The flowers I didn’t plant this spring are continuing to be my garden favorites. Rabbits must not like calendula or chamomile, because they’ve tried eating everything else but haven’t touched these. I guess marigolds are on the list of wildlife-safe flowers, right? And calendula is the original “marigold”, though they don’t smell the same. The chamomile surprises me, because it definitely DOES smell like something tasty, but who knows. Maybe the rabbits can’t afford to get too relaxed, lol!
Last year I planted Seed Savers historic pansies mix, and some plants never died out during our mild winter, and the rest self-seeded. I love them! Such pretty colors. I pressed a bunch last year but haven’t done anything with them yet. You can see sage leaves in the pansies photo above, another plant that overwintered well (also grown from Seed Savers seeds last year!).
Nova and I went out the other morning to take photos and pick raspberries. And chase chipmunks! We’ve never had so many bunnies or chipmunks running around here! I think it has to be down to the lack of outdoor cats, but this strange weather year might be boosting numbers, too. I wonder if we’ll get an uptick in predators next year. We’ve seen coyotes out in the fields a few times (we often hear them, rarely see them). We used to think we had a mink in the pond — until we saw it running across the yard and realized it was an otter!! But we’ve also had bobcats and foxes in the past, and we haven’t seen them in a while now. I imagine the drought years are hard on all the animals.
Anyway, Nova is clearly descended from a long line of fierce hunters — rodent hunters. She has been LOVING the chipmunks, though she’s never going to manage to catch one. She’s determined, though! I lifted her up to the girls’ tree fort/deck when she was in pursuit, because she thought the chipmunk had gone up. She was in focus mode!
I only have one pear tree, since my other died last autumn (something stripped the bark the previous winter, and it managed to survive one more summer, putting out dozens of fruits). They’re supposed to need a partner tree for fertilization, so I was surprised to see that the remaining tree has set about ten pears. Half of them are out of reach, of course! For all the pears that grew last year, we hardly ate any — they seemed to go from rock hard to rotting/mealy overnight. I haven’t figured out the trick for getting to them while they’re edible.
And our beautiful pond. I love seeing the reflection of the trees. I try to tune into our surroundings as much as possible during this time of year. There are more months of naked trees than leafed trees here! I want to soak it up. I think eight months of green and four months of snowy white-brownness would be a better balance. I would happily take winters like last year’s every year (it was so mild, hardly any snow), except I think it would eventually be hard on everything living and growing here. And listening to the snow-lovers complain was almost as bad as the snow itself!