Living on the edge
For the past few days I have been working on assembling a sample quilt top for a class that I will begin teaching at the end of September. Here is the strip set ready to be cut into shapes for the quilt top. Marbles the snowman is moderating the process.
The top assembled and ready for embellishing. I will be “fussy cutting” some frogs, dragonflies, and flowers from scraps of the focus fabric and appliqueing them onto the plain part of the quilt top.
My birthday gift from my sister just arrived. She is a ceramic artist and this is one of her best yet! And her subject is one of my favorite things.
Ahhhhh……. a cool refreshing fountain!
t’s the end of August and the hummingbirds are busy stocking up on nectar for energy for their long flight to the southern USA and beyond. Earlier this week I caught a male hummingbird, by sight, on the deck but he wouldn’t stay still long enough for a photo. However this female, that I call Hummy, has been feeding all morning and isn’t scared by my opening the door for a closer photo. Some of the pictures are thru the glass doors (two panels as a matter of fact) so they are somewhat distorted. But the three at the plant on the metal hangar I took with the lens sticking out of the open screen. Hummy wasn’t the least bit scared of the human with the camera as she was busy gathering from newly open blooms in the bright sun of this beautiful Connecticut Friday!
Depending upon the angle and what Hummy is doing, sometimes you almost cannot see her wings, but look at her cute little feet curled up under her body as she hovers and drinks from this flower.
Then Hummy went to the ice plant — a bit of a surprise as she doesn’t usually mess with the yellow flowers at all. But perhaps she was just doing a taste test as she prepared to take a break and sit for a bit. It’s funny, but I never think of hummingbirds as sitting down and perching on something like a normal bird, but they do.
Tasting the yellow flower —
Heading up to the rest stop —
Taking a much-deserved break —
So, since I wasn’t getting anything done in the house anyway, with watching the deck constantly with camera in hand, I decided to go out to the other side of the house to capture the “frog of the day” photo. This one is a female and she’s really flattened herself out on this lily pad, enjoying the day and keeping cool and wet in the water on top of the lily pad.
And, last but not least, another pond-side member of Mother Nature’s family — this toad. It is a nightly ritual with me (and sometimes hubby goes along or goes in my place) to go out and say goodnight to the fish and check the area around the pond. A week ago on Friday night, we went out together and hubby spotted this toad backed up into the house right under the front door. He too was not a bit concerned by us going in and out stepping right over him. He also didn’t seem to mind when I got out my camera and took his picture. But then again, maybe he did mind — that kind of looks like a “glare in my general direction” on his face.
Here’s Toady —
I was on the lower patio this weekend, stretched out on a hammock with a good book and warm sun on my legs. I could hear water splashing delightfully in the fountain and could look to my right and see the sparkle as the water fell from the second tier into the bottom. Looking up to the main deck, the plants on the deck railing were spilling over the edge. And my thoughts were, “What an oasis this is!”. And I didn’t have to drive miles using expensive gasoline or go thru security at an airport to get there — this is my own back yard. How often are we so busy fixing and planting and weeding and working and repairing and …… and not taking the time for enjoying. So I did quite a bit of that this weekend — some of the work too — but definitely some of the relaxing. What a wonderful place to be!
Today’s water lily — a new bloom on the white plant.
The two adult frogs in our pond have successfully brought at least 5 new frogs into the world around our pond. They are distinct not only in size, but in their markings, so they are relatively easy to tell apart. However, my naming convention is lacking a bit of originality. So here are Number One —
And Number Two —
And on the other side of the pond our newest water lily is blooming. It is absolutely beautiful.
Our big white fish with red lips, Hotlips, is gone from the pond. We came back from our vacation to find that sometime during the week something got to him and removed him from the pond. I searched carefully when we got back and more thoroughly when I was working in the pond over the weekend, trimming the waterlilies. So, we no longer have our gentle white fishie. So sad. And, of course, since we don’t know what got him, we don’t know how much in danger the rest of the fish are. I’m keeping a careful watch and trying to make several appearances at pond side each day discouraging the local hawk if that’s what it was. However, I cannot stay outside all night, so the fish are pretty much on their own then. The photo below is the remaining four “big guys” and the little ones are in there too. Hubby gave me a new camera for my birthday, so as soon as the battery was charged, I went straight out to the pond to capture some fish and frog photos. Unfortunately, it’s about to rain so the light is kind of dim. Frog photos to come soon — we’ve had a population explosion and can find at least 5 small/young frogs at the pond.
It looks like at least one of the tadpoles escaped the hungry mouths of the fish while it was in the pond and we now have a new young frog on the pond. She is small enough to actually sit on a lily pad — how froglike! (The adults, Phinneas, a.k.a. Gurk, and Phyllis are too big and would sink the lily pads if they tried to sit on ithem). She is quite “jumpy” and not nearly as tame as the two adult frogs. If you go anywhere near her, she leaps up into the air and lands in the pond with a big splash. But, I managed to git a little close to her today with the camera for this photo. Welcome — no name yet — “froggie”.
It’s a beautiful day today here in Connecticut. These are the summer days the our area is famous for. Warm and sunny, not too hot, not too cold — as Goldilocks would say, “Just right!”. We parked the car in a lot in town and walked to and from church today and after lunch at a local cafe (out on their deck) we decided to spend some time beside our pond. The fish seemed to enjoy our being out there as they swam around near the surface of the pond biting at the bubbles that were floating around on top from the waterfall. There are several plants blooming right now so the camera came out and I photographed one of the floating water hyacinths and caught a few of the fish near the top. If you look carefully at the photo with the fish, you can see at least one small orange one — this year’s crop of baby fish. He seems to be a daredevil, spending most of his time right in front of the skimmer that contains the pump. The water is moving pretty good there and I am concerned he will be sucked in — but he is not afraid. How do I come up with these fish names?—- well this guy has just been named “Evel Knievel” but we’ll probably just call him “EK” for short.
You know your deck needs repair when a Carolina wren pair build a nest and raise five babies in one of the support beams. About a month ago, I was astounded to find a male Carolina wren trying to build a nest in a support beam of our upper deck. He stuffed the cavity in the beam full of “nest” and then sat on a plant post or my flag pole and sang and sang his song trying to attract a mate.
The next thing I knew, I saw him bringing food to another wren that was sitting on the nest. Then a few days later, both adult wrens were busily bringing worms, bugs, moths etc. to the cavity in the beam. And from that cavity you could hear the high-pitched chirping of what turned out to be five baby Carolina wrens. The adults’ songs were beautiful and became more and more loud as they brought food, but sat away from the nest and sang before they brought the food to the nest. In the photos below you can see an adult with what looks like a spider and the babies being fed. The older and bigger the babies became, the longer the adults sang before they brought the food.
On the day I took all these photos (July 17) the adults really seemed to be trying to coax the babies off the nest as they brought food but sat away and sang and chirped a very long time before actually taking the offering up to the nest. I was up early and in my office and didn’t check on the nest until 10 am today — and all the baby birds have fledged. And I missed it! The nest was only a few feet outside my patio door and I’m not sure the adults would have fledged the babies if I had been there so close, so perhaps it was a good thing I was down in my office below. But now the deck is so quiet — no activity and no wren-song right outside my door.
Gardening, particularly working in flower gardens is one of my favorite things. For some reason I am a bit behind in getting everything planted and am now putting annual flowering plants here and there where the property needs a bit of color. Last Sunday, Hubby and I took the garden tractor and wagon down to the bottom of the drive and worked on the very steep flower bed there. I planted some impatiens and hubby did some bush trimming around the mail1313box. All-in-all a much improved driveway entrance. We don’t really own the property down there, just have an easement for the drive, but no one else does anything, so we try to keep it looking nice. We came back up to the top of the drive and started each working on his/her own projects. I decided that the old wheel barrow at the bend in the driveway needed to have some plants put in it and started digging up the soil. Apparently a yellow jacket had made his home there and was none too happy to have me rooting around in it. He buzzed around and I swatted at him and this battle went on for a bit and he eventually flew away. But, apparently, not too far, as suddenly he swooped in from somewhere, landed on my right hand, and stung me through a very tough gardening glove. Ouch! — or some such utterance! I took some benadryl immediately and went back to work with hubby instructed to watch for any weird symptoms showing on me and to listen for further calls of help. Well, it’s Wednesday and my hand is still swollen and when I use it, gets even more so. It’s a constant battle with Mother Nature around here.