Empty Nest Syndrome

My baby birds have flown away. For three days they sat perched on the rim of the nest - and on top of each other - without flying. Yesterday morning, I put the dogs out in the yard and closed the gate to the patio. I headed back into the house, walking beneath the nest on the way. As I got a step past the nest there was a big whoooosh! accompanied by a wild fluttering of wings around my head, and then all the babies were flying out into the yard, swooping around in ever-increasing circles until they took off in different directions. A couple flew back and perched on the fence briefly, cocked their heads at me and dipped their tails a couple of times as if to say farewell, then flew off. I haven't seen any of the family since.

I'm so glad they made it! I really enjoyed waiting for the clutch to hatch, and then watching them grow. And I hope the parents and the offspring come back next year to breed.

A Green Explosion

We had a line of strong thunderstorms, accompanied by heavy rain, blow through here last night. When I woke up this morning and looked out the window into the garden, I was shocked. Plants practically doubled in size overnight! The Cherokee Purple had gotten top-heavy and was leaning over a little, so I went out to tie it to the stakes I put in when I planted it. It's got a dozen flowers on it! I wonder how long it takes from flower to fruit? Some of the other tomato plants are getting big, too, with nice thick stems and lots of foliage. I had to tie one of them to a stake, too. They've only been in the ground 3 weeks, I can't believe how big they've gotten during that time! The zucchini plants got huge overnight, as did the cucumbers. The watermelon is coming along nicely, and the pumpkins I planted a couple of weeks ago are growing like crazy. (I planted them in the mound of the sod clumps I pulled out when preparing the garden. I wasn't sure the mound had compacted enough for roots to take hold, but I guess they have.)

We're supposed to get more rain on Wednesday. Until this summer, I'd have been unhappy with any forecast calling for rain. Not any more! When I see rain in the forecast, I smile with anticipation of the growth it'll bring to my garden.

The hardware store just called, my lawnmower's fixed. I've already done my errand-running for the day, I'll pick it up tomorrow.

Ahhhhh, Summertime!

The weather has really been nice this last week. It was too hot last weekend, but temps and humidity dropped on Tuesday. Wednesday was lovely - dry, sunny, and in the low 70's. It's been getting a few degrees warmer each day since then, and it's back up into the mid-80's, sunny, and not too humid. Good growing weather - everything in the garden is flourishing - the tomatoes continue to grow, the trampled string beans have recovered nicely and are flourishing, the limas I re-planted a week ago already have 4 leaves and are 6" tall (maybe I won't have to wait until September for limas after all!), and a couple of the pepper plants are flowering. The tomatoes in pots are growing at an incredible rate - two weeks ago they were just 4" tall seedlings, now they're over a foot tall and really filling out. I had potted a couple of sweet pepper seedlings (or yellow Hungarian pepper seedlings, I can't remember which) in a pot but it didn't look like they were going to make it. I left them there but planted a tomato seedling in that pot, so the growing space wouldn't go to waste. Yesterday, when I watered that pot, I was amazed to see that one of the two pepper plants had taken off. It went from a seedling that had been an inch and a half tall since I planted it to an 8" tall pepper plant in just 4 days. And the other little pepper seedling is still alive and looking good even though it hasn't grown at all, I wonder if it's going to take off and grow, too. So maybe I'm going to have more than just jalapeno and habanero peppers, too!

I think I finally fixed the fence so the Big Sister won't slither under it into the garden any more. I staked it down in three places with 24" long crate pins, and she's stopped trying to go under.

The kingbird clutch made it through last weekend's heat. I got out a box fan on Saturday and angled it upward so it would dissipate the heat that builds up under the patio "roof". Sunday was even warmer, so I climbed up on the step ladder and slid a foot-square plastic end table top onto the roof over where the nest is, to shade it from the sun. Between the shade and the air circulation, the nest stayed just cool enough not to bake the baby birds. It looks like they're fully-feathered now, and getting ready to fly. One has been perching on the rim of the nest for a couple of days; though I haven't seen the others perching on the rim, the amount of bird droppings on the patio slab is evidence that they're all perching up there - at least long enough to eliminate. I wouldn't be surprised to see some short, trial flights in the next 24-48 hours.

A week ago Friday, I bought a little pool. Little pool. The kind with the blow-up rim. It's only 10 feet in diameter and 30 inches tall (and holds only 24 inches of water), but it's big enough to float on my back in, or to sit on the bottom and have water almost up to my armpits. It's big enough for cooling off, and small enough to maintain easily. I fenced an enclosure for it just off the yard fence where it attaches to the house and put a gate in the fence between the yard and the enclosure, so the only way to access the pool is from the yard. I made it a little more private by cutting a tarp in half and attaching it to the fence on two sides - cut edge folded over the top of the fence and held in place with binder clips, the bottom edge with grommets secured to the bottom of the fence with zip ties. The third side of the enclosure is the house, so the only "exposed" side of the enclosure is on the yard side. The big pine in the yard hides the pool from the house on the south side, and through that fence I can see the road out front but it's really tough to see the pool from the road, so it's still pretty private. The pot of moonflowers my sis brought me from her MIL finally took off after I divided them and transplanted them into three pots. I re-transplanted them from the pots into the ground on the uncovered fence, so if they thrive (and it looks like they're going to) they may provide a little extra privacy.

After I finished the fencing I prepared the ground and got the pool set up. My neighbors had come to talk while I was working and had slowed me down, so by the time I got the pool up and started filling it was almost dark. When I got up Saturday morning, I realized the half-full pool was on a slope. I drained it, removed it from the enclosure, and excavated into the slope to get a level base for the pool. That was a heck of a project. It took me most of the afternoon. But I finally got the pool back up and started filling, and finished filling it on Sunday morning. I've been in it twice, very briefly, Monday and Tuesday. The water was still too cold both days to even think about getting completely wet. Both the water and the air were too cool on Wednesday and Thursday, and on Friday I went up to my sis with my mom for the day and didn't get home until late in the evening. It was hot here yesterday and the water feels warm enough now for a swim, but I got busy yesterday and by the time I got around to getting ready to go in the pool, the temp had already dropped below 70 and the air was too cool to get wet. It's warm out there today, and the sun's had another day to heat the water, the pool is filtered and skimmed, and I'm going for a dip in a little while.

On our way out from Mom's to go see my sis's weekend/future retirement place, we stopped at the orchard to pick up some sweet cherries. We've been going to that orchard since I was a teen, they've always had exceptionally nice fruit at exceptionally reasonable prices. Their cherries have always been the best, and this year's no exception - big, plump, juicy, sweet, tender-skinned. I've saved a couple of pits, I'm going to try to start a cherry tree to go with the peach tree I intend to get next year. The Amish family who bought the orchard maybe 20 years ago added blueberries since the last time I was there a few years ago. They were gorgeous, perfect berries and I'll bet they tasted as good as they looked. I'm sorry I didn't get some. They'd have made some great muffins for the houseguests who are coming to visit in a couple of weeks. I might try to stop in there when I go up to Mom's this week.

I'm having a hard time getting motivated, today, and I've got so much to do! But I think I'm just going to do what absolutely has to be done today (like cutting up, bagging, and freezing bananas that will be too ripe tomorrow) and maybe a coupld of loads of laundry, and give myself a little break.

Cheep, cheep, cheep!

I climbed up on the step stool this morning to have a look in the nest, I wanted to make sure everyone made it through yesterday's heat OK. There are four little beaks in there, not three, and they're all active and noisy. (That explains why both mom and dad are such frequent visitors to the nest - there are four little mouths to feed!) They don't even have their eyes open yet, but they're already getting feathers. It got very hot this afternoon, over 90 in the shade, and it's humid. I looked for and found one of my box fans, and got that set up out on the patio blowing air upward toward the nest. It did a good job this afternoon of dissipating the heat that builds up under the translucent patio roof. At one point I took a break from what I was doing and sat down to rest; I looked up at the nest and all 4 little heads were resting on the front rim of the nest, I think they were enjoying the breeze. Tomorrow's supposed to be about the same weather as today, I'll turn the fan on for them tomorrow, too. If it gets any hotter, I think I'll go out to the pole barn and get a metal crate pan; I can put that up on the roof over the nest and weight it down with a couple of rocks so it doesn't blow away, and that should shade the nest.