Birbs!

While we live far from the ‘burbs, we do seem to live in “birb” central. I believe all our feathered friends are back for the summer. I’m really glad I talked about getting the other two bird feeders cleaned in last weeks’ column. I set them out with fresh grape jelly plus a clementine cut in half a few days ago. Two days ago, a rosy-breasted grosbeak showed up to study those feeders, and to help himself to the regular bird seed. He tried to get through the living room window to the red blossoms on the geranium. Today (Mother’s Day) we had our first oriole sighting, helping himself to the jelly. The grosbeak also likes the grape jelly. I’ll be refilling that often now.

I’m slowly catching up on clearing flowerbeds. I’ve just finished the one under those bird feeders. The daylilies and iris didn’t suffer too badly from my clumsy removal of 2-3” of dead leaves. The hollyhocks I transplanted to the back of that bed all survived the winter. I’m sure I’ll find a few more to move after I till the garden. Those roots run deep.

After clearing the leaves there, I started trimming dead twigs from the bird-planted honeysuckle bush in that area. They tend to die off from the bottom up while sending up new growth on top. If left untrimmed, they look really shaggy. I don’t recommend them at all. Then I continued on, clipping dead limbs from the lilac hedge that grows north from that bed. Eventually I looked up to see a nest with two white eggs in it right about my eye level. (I looked it up: mourning doves lay two white eggs.) I decided to not finish trimming those lilacs for another couple of weeks. My info said that’s how quickly the fledglings will mature and leave the nest. Mourning doves can have up to five hatches per summer. I guess they need that many to survive as a species. They make the most slap-dash nests!

The asparagus is coming up nicely even though I’ve yet to clear their row of all the trash that accumulated all winter. I did break off the dead fronds from last fall. There have been less than two dozen spears, and I ate all of them raw as I cut them. Maybe the next cutting will get steamed, with minced shallot, EVOO, lemon juice, and fresh tarragon. I am cooking with fresh garlic scrapes as well as fresh chives. I’ll have rhubarb this week.

While I still haven’t tilled the garden, I did purchase a few packets of seeds to plant, mostly carrots. A few years ago, I waited too long to get seeds, and carrots were sold out everywhere! I’m not letting that happen again. My other seed purchases so far are blue kale, curly parsley, and a gourmet blend leaf lettuce. Salads are in my future. I’ll be looking for more seeds when I’m in town Tuesday (my golf day).

The lawn has been mowed - once. The dried dead leaves did not get annihilated. All they did was blow out the side with the grass clippings. I didn’t have the blades set low enough, but then you don’t want to cut too much off the first time out. The dandelions are all in riotous bloom now. They had kept their flower buds low to the ground, only to pop up after I mowed. Maybe I should learn how to make dandelion jelly and/or wine? They’re supposed to be chock full of great nutrition and vitamins and such. And they really are such a pretty yellow when in bloom.

A warning: the ticks are out and about! If you listen to Sean Heavey, ticks can teleport themselves to you. I’m starting to believe him. Saturday, I hadn’t even been outside the house at all, yet when I sat down to have lunch, one appeared suddenly. It was crawling up my forearm. And today, we’d been to church, to the Mother’s Day buffet, visited our daughter, then drove home. Before I even got out of the car, poof! one appeared on my shin. Yuck! And now I’m all itchy. Don’t you just hate ticks? I do.