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.
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| Can you see his little head poking up from the back left side of the hummer feeder? |
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| 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!
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| 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.
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| New Starbucks on Summitview Ave |
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| Gorgeous coneflower in front of the new Starbucks |
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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!
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