Pinks and Chipper

It always confuses me that my peony blooms so late in the season. When I was a kid, we always took bouquets to the cemetery on Memorial Day, and they were always iris, bridal wreath spirea, and peonies. But here, those three plants don't bloom at the same time at all!

This is just a plain old pink peony. Not my favorite, but it seems to bloom most years now.

Another touch of pink- OK, pinkish-purple, is a bunch of house finches that have been visiting the bird bath. The bad news is that I can't get good pictures of them through the screen. The very good news is that this flexible screen is working really well, and I can keep the deck door open most days.

Also pink- the 'Siskiyou' Primrose in the rock garden is beautiful right now. It doesn't get as tall in my poor soil as it was in the pot when I bought it, but that's actually better for the rock garden. It likes to plant itself all over the place. I'm thinking about whether this might be OK. In the former iteration of this garden there were California Poppies that self-seeded all over, and I just let them come up wherever they wanted. The thing is, they are annuals, so they never took over. This one is perennial and spreads with underground rhizomes, so I think it would take over everthing if I let it go. I would like to get it going in a couple other spaces and confine it to those.

And the chipper? Well, it's not really a chipmunk. It's a thirteen-lined ground squirrel, and I was outside without the good camera, so I had to take its picture with the phone. The phone does not do well with zoomed pix. But I did capture it for you.

In other news: I did all the usual project things, had a Zoom meeting, got groceries, and continued weeding the rock garden. The weather was perfect!

See A Quiet Day at Home

Whose Cute Little Tush?

I haven't shown you one of these for quite a while. They are rather permanent fixtures in my yard. Maggie (dog) was fast enough to catch them, so she kept the population down. I suspect the larger blue racers are also helping with that.

Well, of course, it's a thirteen-lined ground squirrel. Never knew anything about these cute critters until I moved to the Midwest. Although these and chipmunks are both in the Sciuridae family, ground squirrels have longer bodies. Some of their habits are different as well. At any rate, they are all very cute to watch as long as they don't eat my flower bulbs and roots.

And I'm happy to say that the birds have found the birdbath again this year. Terrible picture- the camera won't focus through the screen. But it's one of the finches- house or purple. There were three of them there at one time just a few minutes ago.

Today was too humid for me. I managed to work a little bit on several projects, but not a great deal was accomplished. It's cooling down now, perhaps I'll perk up for a final spurt of energy for the day. Or perhaps not.

See Look Who Woke Up See Birdbath Wars

Birdbath Wars

I've been getting a real kick out of watching the birds in the birdbath. Today this one flew in and settled down for a real bath.

You need to keep in mind that these pictures are taken through a (very) dirty window, and I can't see details until I clean the pictures up later. I originally thought this was a starling.

In a few moments, a robin showed up. I didn't get any pictures of the best scene. The robin divebombed the dark bird and there was a tussle with screeching, but the robin did not get possession of the birdbath. You can see what the combatents thought of each other.

Pretty soon, the robin backed off and just sat on the porch rail as if it were waiting in line for its turn.

The robin flew off and the brown bird casually finished its bath. So, when I could really see these pictures... it's not a starling, it's a juvenile robin! Maybe the adult robin is not its parent? Maybe the adult robin has decided the juvie is grown up enough that it needs to learn how to share? Interesting questions.

This year, the birdbath has for sure been used by phoebes, starlings, the robins, a downy woodpecker, and quite a few of these guys. This is probably a house finch, but it's pretty hard to tell them from purple finches.

I alternated between working on the gardens and writing. A good and productive day.

See Phoebe on Birdbath