Mother Nature seems to have calmed down and is giving us some true spring weather. It’s been warm and humid with a fair amount of rain that the garden loves.
The homestead truly lives up to it’s nickname, Mudville. It acquired that name when the barn was built a number of years ago! It was so muddy, the gravel trucks got stuck and had to be pulled out with a bull dozer!
The wildlife continues to be amusing … actually, some of them really aren’t all that “wild” anymore! The bunny is becoming very tame. She sits under the pine tree in the morning and evening, waiting for me to throw carrots out the door. She comes hopping up to the house when she sees me open the door. She just sits and waits for me to toss the carrots out for her!
The squirrel continues to hang on the tree upside down, grabbing the bird feeder made from a water bottle, and helping himself to sunflower seeds.
He must have “six pack abs” from hanging on to the bark of the tree upside down, not to mention the strongest little hind legs!
The birds have their work cut out for them, feeding their young! I’m glad I’m not a bird!
The sparrows have their little brood in the bird bottle outside the side of the kitchen. They are in and out with bills full of whatever they feed their little ones. The cheeping that comes out of that bottle is amusing! A real chorus of baby birds singing for their supper … and breakfast and lunch!
Then there’s the wren. The wren house is on the back of the house, under the eaves on the deck.
He attacks anything that comes close to the deck. The poor chipmunks get attacked on a routine basis! He gets them right in the head and back as they try to run away … he even chased a sparrow.
The noise coming from the wren house is raucous. I read in my Audubon bird book that they can protect a territory up to a quarter mile. The female lays six to eight small eggs so if they all hatched, that little wren house is pretty full!
We have at least seven pairs of barn swallows nesting in the barn with Samson and Delilah. They have constructed their mud nests on each of the lights in the barn.
Talk about protecting territories! When we go to the barn, it’s “duck and run” as these little kamikazes swoop down at us! They seem to get along with each other, its humans they try to attack!
It looks like I’ll have a bumper crop of apples this year. Both trees are loaded … thankfully, one is an early apple and one is a later fall apple so the work of canning apple butter and apple sauce is spaced out.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, “ah, how sweet it is!” here on the homestead.
