A Living Bird Display with Squirrels

 

I kept imagining a house where one windowed section would jut out into the garden, bushes, and trees. It was a good way to add up the costs and fall asleep.

The answer began with giving the unused living room couch to someone else and moving the coffee table to the empty space. That opened the living room windows up with the curtain pulled aside almost 100%.

I removed hummingbird equipment and added some large and small bird feeding baskets. The recliner chair is right in front of biggest and best window. Charlie Sue enjoys watching the birds and squirrels, mostly ignoring us.

Some regulars are:

Male and female cardinals.

Blue jays.

Red-bellied Woodpeckers.

Goldfinches and common finches.

Grackles.

Starlings.

A Time To Print and A Time To Water

The wind is blowing steadily across the gardens, so I decided to water the front rose garden and the two backyard gardens. Rain is expected Wednesday, but I want the newcomers to have enough water. Yes, I am watering weeds - a few new Joe Pye weeds, some butterfly weeds and milkweeds. 

People took milkweed for granted, even though it is the only plant for hosting Monarch butterflies. Now people urge gardeners to plant milkweed and other butterfly friendly plants. I am happy to comply with their wishes. 

My mother brought home some milkweed from the streets of New Ulm, gave orders for securing a big glass jar, and proceeded to feed them until the jade coffins with golden nails released new Monarch butterflies.

I had some time on my hands, waiting for the water-hose changeover, so I published a book, the circulation small but appreciated. Now people can design and publish a hardcover, full-color book while watering the garden. I like Lulu.com for that.

The Creation Garden Emerging

Blue-green Humpback Whale Hostas. The ribbing is intense, as Prince Charles would say. 

The rain let up today, with some mist to remind us it could continue. Rainwater continued down the sloping front yards for a long time, especially those with no mulch. Ranger Bob gave me a truckload, and I used most of it before the rain. Wood mulch absorbs the rain, and the rotting wood feeds the soil, holding water back and in the soil.

Creation is all around us and often not noticed.
Who did this? - John 1:3 - The Logos.

Roses love lots of rainwater, so our old and new ones leafed out and built buds ready for blooming. The bonanza of usable nitrogen also greened up the other plants and sent them out of the ground:

1. Joe Pye Weed
2. Bee Balm
3. Poke Weed (free bird feeders in the backyard)
4. Lilies 
5. Calla Lilies
6. Violets
7. Wild Strawberries
8. Dandelions (an herb used by Hummers, good for the soil, great for its leaves as salad, and good for a coffee substitute in the roots - I'll pass on that)
9. Mountain Mint and Cat Mint
10. Clethra leafed out, Hostas everywhere.

I laboriously listed them because they are great to see popping up as the Daffodils are fading away, far too slowly.

If something is growing up without having much value, I let it grow a while and cut it off at the ground level. Deep roots are good for the soil, soil creatures, and fertility in general. Some plants, like Spirea are obnoxious, so they get dug out. 

Our next weeding will be the wild roses blooming early and then snagging gardeners the rest of the summer. 

Joe Pye is definitely a bully plant, positive and negative. Based on Carbon Cowboy information, I could grow them just for soil and drainage improvement. On the bullying side, they easily dominate most plants, but they can be cut back. On the positive side, they attract Hummers, Butterflies, and bees.

The two backyards got dog-patchy for various reasons, so they are being revised this year. Last fall, Howard removed and mulched over the former Triple Crown blackberry patch, aka Jackson's Folly. I started some Clethra there last fall and now they are like tiny sticks with tiny flowers. 

A few Joe Pye will fill in the two backyard gardens and allow space for future bulbs.

Last fall, Dottie removed the Spirea and moved the Hosta mostly to the backyard, under the formerly jungle-like green fence. Some Hostas burst into perfect form with less sunlight.

Hostas seem to be readily eaten when they are tiny, tasty, crunchy, appealing. However, the critters left a few behind, so small ones are gathering momentum in the front yard.

Elderberries are prized for their medicinal value.

 Elderflowers are covering with beneficial insects, then become Elderberries.

Blackpoll Warbler Can Fly Across the Atlantic, Non-Stop

Tiny songbird can fly the Atlantic, scientists confirm

Blackpoll warbler songbird, which weighs 4.2 ounces, can fly 1700 miles non-stop from New England to South America

A diminutive songbird weighing the equivalent of just three teaspoons of sugar can fly over the north Atlantic, scientists have said, resolving a 50-year mystery.

Tipping the scale at a mere 4.2 ounces (12 grammes), the white-throated, black-capped blackpoll warbler (Setophaga striata) migrates each autumn from New England to South America.

For half a century, scientists have debated whether the birds fly non-stop over the ocean or take breaks on land to carry out this marathon flight.

Backpack flight recorders, attached to 40 of the birds, have now provided "irrefutable evidence" that they do it all in one go, the scientists reported in the journal Biology Letters.

^{A blackpoll warbler fitted with a miniaturised light-sensing geolocator (PA)}

The geolocators, weighing only 0.02 ounces, found that the birds completed an astonishing non-stop flight of between 1,410-1,721 miles.

This was the distance from their summer homes in Vermont and Nova Scotia to Puerto Rico, Cuba and the Greater Antilles islands, where they made landfall before continuing to northern Venezuela and Colombia.

The devices were able to track the birds' flight path but were not big enough to transmit the data in real time.

Three devices with the stored information were recovered for analysis from the Vermont birds, and two from the Novia Scotia group.

Albatrosses, sandpipers and gulls are famous for their ultra-long flights - but they have broad, long wings and can settle on water if they get tired or blown off course.

For a forest bird no bigger than a tennis ball, which would drown if it touched the sea, to do such a feat is a wonder, the researchers said.

"For small songbirds, we are only just now beginning to understand the migratory routes that connect temperate breeding grounds to tropical wintering areas," said Bill DeLuca at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.