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.
