We’ve got fresh peepers
Turns out we’ve got a just-hatched batch of red headed house finches in our back porch eaves… judging by their “feed me” sounds, they hatched a few days ago (a late brood, it seems), so we should be seeing them in flight school in ~10 days. Great to hear / see another bunch of them hatch.
Another new family…
We came across this new family in the perc ponds by the drains yesterday as we were returning from our morning bike ride. There are 10 ducklings in the group and we estimate they hatched a week or so ago.
This guy’s a real drone…
(sorry he’s slightly out of focus)
Note the large eyes of the drone? Since he only exists to locate and breed with Queen, the drone has the largest eyes in the hive… “the better to see you with, my dear”.
The great thing about the drone (from some women’s point of view)? After mating with the Queen, he dies… there’s no uncomfortable “what shall we do later today”, “your hive or mine?” chatter to deal with 🙂
Rosy Peach?
Our new peach tree never made it in to the ground this year, but (if you don’t look too closely) it appears it’s got quite a few roses blossoming on it. (not) The good news is it appears to have survived the season in the pot, has 4 peaches on it and may actually make it in to the ground by year end.
It seems we are the latest to join the trend (apparently began by Incline Mike and Mimi) to add an island to our landscape.
Several years ago we began to seriously consider how to reduce the amount of water we use on our lawns / gardening for non-productive purposes. We considered replacing the front lawn with soil / drought resistant plants that would also attract more bird / friendly insects to our area (while reducing my ability to break the sprinklers each time I mowed the lawn 🙁 The island out front is our initial attempt… we’ll have to see how it does and take it from there. (And, yes, this is where some of the 10 cubic yards of soil I moved went….)