I’ve been battling with a Carolina wren that somehow was getting into my barn and decided to make a nest in my tilt trailer that I haul around with my riding mower. Normally I don’t mind, but I had visions of the little birds fledging and coming home total destruction of everything in the barn from the hooligans trying to catch the birds.   Since it’s summer, I really need to use it for hauling things around the yard.

I thought maybe she was coming through the dog door that was dangling by one electrical tie instead of the two I normally have it hanging from.  I need to replace the door, but the company went out of business and a new one is a different size, so it means a redo of the siding of the wall the door is mounted in. I repaired the flap and threw the nest out only to come back two days later to a completely rebuilt nest.  She was either coming in a chewed off corner of the flap or through the bent in the roof. 

Again I threw the nest out and watched the trailer for several days and around in the barn for signs of a third nest. Not finding one, I was smug thinking I had won.   That is until Friday evening when I was closing down the doors, I thought I saw a bird flying around in the darkness.  I turned the lights back on, searched around the barn, but didn’t find anything.  Sunday when I went to the barn to feed the hooligans, I noticed egg shells on top of the bird seed barrel.   I hadn’t won.  I have a recycled gutter tacked to the wall above the stairs that I put small boards and pcv pipe in along with a small flower pot.  Inside the flower pot were two babies and two eggs.  

Now what?  Wonder if there is any way I can slowly move the pot outside without the Mom abandoning her babies?  I hope they decide to fledge on one of my off days so I can shoo them outside.  Crazy wren.

The hooligans are terrified of storms since they were shot.  Monday evening I got a big scare.   I heard my back door knob rattling. Looked around the corner from the hallway and it was Patches with the knob in her mouth trying to open it. It was thundering and she tore a hole in my fairly new vinyl screen door.  I've got a piece of a roll somewhere from replacing the screen on a front window after they went through a window screen after some critter. 

I've been working out in the garden a lot cleaning up overgrown flower and shrubbery beds and mulching.  I hired some one to help and spent two Saturday’s working the bed along the property line. We got it cleaned up, but broke several of the daylily blooms off in the process.  The blooms are at their peak for the next few weeks. I’ve been bringing cardboard boxes home all week to put under the mulch. After two years of neglect, there is a lot of grass and weed seeds for restocking new growth. The cardboard didn’t go far so I switched to the newspapers I’ve been saving up. I hope to finish it up this Saturday, but it’s supposed to be 95. August temperatures.  We’ve skipped spring again this year. 

I plowed up the garden  again so I could start planting for the third time.  I had my seeds in a cup sitting in the cup holder.  But Mary decided to dig around a bald cypress and with the next pass, I noticed this shredded stuff.  I’ll have to make another trip back to the Co-op for more crook neck squash. I’ll have to reorder the pan squash.  I bet I’ll get a good stand of cucumbers and squash in that one area near the tree.

This coming weekend I plan to work in the garden weeding and mulching. I will take time off to attend the Memorial Day ceremony in Tuscumbia. This year is a special year. I recently found out about a great uncle killed in WWI, and buried in France. I'll be posting his story on a new Tuscumbia and Colbert County historical blog a friend and I started recently.  We named it 'The Tuscumbian' after the old theater in town long gone.

It’s been a very busy last few weeks.  It’s also been unusually hot, more like August weather.  I started cleaning out my flower beds, putting down newspaper and mulching and tilled up the garden area.  I replanted corn, but with the dry weather the second planting hasn’t come up.  Watermelon, cucumbers and cantaloupes started coming up and were promptly eaten by bugs.  I’ll replant this weekend just before the next rain. I finally put my volunteer tomatoes in the garden.  I had a couple of beautiful plants coming up in a compost pile, so I dug them up and into the garden they went.  

The warm weather has encouraged some of my daylilies into an early bloom. Late irises are finishing up their bloom cycle.  I had planned an open garden with a brunch on May 26^th, but there’s no way I’ll be ready both in the garden and the house. My house is still a wreck.    For some more blooms this week check out my gardening blog.

April 2012, I reported 1.18 inches of rain from my reporting station to CoCoRaHS. After planting corn twice I began to wonder if it was fruitless putting in a garden again this year.  Last Thursday it finally rained 0.92 inches, almost as much as last month. Monday I measured 1.78 inches in my gauge and more is expected.  I may have to think about putting catfish in the garden.  The rain gave me an opportunity to separate and move my heirloom tomato plants into larger containers in my greenhouse.  I’m not sure what I’ll do with all the plants as I have a lot more than I can use. I also got flower seeds started.   

Some times, those of us who live in the country take for granted what we have.  Sure there’s a lot of work involved, but it’s the little things that loose sight of.  A couple of high school friends came out to see my flowers.  All of a sudden Richard said, oh listen, a Bob White.  I haven’t heard that since I was a boy he said.  I’d gotten so use to hearing it, that I wasn’t paying attention to it. 

The cities of Tuscumbia, Florence and Sheffield all had historical walking tours each Saturday in April.  I made all of Tuscumbia’s and posted a lot of the pictures on the Remember Tuscumbia page on Facebook. On Confederate Memorial Day, a ceremony was held at the cemetery to honor over 100 unknown soldiers from the Civil War.  New headstones were made for each grave recently.

The hooligans have been busy chasing whatever runs or flies.  A chipmunk made the mistake of trying to cross the driveway. Blackie was on the job and charged in hot pursuit. The chipmunk ran into the garage hit the front wall, made a turn, hit the side wall, and made another turn toward the other garage door.  While Blackie was still looking for it around my pile of tools and newspaper I shooed it toward the open door. Levi came walking up to the door about that time and the chipmunk ran between his front and back legs, and made a turn toward the front walk. Levi and Patches started the pursuit outside.  Once it disappeared, Levi soon lost interest and took a nap while Patches hunted for it.  Blackie was still going through everything in the garage.