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Fair warning – our baby chuckers are on the move and there will be a plethora of photographs in the near future.
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I just can’t get enough of their little paws.
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The siblings stick closely together.
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Though the occasional squabble over prime fruit and veg does occur.
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This is the runt of the litter.
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And it must be hard when the buffet is bigger than you.
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But damn, he’s a cute little bugger.
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My favorite flower is in full bloom.
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It’s peony time!
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For a bright burst of color you really can’t beat them.
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And the fragrance? Heavenly….
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They also make a nice backdrop for pictures of his lordship.
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It has begun.
The search for rocks to build a new border for my defunct perennial bed is underway and I can’t tell you how thrilled I am.
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We went shopping…
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For rocks!
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Did I mention the aforementioned rocks are not cheap? Many rocks will be needed for this project so we drove around all day to multiple yards to compare prices.
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So.
Many.
Rocks!
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I think I died and went to heaven right on that spot.
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This will be our border. 1-3” fieldstone. 3,000 lbs a pallet.. and at $458 per it was the cheapest we found. The bed is 10’x20’ … I say we’ll need two pallets , maybe 3 for a finished bed border… the husband says we’ll start with one.
Silly man. Doesn’t he know you can never have too many rocks?
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Baby woodchucks are everywhere I look lately, including our kitchen porch. I was about to open the door yesterday when I spotted this little fellow.
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He scampered around for a bit and then settled in to rest.
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Before I knew it?
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The little guy was showing me just how much he loved living at Casa River.
If that’s not cute, I don’t know what is.
❤️
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I used to have a beautiful perennial garden in our back yard. It was a lovely little brick bordered bed and over the years I filled it with a varied assortment of colorful flowers.
There was purple lupine.
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The harder to grow white lupine.
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And some fabulous red bee balm.
A few years in, a little apple tree seeded itself and since I didn’t have the heart to pull it up… it grew happily alongside the phlox, black eyed Susans and Shasta daisies.
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My garden made a wonderful foreground in photos of the big barn construction progress.
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And I had many happy years of bright blooms and vases full of freshly cut flowers.
Until my husband bought the beast.
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The monster zero turn lawn mower that flings grass clippings and weeds what seems like 100 miles. No matter how many times I begged him to reverse direction and steer clear, over the years my bed was overtaken by weeds. No matter how many of the damn things I pulled, dug up or chopped… I couldn’t contain the growth and they slowly started choking out my flowers.
By 2019 I gave up.
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I bought numerous bags of mulch.
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Weed whacked everything down to ground level…
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And covered the whole thing, leaving only the tree. And while I missed my riotous blooms, the aesthetic was pleasing enough to satisfy.
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Of course the husband and his big orange beast kept throwing grass in the bed so I kept getting down on my hands and knees to weed. Until I blew out my knee in the fall of 2020 and could no longer crouch or kneel without considerable pain.
So I gave up again, and now? It looks like this.
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A large brick bordered bed of weeds. It disgusts me on a daily basis but I vowed not to touch it again until a new, taller stone border could be built. And now that the husband is retired with nothing but time on his hands….?
To be continued….
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Momma chuck has been bellying up the buffet as soon as it’s laid.
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And though we offer tasty treats…
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She always seems to be scowling.
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The speed at which she can devour a sliced carrot is truly impressive.
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But she’s none too pleased when junior joins her and starts chowing down.
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Eight years ago the flowering pear tree we’d planted by the bird feeders when we moved to this house died. My late mother, who loved nothing more than sitting on the deck watching our fine feathered friends, told me we needed to replace that tree because the birds missed it. Sadly, she passed two months later… and because she wanted me to make the decision what to do with her ashes, I laid part of her to rest with a beautiful tulip tree in that very spot.
Unfortunately the tree wasn’t hardy enough for the rugged Maine winters and croaked two years later. As did the flowering dogwood we planted after that and the Rose of Sharon after that. Two years ago when our neighbor gave us a few river birches to plant in front of the man cave/barn, we transplanted a flowering plum to my mother’s spot. It did well, for two years.
But now….
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There it goes.
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Undeterred and very determined to give my mother the tree she wanted… we went to an extremely expensive nursery where I paid an astronomical sum for a flowering crabapple.
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It was a beautiful specimen. Tall and bursting with good health.
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So in it went, with my mother.
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My fingers and toes are crossed this one makes it more than two years.
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Because if this one dies, I’m really going to wonder if my mother is trying to tell me something.
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When the weather turns dry and hot I always wonder how wild creatures find water. And since I was throwing apple pieces out to momma woodchuck and her brood, I thought I would try something new.
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A large container of fresh cool water.
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Unfortunately it sat there all day… untouched. She had no interest whatsoever.
Oh well. I tried…
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I can’t help myself when it comes to these baby woodchucks. I have to try and make friends.
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Apple chunks help inter species relationships.
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This little fellow was so close..
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But ducked under the barn at the last minute.
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The whole time we were exploring this area we met two other people on the trail.
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Talk about a hidden gem.
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Shame the wild raspberries weren’t quite ready.
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Now that’s my kind of conference room.
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It always surprises me how many beautiful little places there are like this along our coast. I’ve lived in Maine since I was 15 and never knew this existed.
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Another trail lead to a sweet little private beach.
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Hey, it’s Maine. If there’s 3 feet of sand? We call it a beach.
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Ending the hike, we took the final trail back to the parking lot.
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Where there was a wonderful old cemetery. I love exploring those and had just found a headstone from 1837 when I noticed the webs.
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Webs full of squirming worms that could have been the dreaded brown tail moth. No way I was rubbing up against those bad boys again.
Back in the car, there was only one thing left to do to make the day complete. A meal at our favorite Boothbay Harbor restaurant, the Boathouse Bistro.
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It’s not on the water, and the decor might leave a little to be desired but it has the best food around hands down. Spicy Cajun grilled shrimp and veggies on cheesy grits for me.
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And a perfectly cooked filet mignon with herbed truffle butter for the husband.
Life is good.
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River's world..... 