Springing along

Things are really moving along this spring and we're hustling to keep up. A package of new bees arrived to replace one hive that didn't survive the winter. It has a distinctive sweet smell and a nervous hum.

 

As I installed the new hive, I noticed the old hive was really large and acting kind of funny. Sure enough, that hive swarmed the very next day and, despite my best effort to woo them back, took off and made a new home in a tall, tall tree. Good luck to them, I say. So I'm holding steady at two hives.

Ole watched the action from the top of this giant pile of compost we had delivered for the garden.

Most vegetables are planted in the garden now; I'm just waiting on warmer weather for a few things (like my precious, precious tomatoes). Here are the sugar snap peas and radishes, already much larger than when this photo was taken and this blog post was started:

First taste of sunshine and fresh air.

Tomatillos headed for the garden.

We've been talking a lot about camping as we prepare for our upcoming weekend camping trip, and I stumbled across a fantastic idea...tent naps! We had a perfect run of two days, so that's a success in my book. As I write, he's restlessly flopping around in the tent set up in his playroom, so it's not a perfect system.

And a quick nod to summery evenings=so wonderful.

Not again!

We heard a hummingbird zipping through the gym the other day, and when we stopped to look we realized it was trapped inside and confused. I hung a feeder and it quickly stopped to drink and drink. Apparently, a trapped hummingbird can starve to death within an hour! 

It must have flown in through the open French doors, but it kept flying up high looking for an escape at the roofline, zipping nervously the whole length of the building back and forth. I figured that since it had a feeder now, it was best to just leave it alone. Besides, there was no way to catch it. We left the doors open overnight figuring it would eventually find the very obvious way out.

But no. It was still fruitlessly searching for an escape the next morning. I hung a second feeder right in the doorway and turned on all the lights. He flew to each chandelier and perched.
By this time I'd done a little research. I had assumed that this was a juvenile hummingbird, maybe a recent fledgling, not yet savvy to the human world. Again, no. It's an adult male Rufous Hummingbird, just clearly not a terribly clever one.

Eventually, he worked his way over toward the door, and casually sipped his way around the feeder. I saw the moment he realized he was outside, 'Oh', and he flitted off into the lilac bush, probably exhausted from his ordeal.
I closed up the gymnasium that afternoon, lest he find himself trapped again, and found this tiny remembrance...a feather.