Sunny Sunday

My backyard birding has been a bit short-circuited by the emergence of all the trees leaves and flowers this past week. There sounded to be a least a dozen different species up there this morning, as I reveled in my first giant mug of coffee, but I sure couldn't see them. The catbirds' distinctive call was amongst them, I can say--they've begun to make their appearances just in the past week.


Here's another pansy from the front border sporting some royal purple to continue our visual internet discussion/celebration of this delightful side of the color wheel.

I spent the morning (well, once I'd waken up...I did get to sleep in bit later than usual, which was very nice--my horoscope yesterday mentioned that part of my foul mood could likely be blamed on needing more sleep...and that sounded likely enough...so I was happy today was a day off) puttering around at assorted things hardly worth discussing, like laundry and dishes and stuff like that.

But I also got a substantial bit of work done on finishing up the front garden's overall layout, by beginning to tackle the last section around the lamp-post. If you embiggen this photo, you can get a decent look at the Super-Terrific-Happy clematis that's about to be taller than the lamp-post itself. Hey, I just remembered--back when we were moving in, our landlady told us it was purple!

I didn't finish the job, unfortunately, since the weather was changing as the afternoon wore on, and I opted to head inside for things like cooking some dinner, a nice hot shower, a walk with my girl and a little hot tub time.

But I did get the rock edging laid in and about half the "sod" (as you can see, our "lawn" is a model of diversity) seperated from its soil. The rest has been loosened and will probably be a little easier to get cleared away once I get back to this in a day or so.

Ideally, I'd have finished it today, so I could do my veggie planting in perfect conjunction with tomorrow's Full Corn Planting Moon. But honestly, I know if I get my corn planted sometime in this next week, everything should be just fine.

Having this part of the project done will allow me, too, the ability to shift around the locations of a few plants, as I prepare to add a few tomatoes along the inside of the fence, as well as assorted other veggies. And I am giving some more serious thought to some kind of canal/moat business to help address those times of heavy rainfall, in hopes of avoiding yesterday's frustrations returning.

Our forecast had called for showers to begin around three p.m., which is when this first bit of clouds slid by overhead. They never really thickened up, though, so I continued to work a little longer, and it wasn't until I knocked off and got things put away that it started to really cloud over.

While we are celebrating purple, I'd be remiss not to include a shot of our across-the-street neighbor's purple azalea, which has come into bloom this past week. Gorgeous, huh?

It was misting very lightly as Emily and I headed out on our evening walk around Not Wisteria Lane...but not enough to deter us (frankly, she's taking to our evening time together that I don't think any kind of weather would rain on Em's parade).

The last few nights, we've seen a pair of ducks--one male, one female--walking together along the street, which amuses me no end. I didn't realize they went in for this sort of traditional, old-fashioned courting ritual, but it's pretty cute.

I haven't been bringing the camera along, since it just distracts me from the business of walking her, and once there's a full poo bag to carry, it just stays in my pocket anyway. Tonight I brought it, though, so naturally there was no sign of those ducks.