Just like the sparrows.

The season has started, with the return of the picture takers. Every year these beautiful and elusive creatures flock to the native flora in front of my house to take pictures.  I consulted online references, carefully selecting my plants to draw them in and furnish them with nectar.

Ali and I have sat in our blind a few feet away, waiting with the patience of ornithologists or duck hunters or something, hoping to catch a glimpse of our wild neighbors as they come in to take pictures, skittish and fearful, but drawn powerfully to bright colors.  Something inside them, something in their very nature must answer the call of orange and green.  Sometimes we refer to our blind as "the porch", and sometimes we call the long wait "drinking." But I don't mean to confuse you with technical jargon.  After one of us has been home all day, we'll compare sightings.  "I scored a backtrack, walked all the way back across the street to look again."   "Oh, I only bagged a family.  Those are too easy --kids always stop to look."

Ali's far away, in Korea, writing fantastic posts.  She'll be back one day.  Darling Sherry, can you come visit in the spring one time?  My other flowers will be bigger then, so we're likely to see more of the local fauna.  I would coach you in "drinking" "on the porch."  It takes fortitude and self-mastery, but I think you'd be a natural.

My other front beds are filling in, but I wish they would fill in faster.

I am fairly pleased with the blue border, which is doing a lot of what I hoped it would.  I can't be sure of it until the red and yellow flowers come in strong, which is taking FOREVER.

 
See, bare dirt.  All those plants will get big, and the blue ones at the top of the picture have already grown quite a bit.  But not fast enough, because apparently the universe doesn't care if I die of impatience.

This is my neighbor's fence, and the vine-y lookin' things up against the fence are the very fast-growing morning glory type vines she planted.  I don't mind them, except for the part where they want to cross sidewalks and come up through my porch and kill us all in our sleep.  They got hit hard by the frost, so I asked my neighbor if I could clean them out.  She said sure, and when she came out again twenty minutes later, I'd taken them down to dirt.  It wasn't enough, though.  They're coming back.  I'm tempted to plant pumpkins there this year and let the vines fight it out.  We could watch that action from our nature blind as well.

Comments

[Mitch]

Some very nice picture-taker specimens you've captured there. It would be interesting to tag them and see if any individuals return in later seasons.

[Cecily]

I am totally going to make a stop motion action movie about vine on vine fighting.

Also, I sent you some thinks!

[Megan]

"Easy there, big fella. I just want to give you this anklet."

***

Thank you! I will use them!

[Mitch]

It totally helps to talk to them that way; calm voice, keep up a line of patter. It's almost like they understand.

[Megan]

I don't want to get too anthropomorphic, but I think they're very good at reading body language. They can sense that you mean them no harm, so they don't get all fight-or-flight about it.

[ali]

haHA! Good thing they aren't picking any this time.
ps -- I miss YOU a thousand times a day. <3
pps -- my blog has a million more hits, bringing the count to approximately 1,000,003. Helllll yeah!! Thanks for the plug, honey pie xx

[JRoth]

My 20-month-old's sighting of a BEEEEE flying above a flower a couple weeks ago remains his favorite story. Every picture of a flower is occasion for him to "tell the story:" "BEEEEEE [points outside] My-mee*." When you echo the story back to him, he nods in great satisfaction.

* his word for Grammy, who was walking with him on this momentous occasion

[alysia]

Your yard and house look beautiful. I love that it's a project - an evolution - and not just a place to go to bed at night. You cultivate your house. And probably, a little, your neighbors.

[Megan]

Well, I do put out a salt lick.

[doctorpat]

I ask for more irrigation posts, and Megan does manage to sneak in a photo of an irrigation system in her very next post. See, that wasn't that hard.