Two-Part Post

Part 1 - Knitting Humor

I suppose I'm breaking some copyright law by reprinting this comic, but I'm going to take a chance because it's too cute not to share. Plus it gives me a good idea about how to earn extra money after retirement. (Let's hear it for Gramma!)

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Part 2 - Identifying the Victim

Sometime in the last week, an avian murder was committed in my yard. I am unable to identify the victim from its remains and am looking for help from anyone who might possibly recognize what bird these feathers belonged to.

The feathers were found under a white pine tree in the front yard. At first I thought flicker, but ruled that out because there were no yellow shafts on any of the feathers. These feathers are more of gray-ish, not blue-ish, so I ruled out bluejay. Then I thought maybe dove, but ruled that out also because there was too much white on the feathers.

The black, inverted 'V' on the largest feathers (wing or tail?) really has me stumped, as well as the lighter tan fluffy feathers (top right corner), which I'm thinking are breast or tummy feathers. The other clump of feathers on the top left are two-colored: black on the outside and brown in between.

If anyone recognizes these feathers, I would certainly appreciate a definitive ID. Thanks.

Saturday Smorgasbord

Too much sun and outdoor lawn work today has me tired out, so tonight's post is a smorgasbord of some things I saw today.

I brought Penny some fresh catnip from the backyard.

I found a new brush for Sophie at the grocery store--it works great!

It was hot! I caught a little sunburn too, but the nap in the hammock made it all worthwhile.

The lovely new garden bench I purchase and assembled on the 4th of July. It has a little solar cell on the back that powers LED lights around the edge of the maple leaves on the back (in case you want to sit out there after dark -- not with my mosquitoes, thank you very much!)

Wildflower garden is starting to bloom all over--especially Queen Anne's Lace and Purple Coneflowers.

Look at all the apples on my tree--it's going to be a bumper crop this year.

This handsome fellow seemed right at home in the wildflower garden.

Lots of green tomatoes.

Hummingbird oasis (don't you just love the smell of petunias?)

Here's what a frustrated red squirrel does to the screen when he's too fat to get through it anymore to steal seed from the feeder....

Eight Random Facts Meme

Lynne at Hasty Brook tagged me for this Eight Random Facts Meme. I've never done one of these for a blog before and decided it would be fun to take part and post something different in my blog from the usual birds and flowers!

Here are the rules for Eight Random Facts:
-Players start with eight random facts/habits about themselves.
-People who are tagged need to write their own blog about their eight things and post these rules.
-At the end of your blog, you need to choose eight people to tag and list their names. Don't forget to leave them a comment telling them they're tagged, and to read your blog. (Participation is optional, and it's OK if you defer.)

1) I knit in bed.

2) I love power tools and Menards is one of my favorite stores.

3) I can type 85 wpm.

4) I am the oldest child and have 3 younger siblings (1 sister and 2 brothers).

5) I got married in 1979 when I was 20 and never had any kids

6) I like dogs better than I like most people.

7) I really hate it when they play bird songs on TV shows or movies for birds that don't belong in that area, you know what I'm talking about.....when it's a night scene in the desert and they play the song of a loon in the background (drives me nuts!)

8) I am uncomfortable in most social situations because I have a difficult time making small talk unless the topic happens to about birds or hunting (that's why I usually carry a knitting project along so I can just sit, knit, and listen to what other people are saying).

I wasn't able to come up with eight names to tag, because most everyone in this blog group has already been tagged, but here are a few....have fun and thanks!

Martie at Taos Sunflower

Donna at KGMom Mumblings

Robin at The Bumblebee Garden

Trixie at Trixie's View

Assignment Completed

Here's my report from Larry's birding challenge of last week. I'm calling it, "Birding @ IBM."

As you may (or may not) know, I work for Manpower as a vendor at IBM in Rochester. IBM is trying to become more "green" at their facility. Several years ago, they added a large prairie area with a little pond in the center. There's a walking path all the way around it. Larry's instructions were to find a place I've never birded before and also it should not be a place that is known by other birders. I've never birded here before other than watching out the car window as we drive into the parking lot and I've never heard any other birders I know talk about the great birds they saw out at IBM, so this seemed to be the perfect place for completing my assignment.

To give you some additional background as to why this really isn't an ideal birding location, IBM is located just off Highway 52 which is the main north/south corridor (6 lanes) through Rochester. It's a very busy area with shopping centers located to the north and east. There's still a cornfield/ undeveloped area to the south, but this prairie area is between the main IBM facility and US 52, so it's kind of an oasis for any birds that can find it.

Rick came along with me on this trip, not because he's that interested in birds, but probably to make sure this adventure didn't last too long (since I'm a bit of a diddler when it comes to birding).

This post is going to be very visual, so I'll try to keep the captions short. In addition to birds, I've also included some flowers (since this is a prairie area, I thought it would be appropriate).

Here's one of the new bluebird houses they put up this spring--this is right next to the parking lot (I saw a Tree Swallow go inside).

Here's one of the Dickcissels we hear every morning; I'm amazed to see these birds right in town.

OK, let's head down this path and see what we can find.

Ooh, lots of white sweet clover and brown-eyed Susans blooming

Our first good look at the pond (I was wearing my badge so I figured that gave me permission to trespass in case a security guard should stop by and question my motives--BTW, they didn't).

Lots of Red-Winged Blackbirds down by the pond--here's a male and female in the top of a willow tree at the pond edge.

Mallards

A nice patch of False Sunflower

A Cedar Waxwing on a fencepost--I was amazed at the large number of Cedar Waxwings in this area.

Swamp Milkweed

Blue Vervain

There were 2 Mama Mallards with at least 10 babies between the 2 of them--CUTE!

Another view of the pond with the IBM main plant in the background (that long, low blue building)

I'm unsure what these plants are, but my best guesses are Hoary Vervain and Hoary Alyssum

This baby Barn Swallow was being fed on fly-bys from its mom.
Parking lot Killdeer--there was one family group of 5 and several other individuals patrolling the parking lot. During the week, this lot is almost full of cars, so I'm not sure where these killdeer go on weekdays.

Here's a list of all the birds that were seen and/or heard.
Dickcissel
American Goldfinch
Barn Swallow
Tree Swallow
Northern Rough-Winged Swallow
Cedar Waxwing
Red-Winged Blackbird
Common Yellowthroat
House Sparrow
Field Sparrow
Song Sparrow
House Finch
Killdeer
Mallard
European Starling
Eastern Bluebird

This was a great assignment, Larry. Thanks for giving me a good reason to bird this area and to everyone else for letting me share this trip with you. Hope you enjoyed it.

Happy Birthday U.S.A.

Happy Fourth of July everyone! Enjoy the day, play safe, and don't get sunburned!

God Bless America!

After The Storm & A Movie

We had a bit of thunderstorm weather roll through the area this evening. Our neck of the the woods only had a little bit of rain (farther west they had straight line winds and north of us had torrential rains). I'm please to report that I got about 4 sections of weeds pulled from the garden after supper and before it started raining.

After the storm moved through, the clouds outside were very unusual and quite beautiful. The sunset trying to shine through these clouds gave everything a strange pinkish hue. It really was quite lovely as were these storm cloud pictures taken shortly after 9 PM.

We have a Netflix subscription at our house that gets somewhat neglected during the summer months due to long hours of daylight. However, with the rain tonight, we had the opportunity to watch a movie. We have 3 movies here right now, and I tend to choose mostly titles I'm interested in (because Rick has a tendency to doze off during any movie watched in the evening). I let him pick the movie from these 3 choices: An Inconvenient Truth, Rent, and Grizzly Man. He chose Grizzly Man.

This was an interesting documentary about Timothy Treadwell. Here's what the movie description says: "Renowned nonfiction director Werner Herzog chronicles the tragic and untimely death of outdoorsman Timothy Treadwell, who devoted his life to studying grizzly bears living in the Alaskan wilderness -- only to have one of them maul him to death. Pieced together mainly from Treadwell's own video footage, this fascinating documentary goes deep into the wilderness of one man's mind to uncover how he spent his final days." (It was rated "R" for some scenes with liberal use of the "F" word.)

This was a very interesting movie with some fabulous footage of bears and foxes he encountered and befriended while living in Alaska. Timothy truly cared about the bears and their welfare, although his concern was misinterpreted by many people who didn't understand why he was doing this. Do any of you remember the story of Timothy Treadwell, his work with grizzly bears, and his tragic death? Apparently he was featured on Dateline NBC once and he also spoke to schoolchildren on many occasions.

Weeds & Stuff

So far, I have only shown you the nice pictures of flowers and scenes in my yard. Before you get to thinking that I have these really great looking gardens, here are my "confession" pictures--the things I have never shown you before.

Here's my vegetable garden. I'm sure things would be growing much faster if the weeds weren't stealing all the nutrients and moisture from the soil. One of the concepts of dividing the garden into sections was that I would weed a section at a time and that would break up the weeding chore into manageable segments (kind of like dusting one room at a time--another chore I hate and almost never do!)

As you can see my theory hasn't worked. See that big thistle right next to a tomato plant?

The center sections containing onions and leaf lettuce aren't quite as bad as the rest because I just planted them a couple weeks ago and those sections had been covered with weed-barrier cloth till I was ready to plant.

OK, it's only going to get worse....this is my asparagus patch. If you look really close you can actually see some asparagus plants in there....yes, they're right next to that large-leaved, 3 foot weed on the right side of the picture. How do these things grow so fast??

Here's my butterfly garden behind the garage. I used the weed whacker yesterday to cut away all the tall grass growing around the rock border. At least I can see the rocks again now. Next I need to actually get into the garden and pull out the rest of the grass (no, those aren't daylily leaves blowing gracefully in the front--that's all grass!) I've got a spray bottle full of vinegar all ready to spray these weeds to kill them, but I always run out of day before I run out of projects (know the the feeling?)

I also weed whacked all this tall grass that had grown up over the rock border under the deck. It looks pretty good now. Again, a little strategically applied vinegar would work wonders in this area.

OK, now that I've shared these horrifying scenes, I will pledge to you to get them cleaned up in the next week and show you photographs of my accomplishments next Monday. My brother and his family are coming for a visit next week and we're planning a family picture in our backyard, so I want everything to look nice for their visit. Nothing like company coming to get serious about sprucing things up.

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In addition to 3 gray squirrels in my yard, a little red squirrel also showed up over the weekend. He's a pretty clever little squirt. When I came home from work today, I found he had discovered the tube feeder filled with the delicious cardinal mix (containing sunflower hearts and shelled peanuts). The cage was designed to keep grackles out of the feeder, but nothing stops a determined red squirrel. The tray provides a perfect spot to sit and dine for this little rascal. I finally chased him out, figuring that if he ate too much, he would become too fat to squeeze out through the holes anymore.

So cute and yet so naughty!

Sunday Sightings

Hi, I'm finally back and pleased report that I'm fine now and all of my co-workers are still alive. I got a little short with one person who wanted to use my computer on Thursday morning when I was in the middle of panic mode, but apologized to her later and all was fine. Fortunately, she understood, but I think I kind of scared her.

The weather here has been so beautiful that I feel guilty even talking about it because I know so many areas around the country are having extreme weather right now. Yesterday was another nice day: no wind, low humidity, sunny and high in the upper 70's. I took my time mowing the lawn because I wanted to see everything that was going on out in the yard. I noted the interesting sightings and went back this morning with my camera. In no particular order, here are some of the things I saw around the yard.

A pair of purple martins are still hanging around. One of them is an adult male--see how dark he is. I let the gourds down yesterday for a check, but there is no evidence of nesting activity. I'm pretty sure it's too late for them to start anything this year, but it sure is a treat to have them flying around and listening to their lovely song.

Sometimes there will be 3 or 4 flying around, but mainly I see just this one female the majority of the time.

Lots and lots of common milkweed blooming all over the yard. I love the sweet smell of the blossoms. I thought it was interesting that I have white-colored blossoms on the plants at one end of my yard (where the soil seems to be mostly red clay)....

....and really pink-colored blossoms on the plants that are in the front of the yard, closer to the house. The soil still contains clay, but it's much darker. That's the only reason I can think of for the difference in these plants. If anyone knows the real reason, please let me know in the comments section.

I found several piles of these grackle feathers.....Cooper's Hawk taking care of these nuisance birds for me. Good job, CH!

I saw these pretty lavender-colored blossoms near the road ditch. A check of my Wildflowers of Minnesota book told me this was Hedge Nettle (a member of the Mint family) and a cousin of the not-so-pleasant Stinging Nettle, which I also have a few nasty patches of.

Speaking of nasty patches, here is one of my larger patches of the Wild Parsnip. I'm very watchful around this plant. Some of the larger ones I try to get cut down. As far as I can tell, the only redeeming feature of this plant is that it's a host plant for the Black Swallowtail butterfly caterpillar (and I have found some of those caterpillars on wild parsnip before).

I've had small flocks of Cedar Waxwings hanging around all summer. Here's one of the reasons: Mulberries. Several years ago, I ordered some mulberry trees to plant in my yard. For whatever reason, I seemed to think the catalog said they were a Zone 4 tree and I later found out they were actually Zone 5. I lost a few of them after a couple of years, but the ones that are still alive are doing very well, and this year they're loaded with fruit. The berries are delicious and I usually try to snack on a few myself while mowing under the trees. All of the fruit-eating birds (robins, catbirds, and cedar waxwings) are spending lots of time in these mulberry trees this summer. (The really dark ones are the ripe ones.)

The flowers in my butterfly/hummingbird garden are doing great. The daylilies and liatris are just starting to bloom and the delphinium is still covered with blossoms.

The Monarda has opened lots of blossoms in the last week also. (Inside the little ring at the top right of the picture is Lobelia--I don't water this plant as faithfully as I should, so it's slow getting started; I can't wait for those red flowers to start blooming.)