home (the towering Douglas Firs across the street are a bigger threat), so we’ll just let it stay there as long as we can use it for the birds.

This is Earl’s House. Earl is our resident (and brazen) star-nosed mole patriarch. We don’t know how many Earls live in the hole or what Earl’s wife’s name is. Earlene? Chrystal named Earl when I was trying to teach her dog to mole hunt. There will be more blogs about Earl as I am getting ready to wage war with him (humanely, if possible).

War was actually declared by Earl the night before Father’s Day. He came out of his hole while Harvey was standing there, did the little gopher dance from “Caddyshack”, and then retreated into darkness when I tried to point him out to Harvey.

Speaking of Harvey. It’s an on-going battle to keep him in the yard.His last escape attempt was at this gate. He figured out that if he kept jumping on it, it would eventually unhinge and open. Fortunately, I caught him in the act. I stapled a tomato cage (opened and flattened) across the weak point so he’ll stop pushing on it. So far, so good. Another temporary foil until he finds a new weak spot in the yard.

Sometimes I just have to resort to funky with the big dogs. This is my funky “do not pee on this bush” fence. They’ll probably pee on the wires, but they’re still too far away to kill the bush.

Why do we have dogs…?

Which segues into other critters, like snails, slugs and fairies. Here I have the supplies to build a fairy house. A real one, not the sort I make in my studio. The kind that attract real fairies. However, I haven’t done much with it because of the snails and slugs. If I build a hollow, the gastropods will invade it and make it their home. I don’t want to put slug-and-snail bail down inside a fairy house because it’s probably toxic to fairies (not to mention the matter of aesthetics and dead slugs/snails.

I have an idea, but I need to commit it to paper and then visit a hardware store and make a tiny model first. I think a faerie house on stilts with a place underneath to kill slugs and snails? I could post slug bait warning signs for the fairies and the birds wouldn’t be getting into it, either.

Or the dogs.

More on critters: there has been a dearth of these in my yard this summer. We started out strong with the honeybees and bumblebees, but two things have happened that have affected out population. They moved a huge hive that was building outside of a church steeple in early June. My husband said they were relocating them back inside the steeple. All I know is this: the honeybee population in our yard took a dive. It’s starting to come back (I saw six honeybees yesterday).

The other blow was to bumblebees. I still have them in my yard, but it seems like there are far fewer and I’m concerned that what happened in Wilsonville (50,000 bumblebees dead) has happened closer to home. I worry, too, that individuals purchase the insecticide Safari and apply it in their own yards, indiscriminately and because most people think bees, wasps, and hornets are the same thing.

I joined the Xerces Society.

While I was chasing down the honeybees for a photo, this guy kept buzzing me. It’s a young bald-faced hornet. They can be pretty aggressive, but if you don’t get excited and swat at them or you don’t get too close to their hive, you’re usually pretty safe from them. This one definitely let me know how close I could step to the lavender while taking pictures of him. Of course, maybe he was just posing for the lens.

And then there’s the dogs. In a classic move, Harvey, the submissive, hides his treat from Murphy, the domineering. Murphy won’t force the issue (these dogs have never gotten into a fight), but he’ll hover in case Harvey drops the treat.

“Please drop it, Bro!”

“Nope, nope, nope. Yumm.”

And last, a little interlude from Earl the Mole’s cousin: