The Uninvited Guest

He looks pretty darn happy doesn’t he?  Just taking a stroll through his new digs, not a care in the world.  That’s our groundhog, Mr. Chuck.

A friend suggested her builders method.  Trap them in Havaheart traps and then shoot them.  After a week of this, it seems like a sensible idea.

The Garden of Eatin’ featuring Friar Chuck

He ate the daisy buds.  He ate the white conflower I started from seed last year.  He ate every single pansy blossom.  He ate the lupines, the lettuce,  and the asters.  And while I am surveying all this damage, my fragmented brain is thinking, how can he be so fat eating all these greens?  And where is the baseball bat, ’cause I’m putting an end to this business.  And then after drinking all the water in the fountain, he looked around him and saw that it was good and dug a hole under the front porch.  A hole exactly where I put my foot when I come down or go up the porch a bazzillion times a day. 

On Wednesday my lupines looked like this,

on Thursday this is what was left.

 Tomorrow I hope to write, that Friar Chuck has moved on, to the great groundhog in the sky.

 

Whistling pig my patootie.

 

First Lily (day) of the Season

Happy Returns the cutest little day lily of them all.  First bloom peeked out yesterday and from the look of the many buds this will be a good year for her.  I transplanted these from the very shady neglected backyard to the somewhat more sunny front yard, last year.  It’s actually growing rather than surviving, and I get to see it everytime I go in and out.  Brings a smile to this gardeners face.

I lifted this from the American Hemerocallis Society’s page.  Do you think their members carry cards announcing as much?  Anyhoo I found it interesting.  My daughter’s pet peeve is people (her mom?) who spell lilly with two L’s.  The  AHS people are very clear that daylily is indeed one word.  Just in case you’ve been losing sleep over this matter.

The scientific name for daylily is Hemerocallis, most recently considered to belong in the plant family Hemerocallidaceae. Previously, many older works placed daylilies in the Lily family, Liliaceae. Notice that the preferred spelling is “daylily” as one word. Many dictionaries spell it as two words. The word Hemerocallis is derived from two Greek words meaning “beauty” and “day,” referring to the fact that each flower lasts only one day. To make up for this, there are many flower buds on each daylily flower stalk, and many stalks in each clump of plants, so, the flowering period of a clump is usually several weeks long. And, many cultivars have more than one flowering period.  

Light

The light was good on Saturday morning, this is nepata, catmint.  Can’t remember which one.  Do you want me to look it up in the book?

Light near the tree house. 

Lilac.

May, Glorious May