Monthly Archives: June 2024

Now Who’s Eating Our Cherries?

Cherries, Reflections, Wildlife

A couple weeks ago when the cherries first started to ripen we noticed the robins stealing them, so my husband brought the big (fake) owl out of the barn, and we put it near the cherry tree to ward off the robins.

I’m not sure how well it worked because I still saw a robin now and then swoop into the tree or one on the lawn eating a cherry.

Thursday evening I picked about 3 quarts of cherries and decided that along with the seven or so quarts that are already in the freezer that I had picked enough, so my husband took the owl back to the barn. The birds can now have all the cherries they want.

But who invited this guy?

In case you can’t tell that is a baby racoon staring at me from the cherry tree.

I hope it enjoyed its meal.

An Explosion of Color

Flowers, Prayer Garrden, Reflections

Suddenly our prayer garden is busting with color.

I suspect the hot days we are having have something to do with it.

Pink and red rose bushes. Sorry I can’t give their formal names. My husband rescued these from a nursery he was working at a few years back. They had been left to die.

Evening primrose. Again, I’m not sure of the variety because a lady who my husband worked for when he was doing landscaping dug some up and gave them to him. I do know that they are a variety that blossom during the day and now that the deer are no longer eating them they are very prolific.

Roses in the foreground backed by lavender, and Asiatic Lilies in the distant background.

These Asiatic Lilies were planted 8 or 10 years ago. Each year they would send up green shoots, then form a bud, but before they even got a chance to open a deer would come along and bite the top off, so we had never seen them flower until this year.

The fence that my husband put up last year, which encloses our entire property, is a deer deterrent. The deer can certainly jump the 4-foot fence but mostly they don’t. We don’t have nearly as much deer damage as we used to.

Another Asiatic Lily that we have never seen flower before.

I had to add at least one new plant this year. This Foxglove was my choice.

My husband came home yesterday and told me that we need to add a white flowering perennial to the prayer garden.

He says we need to go shop for it today. Who am I to argue? 🙂

Thanks for visiting.

Giving Credit

Reflections

I mentioned in my most recent Monthly Inspiration post that I like to give credit where credit is due so when I came across this article identifying the author of the Rainbow Bridge poem, that I have shared on my blog several times over the past few years, I knew I needed to share this as well.

I do hope you take the time to read the above, well written article/interview but for those who don’t I will tell you that the poem was originally written in 1959 by 19-year-old Edna Clyne of Inverness, Scotland, the day after her Labrador Retriever, Major, died.

I also wanted to share with you this paragraph where Edna, now in her 80’s, answers the question ‘what advice she would give to those grieving the loss of a pet’. “nothing took her aback as when I asked if she has any advice to share for people suffering from the loss of a pet—because she, is after all, the world’s greatest expert on animal mourning. She asked if I really thought that was true, to which I could only respond, “Well you wrote the Rainbow Bridge, didn’t you?” Her response was then immediate—get another pet. We discussed it, how the relationship with a new pet will never be the same as the relationship with the old one, but it can be equally special and loving in different ways. There’s no reason to deny yourself or another animal that love, your previous pet certainly wouldn’t have wanted you to live without it.” I wholeheartedly agree with Edna’s advice. It has certainly helped us 🙂

Thanks for visiting.

Chick Update

Chickens, Chicks, Reflections

Right on Time

May 31st was the day we expected our next batch of chicks to hatch and when my husband returned from opening up the coop that morning, before 6:30, he said “congratulations Grandma!”. I knew we had chicks. He wasn’t sure how many had hatched at that time because it was a chilly morning, and he didn’t want to lift momma and expose the hatchlings to the cold.

When we returned to the farm just before 10:00 a.m. she had three fluffy yellow chicks under her. Another, that it appeared had tried to hatch, didn’t make it. By the end of the day they were wandering around the coop, and she was showing them how to eat and drink.

By the following day they had found their way out of the coop and my husband had to help momma get them back in at night. On day three he kept the big door closed so they stayed inside coop but on day four momma had them out and about all day and they even found their way back into the coop that evening.

I didn’t realize how much the first peep (a group of chicks is called a peep) had grown in three weeks until I saw the new ones. This week the Jersey momma took over full time parenting duties while the buff co-momma apparently decided she was no longer needed and left the group. Hopefully she has started laying eggs again.

Thanks for visiting.

Monthly Inspiration

Inspiration, Reflections

Hello and Welcome. Here is our quote to get the month started right.

Happy June, My Friends.

EDIT: After being asked by a reader (Thanks Cathy) who this quote was attributed to, I realized that this post was incomplete. I always like to give credit where credit is due. While most of the sources I found attribute this post to Harvey Mackay, I also saw one source that credited Dr Suess. According to research done by Snopes.com they could not confirm that Dr Suess was the original author of this quote and while Harvey Mackay may have used the quote, he was not the original author. Thus, the answer remains unknown.

Thanks for reading.