Humming Sunday

The hummingbirds are here!  They officially arrived yesterday, because Bill saw one.  I immediately got two feeders up.  Bill saw one later, probably the same bird, on one of the feeders.  When he saw it at first, it was at one of the spots where I had a feeder last year, so it was probably a returning bird.  I haven't actually seen it yet, but I haven't spent much time out in the back yard today.  It's just too humid and I can't breathe well when it's humid.

It rained most of Friday and was supposed to rain yesterday, but it was sunny and windy.  Which means that it's humid today.  Friday night was in the 50's, yesterday was somewhere in the high 80's but I think it's back to the 90 degree range today.  I accidentally left the bedroom window open Friday night, which Bill discovered when he went to open the window Saturday morning and it was already open.  Which explains why it was so darn cold in the bedroom Friday night/Saturday morning!

Otter and I had a couple of errands today.  She decided that it was a little too much to deal with to carry both her book bag and the laptop in the tote bag carrying case for it.  She wanted to get a sleeve-type cover for it, and she's going to arrange her book bag so that it will also hold the laptop.  We went to Wallyworld and they had a couple, but they were not anything spectacular.  So we went to Office Depot and they had several.  The fancy patterned covers were about twice Wallyworld's price, but they had solid black with different colored outer edges for about the same price as Wally.  Since Otter's a crafter, it was a no brainer - Wally's had patterns but they were not very attractive.  So she got a solid black one with a blue outer edge and she's going to do a little customization to it.  (Which is a normal thing to happen around here!)

While we were out, we went to a thrift store.  I didn't find anything, but Otter found a dvd.  I haven't found much lately on any shopping trips, except the grocery store!  I don't think that counts exactly.  :)

The baby birds in the front are much bigger and look like they may be close to fledging.  They have a lot of feathers now.  We haven't seen them standing on the edge of the nest, but they do look like they are getting closer.  When we go out the door, there are 4 feathered heads sticking up and they all look in our direction.  Then as we get closer, all four heads pop back down but we can still see them.  They will probably be flying within the next few days.

We dumped the jalpenos this afternoon.  They simply were not growing.  They are now filling assorted holes left by the dogs in their mole hunting activities.  They didn't have much in the way of root system growth.  We think that we just had bad seeds, but it's kind of frustrating.  Last year, it was just too hot and dry.  This year, bad seeds.  We're thinking that maybe we should just give up on the idea of growing our own veggies.  We can't really have an actual garden, due to the assorted furry things that live underground.  Gophers eat slugs & grubs that eat plant roots, the roots are usually destroyed by the gopher's activities.  Moles eat the plants themselves, along with grubs and so forth.

A couple of days ago, Otter and I were sitting out on the deck watching the dogs play in the back yard.  I noticed something at the trellis - the dirt was moving.  As in, something underneath the dirt was moving and the top dirt was being pushed up as it moved along the tunnel/trail that it was digging.  We got the flashlight and Otter tried to find it, I uncovered the tunnel a bit.  But it was fast.  It was probably a mole, and it was close enough to the surface that we could see the movement of the dirt.  We squashed down the raised spots, which can sometimes discourage them from coming back.  Otter wanted to get the hose and see if we could flood the beastie out, but I didn't really want my rock garden to float away.  Her second choice was something explosive shoved down the holes, and her third choice was to shove the beagle down there teeth first.

Also, a few days ago the dogs kept going back to one particular spot and rolling on their backs.  I'd looked a couple of times but never could see anything.  Otter found it.  It was a mole, but it was pretty flat!  They'd probably killed it a few days ago and possibly might have gotten it out of one of the two really deep holes they dug.  Both holes were into mole tunnels.  It had been dead for a few days, they usually bring their trophies to us but not this time.  They didn't seem too happy that we took it away from them, I guess they wanted to keep playing with it.

I'm thinking that it's time to dig up all the iris bulbs and start fresh.  They will bloom for many years, but then they eventually "run out of steam" and I think mine may be there.  I want a variety of different colors anyway, so I'm probably going to do that but it will be in the fall since that's the time to plant most bulbs.

I'm not in any hurry to get outside with the shovel!