Back on the bike

We're back to our loveliest summer tradition--the after-dinner bike ride down our country road. The blackberries are nowhere near ready yet, but every ride we talk about how we'll pick them when they're ripe.

There are lots of opportunities to get off the bike when we ride:

To show off road rash.

To get a boost above the tall grass.

To show Dad the geocache we found in the crook of this tree. It's a plastic severed foot--it had me a little nervous the first time I spotted it.

The shadows are getting long. It's time to head home.

One last look at that view. What a beaut!

 

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.

Getting growing

Every early spring I aspire to grow all our vegetables from seed and enthusiastically press them into pots of fine soil. I water them and place them in a sunny windowsill. Nearly all of our south-facing windows have an overhanging roof above them, however, and every year I watch my tiny seedlings sprout and reach for a bit of sunlight they never find. They grow ever paler and leggier until they finally collapse in defeat. This year I finally smartened up and set up shelves and lights in the basement. How about that...it really works!

Everything I planted is alive and growing, but the tomatoes are especially robust. We've got Heinz for canning, Sunchocola cherry tomatoes, and Brandywines for slicing. I've transplanted them once into larger pots, but they're almost ready for another size up.

I'm glad they're so happy under the lights because they'll be there for a while. I started them awfully early, and it'll be cold and rainy outside for another two months. Just keep on growing!

Bun Bun's first bike ride

I think she liked it!

The child's gone wild

The weather here has turned shockingly lovely, so much so that I declared yesterday 'Outside Day' complete with lunchtime picnic, lounging in the sunshine, bare feet, dinner from the grill, and all that good stuff. Ole has taken right to it, of course, and by the end of the day was covered in sand and dirt with a black eye and a bloody nose--but no complaints until it was time to come inside. Okay, the injuries sound much worse than they were, but I do think the boy has gone a bit wild.

A tree climber just like his mama!

"Careful," I said drowsily from my sunny blanket.

Even tough guys need a snack break.

The wee baby chicks have become teenagers already, so I moved them to a more spacious home in the gym where they can roam around a bit more but still be safe. They, too, got to enjoy Outside Day in the grass and sunshine. 

And here are a couple photos in the garden where Ole helped to replace a fence post from inside the hole. Muddy muddy muddy!

 

Spy in the sky

Our neighbors stopped by Sunday evening for a visit and brought along their new drone. They just fly it around for fun with the hope of eventually taking some good aerial photos with a GoPro camera attached. This thing is pretty cool, and we were impressed by the flight show.

The goats? Not so impressed.

Expert maneuvering--Dale even knows a few tricks.

So quiet, and it becomes nearly invisible up high.

Now Ole will probably want one.