UPDATE ON THE QUAIL BABIES ~ GARDEN UPDATE ~ ANOTHER CEMETERY WALK ~ BOILED PEANUTS ~ PARTING SHOT

UPDATE ON THE QUAIL BABIES

A couple of weeks ago in the blog I showed you a video of two baby quail that we have in our yard this year. I am happy to say that they have grown a lot in the last couple of weeks, and the parents are now letting them fend for themselves a little bit. However, the parents are still close by to look after them. I got this video below through the window as they were sitting on the fence outside. Papa Quail was looking after the kids while Momma Quail was foraging around on the ground.

If you have your sound on, you will notice that you are NOT hearing the sound of quail, but rather the sound of a little spoiled brat who was upset because she wasn't getting any attention. Look closely at the video and you will see that one of the babies keeps pushing against the other one. The one doing the pushing is the baby with the hurt foot. We have noticed that he always stay close to the other baby as if he expects that one to protect him. We first saw these two babies on June 4th, so I am guessing that those eggs hatched sometime near the end of May. The video above was taken on June 22nd, and this picture below, taken on June 24th, is the most recent one I have of these two. You can really see how much they have grown compared to the June 4th photo.

June 4th picture

June 24th picture

One day I was sitting out on the front porch with my camera, hoping that the quail family would show up. All of a sudden I noticed movement out of the corner of my eye, so I very slowly got my camera ready to film. At first I thought it was the May babies, but then I noticed that these babies were much smaller, and there were more than two of them. Then Momma Quail made an appearance and she looked like some sort of giant bird (kind of like from that old movie "Food of the Gods." Click here to see a trailer).

It appears we have another quail family in our yard! To distinguish each family I'm calling the first ones the May Family, and the new ones the June Family.

These little guys are so cute running around, and there are so many more of them. We counted at least 10 babies, although I think there may be a couple more than that. We are keeping our fingers crossed that all of them survive.

The video above shows the babies foraging around, and then a noise or something startles them. They cluster together underneath the rose, all huddled up for protection. They don't stay scared long, though, because they run right back out and continue foraging. It probably helps that Mom and Dad are nearby. It's interesting to see how tiny they are compared to the sparrows and finches. I will try to continue taking video of them so we can watch them grow up together.

GARDEN UPDATE

I try to let my garden be a learning experience every year. So this year I decided to try making some "fertilizer tea" to put out on the plants, hopefully to help them grow bigger. I bought some organic fertilizer and followed the instructions to make a 5 gallon bucket of fertilizer tea. I mixed the fertilizer with water and put a lid on it (to keep out inquisitive cats) and let it sit overnight. I actually didn't have time the next day to put it out, so mine sat for 48 hours. When I took the lid off of it, you could never in your entire life imagine the stench that came wafting up from that bucket. There was a disgusting layer of bubbled up slime on top to boot. I managed to haul the bucket out to the garden and distributed about a cup of this foul stuff on each plant. I may have missed a few, I don't know, it was hard to concentrate while trying to keep from gagging from the smell. After I had distributed all of the "tea" (I may never want to drink tea again), I was left with this horrendous sludge in the bottom. I managed to dump it out back behind some bushes. By the way, I want to stress that I made sure to get a fertilizer that was harmless to pets and humans...if you can stand the smell. Well, after all, it is "fertilizer" and we all know what that means. This particular garden learning experience has taught me not to make fertilizer tea again. I would have included a picture, but it was just too gross for the blog.

On a less smelly note, I finally got my potatoes mounded up. I should have done this weeks ago, before I put down my hoses and straw. But I managed to get it done, now I just need to cover up the mounds with more straw.

Mounded-up potato plants

I have several different kinds of squash plants this year. The one that I am most excited about is a Yellow Straight-Neck Squash that came from seeds my friend Sheila sent me from North Carolina. It is the biggest squash plant out in the garden. I am hoping that this is an indication of how well it will produce. You can see another squash plant to the left and that one is much smaller.

North Carolina Yellow Straight-Neck Squash

Below is a picture I took this morning of my tomatillo volunteers. They have grown a lot since last week. Pretty soon I will pinch off all of them except the biggest one.

Tomatillo volunteers getting bigger!

ANOTHER CEMETERY WALK

Linda and I took a guided tour of the Tahoma Cemetery this past Sunday. I posted some pictures of this cemetery back in the winter when we used to go walking there. Taking the guided tour gave us a lot of history of the Yakima area. For example, there is a grave of a young girl underneath this huge tree (see pictures below). The guide said that most likely the tree was planted after she was buried, and grew over her grave. There are quite a few trees in the cemetery over 100 years old, as this one most certainly is.

And here is that same tree in all its beauty.

BOILED PEANUTS

As you may know, I love to cook. So, in keeping with the times, I got myself a 3 quart Mini Lux Instant Pot Pressure Cooker. This is a wondrous machine, it does just about everything. I may never use my stove again. Actually, that's not true, but it sounded good. Anyway, one of the things that I have discovered you can do with a pressure cooker is make boiled peanuts. Those of you not from the South are probably saying, "What??" I can assure you that this another Southern delicacy that is not found in the Pacific Northwest. I have not seen a boiled peanut since we moved here 11 years ago. I can't even find the canned ones in the grocery store...not even at Walmart. You can imagine my excitement when I saw a recipe for making boiled peanuts posted on Facebook (by a fellow named Keith Tant from Anderson, South Carolina). All I had to do was find some "raw" peanuts. Luckily, Linda saw some at one of the local fruit stands, so we picked up a container. I plan to pressure cook these bad boys in the next week, hopefully before next week's blog so I can report on it. Wish me luck!

Soon to be turned into a Southern delicacy

PARTING SHOT

If there's one thing that Summer Girl likes about summer, it is the fact that she has a nice, big bed of straw (also known as The Garden) where she can take a nap.

This week's blog was a couple of days late due to the fact that we took a short vacation trip to Leavenworth, WA, for my birthday. I will be posting highlights from that trip next week, so be sure to tune in. In the meantime, I hope everyone has a great week!

Blog Post Postponed

Hello friends,

I just wanted to let you know that this week’s blog will be a couple of days late, but there will be one!  Stay tuned!

GARDEN UPDATE ~ GOLDFINCH ACROBATICS ~ YANK-YANK BIRD ~ COFFEE DATE ~ SANDING AN HEIRLOOM ~ A BRIEF WALK IN TACOMA ~ PARTING SHOT

GARDEN UPDATE

This time of year you all probably can guess what is foremost in my mind...the garden. It is a lot of work to get everything in before it gets too hot, but we always seem to get it done. I finally got all my straw put down this past week and while I was out there doing that, I noticed a pretty flower out in the garden. 

This is a potato plant blossom. They are so pretty and are a welcome sight in the garden. Here's a picture below of the majority of the garden with the straw put down. A lot of the plants are barely visible, but the big ones in the middle are the potatoes.

You've heard me talk about "volunteers" coming up in the garden, so I thought I'd show you a picture of what the volunteers look like to start with. They are tiny.

This is a group of tomatillo volunteers. From the way they are grouped, it looks like a tomatillo fell in this spot last year and these all came up this year from the seed of that one tomatillo. I am babying them in hopes that I will get one good plant to use as my tomatillo plant this year.

GOLDFINCH ACROBATICS

I've enjoyed watching the goldfinches lately. They are starting to bring their babies to the niger seed feeder to show them how to get the seed out. I tried to get a video of the young ones on the feeder, but they saw me and immediately flew away. However, I did get this video below of an adult female showing the young ones how it's done. She almost looks like she's doing cartwheels on the feeder. They were all so cute, and there were so many of them they looked like bees swarming around the feeder.

YANK-YANK BIRD

I saw a rare visitor to our yard this past week. He landed on top of our hummingbird feeder. I just happened to be outside with my camera, so I got a couple of pictures of him and a short video. We used to see a different variety of this same bird all the time back in Lumberton. We called him the "yank-yank" bird because his call sounds like he's saying, "yank, yank." Click here to listen to the White-breasted Nuthatch's call.

The one I saw was a Red-breasted Nuthatch. We used to see his cousin, the White-breasted Nuthatch, at our feeders all the time back in N.C. But the species that lives here in Washington doesn't come to our feeders often. I have only seen them going up and down in the trees, looking for insects. Click here to go to a website to listen to the Red-breasted Nuthatch's call.

Can you see his little head poking up from the back left side of the hummer feeder?

He actually landed on the goldfinch feeder, but didn't stay there very long because he didn't know how it worked

While outside I just couldn't resist taking a picture of our Catalpa tree in the back yard. I love this tree because it provides us much-needed shade in the summertime. It was tiny when we moved here but has grown over the past 11 years. But, compared to the one in our neighbor's yard, it is still a baby. That one is HUGE!

Our beautiful Catalpa tree

COFFEE DATE

Linda and I like to take a break about once a month and go on a coffee date to Starbucks. We have several of their stores here in Yakima, and since a new one just opened up, we decided to go this week. We both had a free reward drink on our cards, which made it even better. The weather was nice so we decided to sit outside. I think Starbucks did a good job with the landscaping of this store. 

New Starbucks on Summitview Ave

Gorgeous coneflower in front of the new Starbucks

One hot, one cold...mine is the "why bother" drink

Speaking of Starbucks, we received a package this week from Linda's daughter, Emily. She works at the Starbucks Center in Seattle. Every year, during the month of June, Starbucks introduces a new t-shirt in honor of Pride month. Emily sent us both a shirt this year and we absolutely love them! Nice message on the front, too.

Words of wisdom

SANDING AN HEIRLOOM

When we came back home in March after spending a month at Dad's house, we loaded our truck down and tried to bring back everything that we could. We weren't able to fit everything in, but we did a pretty good job.

Packed up to the gills!

A couple of the most important items we brought back were two teak tables that Linda's parents had bought in the 1950's. She has fond memories of all the houses they lived in during that time, and she always said she would like to inherit those tables. And now she has. You can imagine, though, that they were in pretty rough shape having been used for 60-some years. So we are in the process of sanding them down and re-finishing them. I will keep you updated on our progress. For now, it's pretty slow going with the hand sanding.

Manual labor?

I still need to re-finish some of the windowsills in our house. I got one done last year, so keep your fingers crossed for getting at least one done this year. What happened to all that time I was supposed to have when I retired??

A BRIEF WALK IN TACOMA

Linda's sister sent me a short video this week while she was on a walk in Tacoma. She said that she thought of me so that's why she sent it. You can probably understand why she thought of me on this walk.

PARTING SHOT

Summer Girl has her routines, as we all do. Her morning routine is to come into my bedroom and announce herself with a loud yowl, jump up on the bed, head for "her" pillow, and then she winds up like this.

That's all for now, my friends. Please try to stay cool in the summer heat, and join me again next week for more of the same!

UPDATE FROM CARPINTERIA ~ THE KIDS ~ UPDATE ON PUZZLE ~ RAIN ~ ARTY PHOTO OF THE WEEK ~ BIRCH BAY STATE PARK ~ PARTING SHOT

UPDATE FROM CARPINTERIA

Nature will find a way.

You may remember that Linda and I took a hike up Franklin Trail in March while we were in Carpinteria for Dad's memorial. I took this picture below of the Trail on March 5th showing the devastation by the Thomas Fire in December. The burned area was just starting to get back a small bit of vegetation.

Picture from March showing fire damage to Trail

The picture at the top of the blue and yellow wildflowers and these two pictures below were all taken by Linda's sister on May 19th.  These two below show the extent of the rebirth.

Franklin Trail is coming back!

This is a good example of how nature will always find a way to come back. It may take some time, but eventually the hillside will be pretty much as it was before. It is very comforting to know that there is one constant in this world, and it is Mother Nature.

THE KIDS

I took another video of the quail babies this past Sunday. I like to check up on them every day or so, just to know that they are okay and that a predator hasn't snatched one of them up. I noticed, though, that one of the kids has either an injured or deformed right foot. You can see him favoring that foot when he hops around in the video. I hope it is just temporary, as we all know that an animal with a disability is far less likely to survive to adulthood than one that is fully functional. Let's all keep our fingers crossed for the little guy.

UPDATE ON PUZZLE

We finally finished the Tower of Babel puzzle. It was definitely a hard one and I thought we were both going to start speaking in foreign languages before it was done. Now we are on to a new puzzle, and this one promises to be hard as well, but looks like it is going to be way more fun. We will definitely be hungry for a certain thing while working on the new one.

This one almost made us babbling idiots!

You can probably tell what we will be craving while working on this!

RAIN

People in Eastern Washington are always thankful when it rains. I just checked on a website here (link) to get the precipitation amount for Yakima, and found that it is 7 to 8 inches per year. This website says that the definition of a true desert is anything less than 10 inches. So, we are definitely in a desert. When we got quite a bit of rain over the weekend, you better believe everyone was glad. My garden was very happy to get some moisture, and Linda was very happy because she didn't have to water the front yard as much. Here is a gorgeous picture that she took of the white "Dad Rose" after it rained.

The "Dad Rose"

An interesting topographical map of Washington State can be found here (link). Hopefully the map will come up with Yakima right in the middle. You can zoom in and out to see the various coastal, mountain, and desert areas of the state. Washington state has such a varied climate from one side of the mountains to the other. It is interesting how all of that works out. There is a short article here (link) that summarizes the state's climate areas, in case you are interested.

As a result of the rain, I am beginning to seem some volunteer tomato and tomatillo plants coming up in the garden. I guess we had a much drier Spring than we've had in previous years or they would have been up earlier. In last week's update to the garden, I mentioned that I would be planting more tomatoes. I did just that the other day when I planted another Black Krim (my favorite) and a new one called Big Rainbow. Plus, I couldn't resist getting more peppers, so I've added 4 California Golden Wonder Bell Peppers to the garden as well. Linda H. (Summer Girl's BFF), I am hoping we have a bumper crop of tomatoes this year!

ARTY  PHOTO OF THE WEEK

This leads us to the Arty Photo of the Week. This week we have more than one because I just couldn't decide on which one to pick, so I included three of them. One morning I walked out the front door to check on the bird feeder and noticed the rain drops on our Solomon Seal plants.

I grabbed my camera and took several closeups of the rain drops, and here are two of the best shots. The leaves shed water so well that they look like they have been waxed.

Variegated Solomon Seal

BIRCH BAY STATE PARK

I'm not the only one in the family who likes to take pictures. This past week Linda's daughter, Emily, and her husband, John, went camping at Birch Bay State Park (link). She sent me some pictures she took while there and they are absolutely gorgeous! As you can guess from the pictures, this state park is on the Western side of the state, near Bellingham. This might be somewhere Linda and I need to go!

Serenity

Looks like some sort of heron in the foreground...beautiful!

Two of my favorite people...Emily & John

PARTING SHOT

This one is self-explanatory.

What, me worry?

That's it for this week. I hope you enjoyed hearing about this wonderful state that we live in. Please join me again next week for more pictures, video, information, and assorted trivia from the Southerner in the Northwest!

FRONT YARD ~ CLOUDS ~ ARTY PHOTO OF THE WEEK ~ UPDATE ON THE SPROUTS ~ GARDEN UPDATE ~ PARTING SHOT

FRONT YARD

Our front yard is amazing this time of year. Most of the flowers are blooming like crazy, and the trees are in full leaf. You can probably find any color imaginable somewhere among the flowers, trees, and shrubs. It's almost like a huge painter's palette exploded over our house.

All those flowers do more than just provide something beautiful to admire, though. The spring of the year is when our fine feathered friends are growing their families. All of these plantings provide welcome food for the birds in the form of the insects that they attract, as well as blossoms and seeds that some of the birds eat. The densely packed flowers also provide shelter to hide from predators. Look closely at the picture below to see who is lurking among the flowers.

Yes, it's Papa Quail. He's on lookout while his family forages around on the ground. You can't tell from the picture, but he is standing on a large rock. The lead male of the California Quail will always serve as lookout when there are females or babies looking for food. He positions himself on a high spot and constantly surveys the area, looking for signs of any kind of trouble. If he spots something suspicious, he lets out a loud cry. This alerts the female to gather her babies and take cover. Sometimes the male will also forage around with the family, if he has sufficiently satisfied himself that the area is safe.

This past week as Linda was looking out our front window, she announced that there was a Quail couple in the front yard with two tiny babies. I immediately ran for my camera and was able to get a quick video out of the window. Please excuse the cross-pieces that divide our window into panes. This is definitely not a bird-watcher's choice for a window, but it came with the house.

The whole family was scratching around underneath the bird feeder, but Papa was still keeping an eye out for danger, jerking his head back and forth every few seconds. I think he spotted me through the window.

I see you!

The babies were sticking close to Mom, getting underfoot every chance they could. I was afraid Mom was going to kick one of the babies across the yard, but they seemed to know when to move out of the way.

The babies may be small, but they are extremely fast. I went out onto the porch at one point and spotted one of them further out in the yard. Apparently he spotted me as well and took off for cover.

This is going to seem weird, but you will never believe what popped into my mind when I first watched the video above. You know that scene in the movie Alien where the baby alien bursts out of John Hurt's chest? Well, the little creature looks around for a few seconds and then tears across the room lickety-split. Our little guy above was moving just that fast! He kind of looks like an alien, too. Hmmm...

Did you know that Quail can dance? Yes, they can. They are very talented birds and can shake a tail feather with the best of them. Here's the proof.

After they were done dancing, one of the babies stretched his wings, Mom took a quick dirt bath, and then the family moved off to head back home.

CLOUDS

Clouds are not something we see every day in Yakima. Oh, we see enough of them, but they are usually all over towards the horizon and pass us by without leaving a drop. Some days, when I'm outside sitting under the Catalpa tree, I like to look up and watch the clouds pass by. Such a day was this past Saturday. I had spent some time in my lounge chair, relaxing and enjoying the nice weather. I had my camera with me, so I was searching for subjects to photograph. That's when I looked up and saw this...

Our Catalpa tree has just now started to bloom, but these buds were not open then. I loved the juxtaposition of the light and dark. And, of course, the sky is Carolina Blue.

ARTY PHOTO OF THE WEEK

Right after I took the picture above I spotted another good photo opportunity. The sun was shining through our neighbor's maple tree and the color was stunning. I focused on the wisteria vines that are growing on his fence (and trying to get into our tree) and the resulting photo is our Arty Photo of the week.

Looks like Alien tentacles...I really need to watch that movie again!

UPDATE ON THE SPROUTS

You might remember the sprout seeds that I planted in a long flat a few weeks ago. It seems they are fully grown now because I haven't noticed them getting any bigger lately. They have been somewhat of a disappointment because they are still so tiny. I was expecting them to be much bigger. This was something new I wanted to try because that's the only way to learn about new things. I think I need to look around and see if there is a different variety of seeds out there to plant that might give me a bigger end result.

These are the ones still in the flat

I harvested these for a salad.  That is a half-cup measure.

GARDEN UPDATE

As promised, here is an update on the vegetable garden. Last week I was upset because some kind of bug was eating away at everything. In an effort to get rid of them, I spread around some organic snail, slug, and earwig bait. I don't ever like to use chemicals in my garden, but sometimes you have to do something or you will have no garden at all. I hoped that using an organic bait would do the trick, and it did. I'm happy to report that things are moving along, albeit slowly due to the low nighttime temperatures. We are still having lows in the 40's, which keeps the plants in a dormant stage. The overnight temperatures need to be 55 degrees or above for things to really start growing. Still, I can see some progress. I've noticed one thing different this year from every other year, and it's the fact that I do not have a bazillion volunteer tomato and tomatillo plants. As a result, I only have 2 tomato plants out in the garden as of right now. This I plan to rectify soon.

It looks like I have an overabundance of squash plants, and that is correct. Last year I discovered a recipe for making Zucchini Bacon in the dehydrator, and I plan to make tons of it this year. Also, I am really enjoying spiralized zucchini, squash and cucumber. So, this year I planted enough seeds in hopes that I won't run out. We'll see how that goes.

PARTING SHOT

I think Summer Girl is trying to kill our tree. At least it seems that way because this is what she does almost every time I let her out.

That's about all the news I have room for this week. Join me again next week for more!