Posted in general silliness on May 25, 2012 | 12 Comments »
Gonna be off line for a while I think, I don’t know how well I will be able to connect.
I am off to Connecticut to be at my brother’s side. His wife, who has been dealing with a metastacized breast cancer that attacked her liver has been on a down hill slide for a while. Now she is dying and he needs support.
So we are exercising the credit card….
Talk to you later
Posted in general silliness on May 24, 2012 | 4 Comments »
The Havens has become quite the pollinators’ delight. Now that we have three colonies of honeybees living on the place, there aren’t many places you can look without seeing them at work.
This is a bouquet I picked just Tuesday morning, walking around the place and selecting things that were all fresh and new. I took this up to the hospital to keep my mother company while she recovers from the knee replacement surgery she had Monday.
Beginning from the bottom of the bouquet and proceeding clockwise, we have clematis, skullcap, hosta, coreopsis (2 kinds), yarrow, purple bachelor’s buttons, lavender, great reed, coral bells, bluebells, white asiatic lily, butterfly weed.
Out on the lavender bed yesterday there was a zebra swallowtail disporting itself and hugely enjoying the nectar from the blooms.
Notice its very long swallow tails. This butterfly was hard to capture due to its very peripatetic nature. This next shot captures the red eyes at the base of the outer lower wings. In this shot, a cabbage worm butterfly flits through the frame.
I spoke of the lamb’s ears the other day. The honey bees have moved on to the butterfly weed, but the native bumblebees are still busy at the lamb’s ears.
This is why it is called lamb’s ears. It truly is just as soft as it looks in the picture.
Here is one of the many shots I got the other day of the butterfly weed playing cafe to the honeybees.
The broadiae is blooming right now. It isn’t very popular with the pollinators, but it seems like a little piece of sky broke off and fell to the ground. I love it.
Not all my poppies are red. Here is a pink one, volunteering in the herb garden, floating above one of the asiatic lilies that is going crazy right now.
That’s not all that is going on around The Havens, but it certainly gives you a good idea of what is happening.
Posted in Flowers, garden, tagged bees, campanula, flowers, garden, poppies, swamp milkweed on May 14, 2012 | 9 Comments »
The stroll garden is looking fantastic right now. That’s the small prairie with the barn behind.
The poppies are blooming.
So are the campanula. I have two kinds intermingling. They make wonderful bouquets that last well in the vase.
The swamp milkweed is out now, and the honeybees have found it. They are also really interested in the lamb’s ears right now, which are producing pollen for feeding the young brood. The colonies are both growing nicely.
Up close and personal with a poppy –
Posted in Wildlife, tagged moths, Polyphemus moth, wildlife on May 11, 2012 | 13 Comments »
The neighbor children were very excited yesterday afternoon. They had found a very large moth wandering around their carport, and were admiring it.
I was happy to see this fellow. He is a Polyphemus moth, named after one of the cyclops. It is a member of the silkworm family, and probably one of the largest moths in Missouri. The caterpillars feed on hardwood leaves, mainly oak, ash, hickory and sassafras. Goodness knows there is plenty for them to eat around here! The adults do not eat anything, do not even have a digestive system. They have about 5-7 days to find a mate and lay eggs before they die.
This one was nearing the end of its life, but still beautiful even though battered. It was happy to walk around on my hand as I took pictures of it. Notice that the eyes on the upper wings are transparent membranes, and so are the centers of the eyes on the lower wings.
Posted in cats, tagged cats, quilt, why do we need another one of THOSE? on May 8, 2012 | 9 Comments »
When my father died he left behind two cats, Shadow and Impy. He always had a cat around, always. A few years ago he had two cats, Puff and Creampuff, who were sisters. They died of old age within weeks of each other at the age of 22 years.
After a few weeks I noticed that he wasn’t getting another cat, and it concerned me greatly as I just couldn’t imagine my dad without cats in his life. I knew of a little stray at the park that desperately needed a home, and I thought Dad would like her. So I talked about it with him, and it turned out that he was worried that if he got another cat that he would die and it wouldn’t have a home. At that time, I promised him that I if he adopted a cat I would make sure it had a home if he died before it did.
The ice was broken, and in addition to Shadow (the tortoise shell from the park), he acquired another cat, a tabby he called Stripy.
Life in the country is difficult for indoor/outdoor cats. There are coyotes, owls, raccoons and foxes all eager to snap up a tasty fat pussy cat. Stripy disappeared one night, and Dad was very upset about it. My sister lives nearby, and she happened to have a cat that was nearly identical to Stripy, and she planted this cat on his deck early one morning.
Dad awoke to a cat calling to be let in and be given food, and went to the door and joyously greeted “Stripy”. The cat was very friendly, loving all over Dad when he picked it up, purring and generally acting very glad to be home. But inevitably, after a few minutes, Dad did notice that there were some differences between this cat and Stripy; the most noticeable one that caught his attention very quickly was the fact that this new cat was not neutered… and Stripy was.
“You aren’t Stripy!” my father exclaimed. “You are an imposter!” For a few days he referred to the new cat as “The Imposter Cat”, but very shortly this was adapted to “Impy.”
Impy has come to live with us; Shadow has a new home in the enclave of felines at my sister’s place.
This is Impy.
He weighs 12.5 pounds, is quite friendly and loves to be brushed. In the above shots he is ensconced in the back bedroom. He is quite concerned about the presence of a DOG in the house and not exactly sure about the situation. Ruby isn’t sure either, as she is quite nervous about whether this cat is mean or not, but she’d like to be friends. But only if that doesn’t mean her nose is going to get smacked.
Mallory is totally pissed off. In the shot below, she has Impy pinned down in the back bedroom. She has hissed, and put her ears back, and told him that in general she thinks that there were quite enough cats in the house when there was only one, thank you very much.
Impy is used to pissy females, as Shadow used to box him on the ears on a regular basis, and not with her claws retracted either. He is quite deferential in spite of the fact that he weighs almost exactly twice as much as Mallory does.
There is an uneasy peace as he has begun to emerge from the back and explore the house.
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In other news, my quilt is done and so is the new bed skirt. I still need to do something about the covers of the boxes that support our bedside tables. I may just get bedside tables that are tall enough and dispense with the boxes.
I think the new quilt changes the whole energy of our bedroom radically.
