the turtle, birds, fish, and gardens

I've been kinda busy these last few days...mucked out the turtle pond on Friday, worked in the store last Saturday, finished planting the garden and finished a wax model on Sunday, Monday a trip to the nursery to buy azaleas that were on special to replace the ones I moved last spring and that did not make it through the brutal summer, and today I worked on designs for an elaborate mirror with lots of bevels and jewels.

I would liked to have worked outside today getting the azaleas planted and the new garden square finished but I was late working on the sketches. Marc got the grass up though after we marked out the space. We're going to plant watermelon seeds in there that our neighbor gave us. He says these are watermelons to swoon over.

The wrens are gone, I don't know where, but I haven't seen them in weeks.

I found a fledgling mockingbird dead on the ground, no sign of injury so perhaps it didn't survive the long fall. I scanned the oak tree canopy but did not see a nest.

A loud thwacking in my neighbor's yard caught my attention yesterday morning. A pileated woodpecker was very intent on a dead limb of the pine it was in. It deftly removed the bark to probe for insects.

As mentioned above, we mucked out the turtle pond, a task that took all day.

 

Much nicer now.

The goldfish were happy to be back in the pond.

These two minnows were circling each other and occasionally they would tussle.

We finished planting the garden. Didn't get potatoes in like I wanted or onions or the beets we talked about or any number of things I wanted to try. But we did get in tomatoes, bell peppers, jalapenos, cucumbers, pole beans, two kinds of squash, japanese eggplant, okra, watermelon, and cantaloupe. This food farming is still new.

I looked down for some reason and spied these tiny red dots in a flower bed. Baby lady bugs? They're not that much bigger than a pin head.

This cluster of rose blooms is enormous poking through the fence of the little back yard.

Spring.