It’s been a long hot spring & summer, actually no spring at all. We went from unusual snowy winter to summer.  A couple of weekends ago, temperatures were near one hundred degrees and two days later, it was in the mid seventies.  It was a record low high for the date.  The following couple of cool days signaled the start of hummingbird migration back to Mexico.  Each year it seems like I have more hummingbirds than the year before, and this year I’ve hit the big time.  I haven’t been able to keep my feeders full.  (Have I told you not to use the red dye commercial stuff?  It’s not good for them.)  When I take down an empty feeder, the ruby-throated will swarm around the empty ant moat and hanger just flying around and around looking for the feeder.  When I walk back with a full feeder, I’m being buzzed, and they are feeding before I can get it hung back up.  I have a couple of videos of the migrants at my feeder for your pleasure.  One was taken about a foot away.  

The other video is from a few feet away so you can see how many are in the area around the feeder.

Daylily Condilla  

Daylily My Ways  

Daylily Powerful Praise  

Since my knee blow out accident, the beds which weren’t mulched yet have been an ugly, embarrassing and overgrown mess, especially after a couple of seven plus inches rain spells. The wet weather has raised a hungry horde of mosquitoes that seem attracted to every repellent out there.  We haven’t found anything to scare them off.  I read some where that Vicks Vapor Rub was a good repellent.  It worked for about five minutes, and then the attack began.  With the excess rain, fire ant mounds are everywhere. I’ve gone through several bags of grits in order to control them. Small mounds don’t take long to eliminate, but the larger mounds with several queens take several feeding to control.    

The Pittosporium shrubs that the so-called landscaper I hired a couple of years ago planted are not cold hardy enough for this area, so I’m replacing shrubs for the third time along the front and west end of the house.  This weekend I worked along the driveway beds.  It looks like I have enough piled up on the driveway to make one large bale of hay.  The beds that I hired some one to clean and mulch back in the spring looks just as bad as or worse than the ones not cleaned.  And I didn’t have to worry about loosing over two hundred dollars in plants in the beds not touched.  With the rain and cooler weather I have some re-blooming daylilies in bloom. 

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A big mess ready to go to compost pile 

 While working, I noticed a truck stopping at the three way stop at the bridge sitting a while and then going up the dirt road which would be the fourth leg of the intersection.  We have a lot of trouble with parkers met labs, and dumping of trash and animals on the road.   I heard them go down the road a piece and turn around and stop just before getting back to the intersection.  I walked down the road and saw one guy standing behind the truck and yelled at him that he better not be dumping. He looked startled and got into the passenger side and the driver pulled into the intersection. I held up my cell phone like I was taking his picture and he said that “we ain’t doing nothing Mamm, we were just taking a leak”.  I hope he was far enough away to miss my red face as I told him that it was okay to do that.   I told him we had a lot of trouble with dumpers and wanted to make sure he wasn’t dumping trash or dogs. 

Back to my yard work, I took the John Deere and tiller through an area between my place and the dry creek where I had burned up rooted trees and brush.  I found a few surprises. One was a large leg bone that I was 99.9% sure wasn’t human and a part from old farm equipment or wagon.  Just to be sure I took the bone to work and showed it to one of our Pathologist and told him I thought it was from a cow, but before disposing of it wanted to be sure. He confirmed it wasn’t human.  The hooligans have been dragging it around and chewing on it. The metal thing looks like it might be a step up on a wagon maybe? It has a hole drilled into each end. I figured if anyone would know what it was would be a Grit reader.   

What is it? view 1 

What is it view 2.  

By the end of a long hot day weeding and being hit with reflected heat off of the brick of the house, I was ripe. So ripe a buzzard flew down within inches of the ground, flew back up and came around and swooped down within inches of the ground again and flew off.  The hooligans were ready and went on the chase the second pass the buzzard did and scared it off.   The hooligans are good for something every once in a while. 

Some of my water hoses are in bad shape, so when I saw that one of the discount warehouses had some industrial made in the USA on close out, I couldn’t pass up a chance to replace a couple. I have one of those fancy Ram’s with a remote start and when I can back out my truck was sitting there locked and running. Oh course the AC was also running full blast.  While going in I had put the keys in my front pocket, and didn’t like how I had it bunched up and pulled it out of my pocket and must have pushed the remote start button a couple of times.  I pushed the unlock button on the remote, got in and I’m sitting there wondering now what? Finally I stuck what they call a key in the little slot for the chip and turned it to accessory but I couldn’t shift it. I finally turned it to the start position and was able to put it in drive.  I wonder how many people went by and tried to turn it off, or get in and take off with it? 

Blackie is still on Uroeze for her bladder stones, but looks like she is headed for surgery to remove them.  She feels a lot better and Levi and the mice are getting the brunt of her energy. She drug up a large field rat and left me a present of it at the end of the driveway.   

I finished the historical calendar and note cards for Tuscumbia and have them at the printers. They will be sold at a local incubator called Fiddledee D ran by the down town retail woman’s group and will help promote retail development.  The note cards were supposed to be ready three weeks ago for Fourth Thursday last week and still aren’t ready.  One set of cards is all Helen Keller’s birthplace and the other two sets are historical homes in the area. Hopefully they will be a hit and I’ll do a series of our big snow we had in January for Christmas. 

  
Hooligans being hooligans.  

Hooligans: Taking close up shots of flowers does involve some hazards. One of the biggest nuisances I have is while trying to take pictures of butterflies. I don’t like to use a telephoto lens when shooting butterflies.  I think I get a sharper and better quality photo by using a regular lens. You chase one around for a while, and finally it decides to light, and you finally get the angle you want. Just about the  time you get ready to press the button one of the hooligans decides that the butterfly or flower is going to attack you and bites at it, or all 3 decide to stampede through, scaring your subject or breaking off the flower. Whenever Levi sees my camera he bugs me until I take his picture then he goes off. He’s such a ham. Other times it’s either a nose under your arm or pawing at the time the picture is snapped results in a sky or ground picture. If you pet that one, the other two jealous hooligans also have to have attention and a tussle starts between them which results in me sitting on the ground with all 3 on top giving you a face wash. It must be a ploy so that I’ll pay them attention. Patches and Levi are scared of gunshots and thunder, so with dove season they are right underfoot or sitting on my foot making themselves a tripping hazard. Not to mention, they scare off the birds. I use the sports setting on my Canon Rebel Xti when taking pictures of birds or butterflies. Close up setting is used for flowers. 

While on the hooligan front, another hazard is the holes they create from digging up field mice or moles. However hooligan holes are an everyday gardening hazard.

    
I was wondering why the hummingbirds weren't coming around. 

Insects: Of course you also have the bugs to contend with. I have several re-blooming iris which bloom in the spring and again in late September to October.  The fall bloom season seems to have a longer blooming than the spring one. They are usually still blooming when frost hits. I was taking pictures of one re-blooming iris called Harvest of Memories when all of a sudden I had claws coming across the view finder. A huge praying mantis decided that the camera lens was a good place to hang out while hunting for bugs. After calming down, I placed it back on the iris bloom and got a picture of it.  I have found several paper wasps nest this year on the ground or just above the ground. Wonder if this is a prediction for the type of winter we are going to have?  I was almost stung by bees getting the picture of the swallowtail on Joe Pye weed.  I was so focused on getting shots that I ignored the numerous bees on the plant.  

    
Harvest of Memories re-blooming iris 

  
Swallowtail on Joe Pye weed 

    
Buckeye on Profusion zinnia  

Mowing neighbors: A neighbor (Mom) who constantly mows their grass is another issue.  This doesn’t affect flower photography, unless she sprays grass clippings on the flower you want a picture of. The mower will scare off any birds or butterflies you’re trying to capture, though. Big low flying helicopters are unsettling to birds also.

    
Neighbor Mom 

Crawling things: Then there are the long crawling things such as Fred. Fred is a very large what we in the south call a chicken snake, and the biggest one I’ve seen. Fred has lived under my house for several years feasting on the colony of field mice I built my house over. Fred comes out from under the house by way of my central unit every once in a while to get some sunshine.  I first learned of Fred from the termite inspectors a year or so after building the house. They would come out from under the house talking about the huge snake skins they were finding. The first time I saw Fred was right after I got Patches. Patches had this thing about dragging sticks. She can’t pass by a stick without picking it up and dragging it or putting it in my face while weeding. I was working out in the yard one day, and there was Fred all stretched out having a nice snooze in the sun. Patches saw this big stick and tried to pick it up in the middle, and it was too limp and she couldn’t drag it well. Then she decided to drag the stick by the head end. Fred decided that he had enough and didn’t like the idea of being drug by his head and reared back flicking his tongue. Patches decided real fast she didn’t like that stick. Once I had to rescue Fred from the hooligans, so he’s not so friendly now. 

This weekend he surprised me while I was making a video to send to my landscaper friend for recommendations for replacing Pittosporium shrubs, which cannot take the cold.  I was concerned that the hooligans would see him. 

    
I call this one the 'Hand of God' 

Traffic: Trying to pull over in traffic to get a shot of something. Nuff said, that one’s self explanatory.  

Missed shots and timing issues: I took 1671 hummingbird pictures last Saturday, filled up my card, came around the corner of the house and there posing so nicely on a cone flower were 3 gold finches, ugh!!  The other morning while driving to work I noticed a couple of dozen crows hanging beautifully on corn stalks in a combined field. After I stop I should have rolled the window down. As soon as I opened the door, they took off. Another ugh!! 

Sunrises and sunsets: There is a narrow time window as far as getting the best color in your shots.  One sunset I took a picture of an upturn cloud with sunrays coming off. I called that shot the hand of God. Five minutes later, it looked like a dinosaur. 

    
Same cloud a few minutes later, now a dinosaur. 

Camera straps:  For some reason I hate to wear the camera strap around my neck. It’s just a nuisance and if you try to reach closer to something you have to take it off.  With it hanging, it gets caught on a flower that you are reaching over and breaks it off.  The strap hanging will scare off butterflies.  I saw one of the professional photographers at the W C Handy Festival with a wrist strap on his camera. I need to find one.

Trying to weed around a flower to clean up the scenery a little gets you the same results as the camera strap, flower on the ground or full of trash or dirty

    
El Despardo daylily 

    
Camera strap victim 

* * * * *

On the hooligan home front, we had several weeks of near 100 degree temperatures without rain.  Sunday of Labor Day weekend, tropical storm Lee hit. From Sunday at lunch until Tuesday morning we had 7.44 inches of rain with a record low high for the day of 61.  Previous low high record was 70.  After all the hot weather, 61 seemed like a winter day.  I considered breaking out a space heater. 

With the cooler weather, the hooligans have been very active.  They are busy chasing field mice and rabbits around the garden. Vegetable gardening has been a bust again this year.  My tomato plants are all plants and no fruit.  What tomatoes I had rotted during the several weeks of near 100 degree temperatures.  When we had rain, it would be several inches in a few hours only to be followed by no rain for weeks with around 100 degree temps.  Blackie must have a little beagle in her somewhere.  Levi and Patches will lie around the house until they hear Blackie yipping and it’s off to the chase.  Yesterday while trying to get pictures of some of the hummingbird migrants feeding at my feeders, I kept hearing Blackie fussing.  She had something trapped in an ten foot long sewer pipe I use to hang shade cloth. She kept running from end to end and started pulling the pipe across the yard. Fully expecting a field rat, it turned out to be a full grown rabbit. I carried the pipe across the wireless fence and dumped out the contents into a ditch near the dry creek.  The poor bunny looked dazed for a moment, and then took off in the opposite direction away from the hooligans.