summer begins

  

The spring has given way to summer.  The garden spills over with green and beauty.  Peas are climbing the teepee and producing so many that we can't keep up with picking them; the same is true of the raspberries, though I'm doing my best.  Green tomatoes appear where yellow flowers once were, and I'm on my second planting of salad greens since it got warm enough that they all bolted.  One of my favorite things in the garden this year is the new square raised bed where I just scattered wildflower seeds for now until I plant perennials to make a cutting garden.  I've always tried to grow wildflowers here and there but with no success until this year.  I now have Bachelor's Buttons, orange poppies and big floppy red poppies, calendula and other beauties in a riot of color. It's really pretty. 

Above our porch steps, on a branch of one of our birch trees, rests a tiny cup of a nest where Madame Hummingbird rests for mere moments a day, when she's not visiting our feeder, our snapdragons, or resting atop the bean trellis in the garden.  I wish we could get a peek in the nest which should contain two tiny white bean-sized eggs, but we must content ourselves with watching mama zip back and forth above our heads all day long. 

The hay is cut and lays in the field waiting to be baled.  The red-tailed hawk "chicks" have fledged and make the most unsettling cry all day from the branches of the maple in the nearby pasture.  I planted three little Rose of Sharon cuttings in the yard today.  The girls read and read and play and play.  Lyddie has found some "science" experiments in a book and decided to try the old vinegar/baking soda "bomb" activity today.  Carefully, all girls stood three feet back from the plastic bag containing their explosive, and watching with rapt attention as the contents foamed and sizzled, and finally "pop" went the sandwich bag.  A little anticlimactic if you ask me, but if you ask them, it was high entertainment.  I love that they're smart enough and big enough to completely independently gather the materials and measure it all out and follow the directions to stuff like this now.  Well, mainly Lyddie, still, but the other two were excited, too.