Month: July 2021

Works.

A honeybee works a Purple Coneflower bloom.

Squiggly.

insects wrote squiggly lines on this tree trunk.

Insects wrote squiggly lines in this tree trunk.

Gleaned.

These Downy Woodpeckers gleaned every last reachable bit from the feeder before I could refill it.

Dinner was served.

Nachos! Avocado, sliced jalapeno from the garden, a tomato from the local organic farm, cheese, and lentil chili underneath it all. With sour cream on the side.

It was delicious.

Swanlings

I understand that the correct word for young swans is cygnets. Nonetheless, since young ducks are called ducklings and young geese are called goslings, I often think of young swans as swanlings.

Here are four Mute Swan swanlings with their parents. It is interesting that three of them are grey morphs. It was also interesting that they did not move away when a companion and I appeared from behind a screen of phragmites.

Disk.

The sun was little more than an orange-red disk on this hazy, smoky, foggy morning.

Naturalized.

Our municipality’s Council recently approved a bylaw amendment to allow naturalized areas in residential areas.

Don’t tell anyone (shhhh), we have had naturalized areas in our yard for years now. This bed in our front yard is full of Purple Coneflower (background), Tickseed (foreground), and Gaillardia (out of the frame). While I can broaden my knowledge of insects in general and pollinators in particular, I am certain our yard is friendlier to pollinators than that of almost all of our neighbours who have (mostly) turfgrass and imported ornamentals.

We also let dandelions go, probably to our neighbours’ chagrin.

Busily.

A honeybee busily works a Purple Coneflower bloom in the front yard.

More important.

It would be good to see more fields in this part of the world protected by hedgerows. Unfortunately, it seems that planting property line to property line is more important.