Mish-Mosh

 

Last week I took a walk up to the garden thinking that there might be some blackberries that were ready for picking.  Admittedly, I have not been up there since very early spring and the weeds have made it look more like a fenced in meadow than a garden.   I had my camera with me and a container for the berries and as I stepped into the mess, my camera swung into the container I was carrying and the lens cap popped off.  It flew off so fast that I had no idea where to look for it and thought for sure that it was going to stay lost until we cleaned up the garden in the fall.  I pushed aside some of the weeds but knew it was useless.  I might as well have dropped it in the bay.

That day there weren't very many berries and I didn't stay long looking for them because with weeds seem to come mosquitos and I was getting bit more than I cared to be.  Still on my way back through the path I decided to give it one more shot and bent over on the opposite side of the path, moved some weeds and lo and behold, there was the cap.  That truly was a shot in the dark.  

The berries above were from several days later and I actually took this picture with my cell phone.  I had decided it would be best to carry that with me when I went up to the garden from now on because I was a little nervous as to what could be lurking (besides mosquitos) in those weeds.  There happened to be the faint smell of skunk up there the first time!  And you see the bed of green that the container is on should actually be a clean pathway, but it's not.

Oh, and let me say that there's nothing like the taste of warm berries off the vine.  You get the full flavor of them, and provided that they are indeed ripe, total sweetness.

I will pick every couple of days and hope to get more than the birds are stealing.  We could cover the vines with bird netting, but seeing as we actually have a nesting box within the confines of the garden, it would be very unfair to the birds to also have something that could endanger them.  So we share.  They usually get the easy ones on the top and outsides.  I have to wade into the vines and check underneath for them.  

And now, as I seque into the bird theme with the card above and picture below...... The card was made for a co-worker who has joined our staff with a new position created in our district.  I wanted to welcome her and wish her success in this new endeavor.  The sentiment (which I'm finding hard to read in this picture) says "Use what talents you possess.  The woods would be very quiet if no birds sang there except those that sang best."  credited to Henry Van Dyke.  The stamp set is from Amuse - I couldn't resist.  It has a few of my favorite quotes and this nesting birds image.  I wish I could show a better picture, but this was taken at my desk at work.  Not the most opportune spot.

This seagull was not squawking away, though with it's mouth wide open you might have thought so.  It rather looked like it was panting, or maybe daydreaming.  It was perched atop this chimney cap and facing away from the water.  And seemed quite comfortable.

And here's an update on the school nest box.  Looks like the 100+º temps may have kept all those eggs from being viable.  If you follow, you may remember that there were 4 eggs and last Tuesday one had hatched.  We were hoping to find 4 nestlings in there but HWNSNBP checked on Monday night of this week and there was only one chick and three eggs.  One of the eggs was cracked and he removed it.  There was not a formed bird in the egg.  These eggs will not hatch and when the chick starts jumping in the nest to get ready to fledge, it will most likely destroy the eggs.  Until then, the parents will leave them there.  We're debating whether to remove them or push them off to the side, but we'd have to bring a ladder and that might cause too much attention in the neighborhood.  So Mother Nature might just have to take care of it for them.

He/she is rather large for a week-old chick, but that is probably because Mr. and Mrs. Blue only have one to feed.  I feel certain that this will be the last clutch of the season for the blues.

So there is the mish-mosh of the last week or so.  I have promised to post my tangles and I will try to get pictures this weekend that I can use.  I took some with my phone but was not pleased with how they came out.  So I'm hoping for some sunny weather to help with lighting and a steady hand for I am terribly behind on this posting.