This year for the first time in ages there are so many fireflies in the front yard garden and even some in the back yard. Apparently they like pollenator plants.
So much nicer than raccoons. It really is a treat watching their tiny flashes.
They remind me of the years we saw the synchronized fireflies at Elkmont in the Smokies. Their show would happen for just a couple of weeks in June.
Eventually they got to be sso popular that we stopped going, but they are probably still flashing.
Apparently I have a raccoon living in my chimney, and I'm not happy.
My new neighbor told me that he's seen it crawling in and out. I don't have a fireplace but the chimney was used for the original heating system ventelation.
This has turned into a neighborhood project. The original plan was to trap the raccoon and relocate her, but it turns out that if I go behind the furnace I can hear babies squeaking. Mama gets a reprieve until the babies leave.
This pretty iris appeared today. Sarah said she planted it last year, beside the front porch so I could easily water it. She said it needs a lot of water.
In fact it has received next to none. It's surrounded by day lilies, which get minimal water from me. I'll be more diligent going forward. It's such a lovely flower on a long stalk.
The small local nursery has no milkweed. The nice man sitting in a chair just outside the door said he had tried three or four suppliers without any luck. He said that seems to happen every three or four years.
There has been gentle thunder rumbling for the past hour. Somewhere, it is raining, just not here.
Joanne mentioned the plant false indigo in a reent post. She inspsired me to admire mine, very big this year. You can see both leaves and seed pods.
Sometimes called baptisia, these plants are drought tolerant, good pollenators, and (drum roll) deer resistant. And, they're pretty.
Because I'd read that they are self seeding I tried to start my own from seeds in the refrigerator rolled up in a damp paper towel. It didn't work.
In the interest of really finishing, and in getting the three misfit blocks off the table, I pieced that fourth block and stitched the bocks together.
The blocks still look like misfits, but with some quilting they will make a pretty enough Christmas table topper.
When I was telling you about that lower left block, I was reminded about how long it took me as a child to learn right from left. (That, and tying my shoes. My mother dispaired.) I'm pretty sure I was the last in my class to learn both
I remember sitting in the second grade classroom trying to puzzle out right vs. left, a concept that made no sense. It was a combination second and third grade classroom and I'm sure I was supposed to be doing something else, but I was easily distracted.
I finally learned by looking to see on which hand women wore their wedding rings and translating that to other situations.
To this day, I'm always happy for a work-around. I think it's related to math appreciation. There are different paths to the right answer.
Now for the stupidity - A few weeeks ago I had my sewing machine serviced, and I'd used it a few times since then. All was good, until I got really stupid. I realized I hadn't engaged the dual feed foot and promptly did that.
The backstory is that that feature hooks up to only one of the many feet that come with the machine. And I chose the wrong one.
I should have looked at the manual, just to be sure I had everything right. But I didn't because I'd done it many times before. And then I felt so, so stupid when I went to the dealer because things weren't working.
All the more so because I was an educator for that dealer for many years.
As a delayed Mother's Day gift, Sarah and Winnie and the dogs took me plant shopping at the huge nursery north of Cincinnati.
II'm easily impressed - they had complementary icy bottles of cold water.
It's the kind of place where customers stroll around just looking at plants of all kinds, knowledgable employees stroll around asking if they can help, and dog biscuits appear out of employee smock pockets.
Luckily, Winnie located a smaller nursery on the way to the brewery. That nursery had lots of pollinator plants, inclluding a selection of milkweed - I may have to go back.
