Birds and Bees.

7-31-11 VERMONT: The cellar doors are finished, the project turned out fine. I will need to use a can of spray foam to plug all the holes and gaps between the cinder block irregularities and the new wood. Yesterday I was back to pruning and weeding. We had a rain Friday night that gave us exactly one inch, a much needed inch. Since then it has been gorgeous.

Alison and Dan left this AM with a quart of newly picked blueberries. The bushes are so productive this year that I picked another quart for us afterwards. Some of the apples are ripe enough to eat, Brady the horse has been eating them for weeks. We have had tomatoes every day, but no flood of red as yet. The corn has tassels and silk. There are about six soccer ball sized pumpkins in green stripes.

All our guests have commented on all the bee activity on all the blossoms. I haven’t seen any honey bees, but there are lots of different bumblebees and a variety of other, smaller bees. Wikipedia says there are 20,000 species of bees overall, and 250 species of bumblebees.

Yesterday Judy and I both saw two turtles in the pond at the same time. Also yesterday there was a blue heron here for second day in a row. When you’ve been looking at chickadees and robins all day, the heron seems enormous. There was a kingfisher here for a few hours also, but he/she was camera shy. Maine Tuesday.

New blooms: monkshood, goldenrod.


Bumblebee and echinacea.

Heron cleared for landing.

Where's the frogs?