Mosaic Monday #166: A Spring Reverie

Spring is flitting among my thoughts, a butterfly alighting here and there, only to whisk away again on gossamer wings.  I just came in from snow-shoeing; the warm caressing breezes are more akin to early April than February 13.  I could have managed with a robust sweatshirt rather than my ancient ski jacket, and the lake that I circled shimmers with puddles lying on its icy surface.  

The arrival of the Prairie Moon Nursery catalog (specializing in native seeds and plants for gardening and restoration) goosed my Spring daydream, and prompted an eye-roll from the Spousal Unit.  With more than 30 years of marriage under his belt, he (wisely) said not a word.  Trying not to salivate on the glossy pictures of pollinator gardens, mix and match trays and host plants, it occurred to me that my garden will be waking up while we travel to the UK and to Grand Cayman.  My mind raced ahead.  What will happen without me here?  Can I put protection in place before we go?  Will it be too cold to install our sprinkler defense system? 

I finally found a few stolen moments to study my garden journal, and I have formulated the beginning of a plan.  The last two weeks of April will find us in the UK; in 2019, the first notes in my journal are from April 21.  On April 8, 2020, I wrote "Planted columbine seeds in front driveway flower bed and several other places in front of the house."  Judging from two years of data, ground squirrels can emerge from hibernation (ravenously hungry, mind you!) anywhere from mid-April to early May.

Weather permitting, the following tasks need to be completed before our UK trip:    1. Guard Strawberries, Stonecrop, Columbine, Nodding Onion, Chives and Goldenrod with chicken wire  2.  Plant Columbine seeds

One worry? Covering the Sand Cherries in the event of frost.  It would not be healthy to wrap them for two weeks, so I might have to ask one of my neighbors to pitch in!

We will be home for two and a half weeks before we fly to Grand Cayman mid-May.  This will be perfect timing to: 1. Install sprinkler defense system  2. Remove dead stalks from plants      3.  Fertilize trees and shrubs   4. Guard Penstemon, Aspen Fleabane, Paintbrush, Poppy and Aster with chicken wire  5. Plant Blanketflower seeds.

By the time we return from Cayman, the garden could look like this.  

All the while I am in this daydream, reality keeps tugging me back, like gravity pulls the moon toward Earth.  I am not ready to let go of winter - the window to enjoy winter sports is already short enough (and getting briefer).  So, for now, you will still find me on the slopes with Spousal Unit and cross-country skiing in the meadow with Dear Neighbor Friend and her dog.  Pray for snow!

Mosaic Monday

Welcome to Mosaic Monday, a weekly meme where we get together to share our photo mosaics and collages.

Please include at least one photo mosaic/collage in your post.

The link will be open from 1 p.m. Sunday until 11 p.m. Tuesday (U.S. Mountain time).

Remember to add the link to your Mosaic Monday post and not the one to your blog.

Please link back to this post so that your readers will be able to visit and enjoy more wonderful mosaics; taking the MM blog button from my sidebar is an easy way to link back.

As host I will visit every participant and leave a comment so that you know I stopped by.

Please try and visit as many other blogs as you can, especially those that join in later, so that everyone's creativity can be appreciated fully.

Thank you for joining in today and sharing your mosaics with us. 

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

Mosaic Monday #23: Anticipation

When we moved into our new house on April 14, 2018, I began taking notes about wildlife we saw around the acreage, including information such as date and location.  And, of course, digital photography is a superb record-keeper since it embeds the date the photo is taken.  My blog is another source of historic information about the last 12 months.

So, as the anniversary of our move-in date approached, the idea of a retrospective on flora and fauna deeply excited me, and mainly as a reminder about what we can expect as spring continues to unfold.  I plan to maintain my journal, and in the years ahead I can envision a running dialogue such as "the bluebirds are late this year" or "flowers will be delayed because this winter slammed us with 5 more feet of snow than normal".  Won't that be interesting?

For now, let's focus on what we can anticipate in the next 90 days.  Maybe in a future post I can tell you if it happened or not!!!

APRIL

As the saying goes, April showers bring May flowers, so this month delivers more in the way of fauna than flora.  Last year, April meant turkeys passing through our yard, but we have yet to spot any this year.  The chipmunks, on the other hand, emerged from hibernation at the end of March and have been scampering around ever since.

Birds that have been absent for the winter have begun to appear.  Both the Mountain Bluebird and Sandhill Crane have arrived at Hodge Lake, earlier than last year.  I find it particularly interesting that I observe a mating pair of bluebirds in almost the same location as last year.  I read some material that suggests these birds bond more to a nest site than to each other.

Sandhill Crane

Last year at this time, the bluebirds and swallows were considering our bird houses.  This year, as I mentioned in my last post, we have already noticed the bluebirds examining the nesting quarters, but the swallows are still in absentia.

April also witnessed the return of the Red-Winged Blackbirds at our bird feeders.  This year, the first one showed up on March 14, and now my feeders are mobbed by males and females alike on a daily basis.  The sunflower seeds have also attracted an occasional house finch, a new visitor.  On Friday, I almost fell over myself when a Red-Naped Sapsucker perched for just a few moments on our porch railing.  (I knew it was a woodpecker, but I had never seen it before and had to look it up in my Montana field guide.  SOOOO exciting!!!)

Other new sightings have included two otters.  On April 7, in the early evening, Spousal Unit spotted something dark on the remaining ice of the lake, and he examined it through the binoculars while I deployed the spotting scope.  Over the next few minutes, we watched one and then two otters slide in and out of the water onto the ice.  At one point, they shared a fish that one of them had pulled out onto the ice.  How cool is that?

On April 10, Spousal Unit (yes, he has sharp eyes) detected movement on the far side of the lake, and we soon determined that it was four wolves.  We must have observed their activity for 20 minutes; they ran up and down along the edge of the lake, and at times acted almost like puppies in the way that they gamboled together.  Of course, I have reported wolves before, but this is the first occasion that we have seen them in real time.

That same evening, I noticed something white moving around in the tall grass near the lake.  On closer examination, it turned out to be a bald eagle eating something on the ground.  Being this close to Hodge Lake is certainly a boon for wildlife!

MAY

May 2018 was a thrilling month since we witnessed the moose down at the lake, and the beaver pair moved into the neighborhood, building a dam and lodge lickety-split.  After those initial sightings of the moose, it disappeared for parts unknown.  We continued to see beaver activity in terms of changes to the dam, tree cutting and the occasional tail slap, but over the winter they have been entrenched in the lodge.  Hopefully they will be more visible once the ice clears out.

The flowers surged last year during this month, and here are some of the beauties we can anticipate emerging first.

Lower left: Glacier Lily; Center: Blue Violet; Lower right: Aspen

Upper right: Kinnikinnick

Upper left: Serviceberry; Upper Center: Heartleaf Arnica; Upper right: Wild Strawberry

Lower left: Oregon grape; Lower Center: Not sure; Lower right: Lodgepole pine

On May 28, my trail cam documented the Columbian Ground Squirrels, but I am fairly certain they were scrambling about earlier.  Just as I was wondering when they would leave hibernation, I spotted one yesterday on the slope just below the kitchen window.  He was frantically eating the short grass; we shouldn't be surprised since he has been underground since mid-August!

May 29 brought a coyote loping through our leach field around 9.30 pm.  At the time, it was a novelty that had me jumping up and down.  Twelve months on, I have become accustomed to a sighting (at a distance) while I am running, and I have certainly captured plenty of them on my trail cam.  Don't get me wrong, I am still mesmerized, but they are not as rare as I first imagined.

At the end of the month, we planted our flower pots.  While this does not relate directly to my chronicles of native flora and fauna, I can use the reference as a safety net - generally, I don't have to worry about these plants suffering a snow storm or ravaging frost if I wait for the final days of May to set them out.

JUNE

 Middle left: Narrowleaf Collomia

Middle right: Rose

Lower left: Starry Wild Lily of the Valley

Reproduction systems kick into high gear in this month.  Fawns begin to appear, and as many as six elk with a baby in tow wandered the edges of Hodge Lake.  A painted turtle crawled up the logging road and seemed to be digging a hole for eggs.  This occurred twice that I witnessed.  Each time, I placed rocks on either side of the area to enable monitoring (incubation is 72 days).  Nothing came of it as far as I could tell.

Not to be outdone, the swallows were nesting in both bird boxes.  (But by mid-June, the gnawing squirrels had kicked them to the curb.)  I also glimpsed the occasional Western Tanager high in the pine treetops, and male and female crossbills chose our rock steps below the kitchen as a favorite hang-out.  I still have not determined what drew them to that spot - something in the soil?  Microscopic bugs that I could not see?

Of course, not all wildlife is welcome.  This month also brought the carpenter ant infestation, which we were able to fend off quickly.  That was a relief, and now I am constantly vigilant for bugs attempting to make a warm nest out of our house.

Abundant wildflowers danced in the meadows and nodded under the shrubs.

Upper left: Cinquefoil; Upper Middle: Blue Violet;

Upper Right: Butter and Eggs

Lower left: reflection in lake; Lower right: Shooting Star

Left: Yarrow; Upper middle: Pink Wintergreen; Upper right: Blue-eyed Grass

Lower middle: Self-heal; Lower right: Bog Orchid

I would be hard-pressed to choose the highlights from June, but the black bear on the logging road (captured by trail cam) and the badgers I observed would land at the top of the list.

JULY

Early July brought much of the same with an occasional surprise, such as the afternoon I glimpsed a small black bear on our driveway as I returned home from a run.  Or the weasel that caught my eye from the window of our master bathroom.

As I sit here now, looking at barren tree branches and muddy ground, my mind struggles to grasp the life that is waiting just below every surface.  I am dreaming about the wild grass and wildflowers that we sowed in the fall, immediately before the snow took over.  Will it sprout?  What kind of wildflowers will we see?  Can we defend the new growth from the deer and the bunnies?  Of course I am also keen to observe our formal landscaping.  Does it come back?  How much self-seeding occurred?  Will our apple trees bloom and cross-pollinate?  And then we have the pines and aspens we transplanted at the end of the summer.  Did they survive the process?  When can we expect the aspens to leaf out?  So much anticipation.  All I have to do is wait.

Mosaic Monday

Welcome to Mosaic Monday, a weekly meme where we get together to share our photo mosaics and collages.

Please include at least one photo mosaic/collage in your post.
The link will be open from 1 p.m. Sunday until 11 p.m. Monday (U.S. Mountain time).
Remember to add the link to your Mosaic Monday post and not the one to your blog.
Please link back to this post so that your readers will be able to visit and enjoy more wonderful mosaics; taking the MM blog button from my sidebar is an easy way to link back.
As host I will visit every participant and leave a comment so that you know I stopped by.
Please try and visit as many other blogs as you can, especially those that join in later, so that everyone's creativity can be appreciated fully.
Thank you for joining in today and sharing your mosaics with us. 

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

Another Day in the Neighborhood

When we moved to the country, I fully expected to encounter wildlife in all its forms, and this post is testimony to that dream, fulfilled.  And we've only been here 60 days!



My trail cam is the gift that keeps on giving … like a kid on Christmas morning, I retrieve the SIM card every few days and practically jog back to the house to see what has been wandering around the 'back 40'.

On May 23, the beaver(s) worked from 7.53 pm to 2.30 am as

documented by the trail cam.  A couple of days later, the trail cam

captured the lower right hand shot of mist rising off the lake as    

the sun rises.  I call it "Swimming Home from Work". 

If you read my May 23 post, you know that an active beaver pair has dammed the lake on the edge of our property.  At that time, I did not have any of my own pictures of the beaver … a situation that has now been rectified!

In my six months with the trail cam, I have learned that it can capture changes in the environment in addition to candid shots of animals (such as snow disappearing, in my May 10 post).  While the trail cam was focused on the beaver dam, it documented the sunset and the resulting reflections in the lake.

And I love this picture of the 'bubbles' on the lake's surface, created by large raindrops.

You may be wondering how I decide on the location of the trail cam - mostly it involves observing events (beaver is building a dam) and positioning the camera accordingly.  From my blogging perch on the deck, I noticed a dead tree frequented by Columbian Ground Squirrels.  Turned out to be a good choice for a photo studio!

Good morning, madam!

Flicker

Let's see - safe to take a snooze?

Oh, this sun feels SOOO good ...

Yeah, baby, this is the life …

Until that TURKEY shows up!

Of course, some forms of wildlife are not welcome, and can be a downright nuisance or problem.  Within a 24-hour period, we discovered a carpenter ant invasion (not a good thing in a log home) and a squirrel that had set up house in the bottom of the barbecue.  The latter was easily solved (remove the nest - no babies, folks!) but the ants will require ongoing vigilance ….

(And now I have an inkling who was scratching away at my patio cushions … could it be the squirrel in search of nesting material?)  We now have our cushions safely stored in this handy dandy shed!

(And then there was the recent episode with the fan in my 4runner, which was making flapping noises.  Upon servicing it, the technician showed Spousal Unit a large hole that had been gnawed in the air filter!!!  Apparently, this is a frequent event with vehicles that are parked outside in Montana.  Good thing that our garage now has space for both cars to be inside!)

Swallows had won the nesting boxes from the mountain bluebirds, but then the squirrels came along and made the entrances larger by gnawing around the circumference of the hole.  Exit the swallows … Grrrr.  (Are you noticing a repetitive villain here by the moniker of SQUIRREL?)

When I need to calm myself (how dare those carpenter ants chew MY logs?), I go for a walk.  And I find plenty to distract me.  First, geese flying overhead.  Listen for the flapping wings …

And the flowers always put me in a better mood!!!

Upper left: Cinquefoil; Upper Middle: Blue Violet;

Upper Right: Butter and Eggs

Lower left: reflection in lake; Lower right: Shooting Star

Top and lower right: Painted turtle -  I ran into

this turtle on the old logging road on our

property, and was amazed to see it several

days in a row, including an episode of 

apparent egg laying not too far from our

deck … Middle left: Narrowleaf Collomia

Middle right: Rose

Lower left: Starry Wild Lily of the Valley

And there's almost always some sort of surprise, like this turtle in the middle of the road!












Last year, we had no rain for over 90 days, spanning most of the summer.  So, although I haven't checked the stats, I know we have already accumulated more rain in June than we had all of last summer.  I love watching the sky as the storm clouds move in.

Spousal Unit, from his chair near the great room windows, had observed the lone coyote loping by in the dusk, so I moved my trail cam in the hopes of capturing more shots of this iconic hunter.  So far, no luck with the coyote, but maybe I got something even better … (please note that the trail cam was only 20 yards from our house for these shots.)

Robin

Buck

Hare

Black bear

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