in the yard

Blue Jay Nests

Rae Spencer4 Comments

As a child, I both loved and dreaded blue jays. Beautiful and fierce, they are a permanent fixture in my summer memories. (See this poem.)

Last year, a pair of blue jays nested in our wax myrtle. They built on the far side of our fence, right over the sidewalk. It was a precarious choice, and I wasn’t too surprised when the nest failed.

Today, a new nest is taking shape. This time they chose the neighbor’s pear tree, a safer and more defensible position. They are using twigs from our wax myrtle, which makes for some fun photos, but I’m content to have them in someone else’s yard. They are, after all, quarrelsome birds.

Okay, that part about being content is a lie. I’m jealous. Maybe the babies will spend some time in our yard, as they learn to fly…

Yard Work and Spiderlings (not recommended for arachnophobic readers!)

Rae Spencer7 Comments

I did a few spring chores in the yard today. I mowed, which thrilled the robins.

Then I uncovered the ginger lilies. Last winter, we lost an entire bed of ginger lilies, who are more susceptible to cold than any of our other bulbs. I feared losing all the beds as snowstorm after snowstorm plowed through the area. Stung by last year’s losses, this year I have been determined to leave them insulated until well after our last “frost date”. They’ve had other plans, stubbornly growing through and under and around their protective layers. So tonight they are free.

It’s not just the ginger lilies. The tulips are ahead of schedule, too. We don’t have many tulips (six, to be exact), and they don’t seem to thrive in our yard. Some years, they don’t bloom at all. That’s not the case this year.

While working in the corner flower bed, I found a family of fresh-hatched spiderlings. (Look away!) I’m wretchedly arachnophobic, but these little motes hardly seemed like spiders. They were almost cute. I watched as they trooped across a tiny span of web, climbed the tallest iris, and floated away on gossamer sails. I wanted to wave goodbye. And wish them luck. And read Charlotte’s Web again.

All told, it was a lovely day in the yard.

From the Butterfly Archives

Rae Spencer7 Comments

Today is too warm for March. And too humid. It feels like June. The sky is low and gray. The yard’s air is clotted, a claustrophobic weight that has me hiding in my office, where a tower of neglected paperwork teeters on the brink of deadlines.

To lighten the mood, I took a brief stroll through the butterfly archives. This was my first “successful” butterfly photo, taken in July of 2010.

Something In the Yard

Rae Spencer7 Comments

Yesterday afternoon, an Unidentified Dreadful Object appeared in the yard.

The Object landed in a major squirrel cache, amid a trove of buried tidbits. This squirrel made a wary approach, but quickly lost courage.

From the fence’s safe vantage, the squirrel eyed the Object for a while. After a few nervous changes of direction, over the fence and back again, anxiety defeated hunger.

Once the squirrel was gone, the Object was easy to subdue and remove.

A sidewalk runs along our fence, and litter tends to accumulate in the wax myrtle border. Every so often, something finds a break in the wax myrtles and lands in the yard. As a kid, I did my share of littering, so I pick up what lands in my yard with a weird sense of satisfaction. An atonement, of sorts, as if each current act of responsibility erases a previous moment of carelessness.

More bees

Rae Spencer2 Comments

I’m stunned by the number of bees in our yard. Bees of every shape and size, sampling every flower. The pear tree is the main attraction, but only because it is the most flamboyant, positively exploding with blooms. The bees are not so pear-dazzled that they ignore the dandelions and irises, nor any of the other flowers that vie for their attention.