Tuesday Mutterings

 

I still have to purchase some netting to save the this year's blueberry crop for the humans. 

Our bushes are loaded with immature but healthy looking berries. 

I doubt that the deer are interested in them right now cuz they haven't turned blue. 

Meanwhile, our service-berry bushes are loaded with berries, which have already attracted deer, song birds and cedar waxwings, and the berries have yet to ripen. 

Yesterday a doe came strolling by the sliding-glass door, then stood still, looked around the yard and finally moseyed over to the service berry bush.

She began feasting on berries, seemingly without a care in the world that Bridie was just feet away (Bridie apparently never saw her).  

She was also just about 10 feet from the garage door, so I quietly summoned Bridie inside and carefully stuck my camera out the door.  

The doe was eating berries but noticed my presence.  Soon, a "what to do, where to go" look came over her face.  She even crouched a bit, probably thinking I wouldn't see her. 

I talked to her for a few seconds, and then she decided to trot off. 

Earlier in the day, Bill spotted a fawn out in the south yard, racing around and having a good time. Its mother stood nearby. 

I tried to sneak out the front door and move quietly along the deck, but Mom saw me and summoned her little one toward the south woods.  

I could see her standing behind the dog run and hoped that maybe the fawn would still be playing.  Nope, Mom had told the baby to stay put. 

So, I stared at Mom for a while, and she stared back, eventually leading the baby somewhere further into the woods. 

Last night while Bill was out for his first kayak fishing excursion at Trestle Creek, I fired up the 4-wheeler and took a slow trip around all corners of our woods.

The hope was to spot a fawn, but that was not to be.  Still, the evening ride in the woods made for a pleasant ending to a busy day. 

I'm sure we'll have at least a deer a day to report about for the rest of the summer, and I'm hoping none of those reports involved missing blueberries or chomped-off potato tops. 

In other news, I visited briefly with Gary Finney today.  He was on his way to coffee time with his buddies.  

Gary is excited about our 60th class reunion, and I was able to add to the excitement with news that Ray Greene called me yesterday asking for information. 

Gary wants to know where our classmate and his good friend Paul Munson can be reached, so if anyone reading this post knows his whereabouts, let me know and I'll pass it along to Gary.  

Plus, we reunion-committee folks can make sure Paul knows about the reunion. 

Gary, who moves quickly from subject to subject, also wanted to tease me by saying that he wished he had taken a picture when I had my Harris-Waltz sign in my manure-spreader flower bed last fall. 

Gary and I sit on opposite sides of the political spectrum, but we totally agree on one important guideline:  the constant below-the-belt nastiness and total disrespect coupled with the even more extreme action of shooting people should not be the way we approach our politics. 

"Our mothers didn't teach us to behave like that," he said. 

And, I agreed.  

 

Some new roses and one which played idle last year are filled with buds. 

One has burst open on the bush that took a year off from blooming.  

I have another bush in my fenced-in garden which hasn't bloomed for at least three years, just keeps growing healthy foliage but no flowers. 

Anyone have any idea why this happens and how to fix it?

I was thrilled to tell Bill this morning about my success in bringing some cucumber plants back to life. 

Some did not deal well with being transplanted from the greenhouse.  In fact, some looked like they just gave up right away and died. 

Nonetheless, I kept watering them.  In the past two days they have begun to rise up from the ground, still looking pretty sick, but definitely coming back to life.

So, we give everything its best chance.  

Today is lawn-mowing day, so it's time to get moving. 

Happy Tuesday.